As a volunteer reporter for Barry Schwartz’s Search Engine Roundtable blog, I’m often asked, “Why do you do it?” My consulting work is focused on usability and Internet application testing. Why am I out chasing sessions at search engine marketing conferences?

To begin with, my work began in web design and consulting/online teaching search engine optimization in the 1990’s. Therefore, I know many “long-timers” in the SEO/M industry. It remains an area of strong interest for me, which is why I continue to keep another volunteer, non-paying project, Cre8asiteforums, going. Discussions there cover web design, development, usability, accessibility, search engines, marketing, and much more.

This daily involvement keeps me well informed, which makes me unique to companies and individuals who wish for usability consulting from someone who can see the whole picture. I need (and want) to understand the code behind a page, the behaviors and habits of people intended to use those web pages and the ways in which the final product may be marketed.

Knowledge Fortifies and Enhances Skills

Since in today’s web environment, more and more people are finding web sites from social networking sites, I felt it was important for me to truly understand how advertising, marketing and public relations companies are applying social media to their clients’ marketing campaigns.

This is why I chose this particular conference as my next volunteer reporting “job”. Being there in person allows me to meet industry leaders or speakers who are teaching attendees. The entire time I’m at a conference related to marketing, in my mind, I’m weaving what I learn into what I know about human factors and user centered design.

For example, one of the messages that came from this conference on social media was that success comes from participating in social networking. It’s not something you can pretend to know from the outside, looking in. To truly understand who uses Facebook, Stumbleupon, or the hundreds of niche micro community sites popping up, marketing teams learn and apply campaigns by first getting involved with social media/networking communities.

When a client comes to you, seeking the right profitable course for their brand, a skilled marketer will know which social networking site is the best fit for your company. This may absolutely NOT be Digg, Reddit, MySpace or Facebook.

Choose a marketing company that takes the required time to study your target market and understands their behaviors, language, interests and their favorite ways of communicating with one another. This includes understanding the importance of usability, accessibility and persuasive web design and where these fit into web site promotion and social web behavior. Once again, I’ve reinforced my long-held belief that usability and seo (and all the related tie-in skills to these two areas), are able to join forces and provide a united project plan. A team such as this understands and values your brand reputation management.

They are also well aware that the Internet never sits still. Consider hiring employees and consultants who invest time in keeping their skills and knowledge current. Additionally, make sure to budget for continued education for your present staff. A poor choice in marketing or web design can absolutely crush your business.

This is why I place such value on reporting conference sessions and why I invest my own money to do it.

I want to be sure that those who hire me are getting the best person for the job.

Coverage by Search Engine Roundtable, Rather Than My Own Blog

Another key reason I’m tied to SER is because I’m a contributing writer for that blog. I do that, and conference reporting, because he’s been a great friend and strong supporter to me. So yes, a bit of simple loyalty and friendship certainly comes into play. Barry doesn’t put any pressure on his reporters. He’s always grateful for the help. I’m crazy enough to work for a smile and a hug sometimes…

It’s our tradition, at SER, to get the session information posted quickly. SER was the first blog to try and reach every SES conference and bring it to those who weren’t able to be there in person. Several years later this remains a volunteer project, where reporters offer to help Barry Schwartz (and now Tamar Weinberg), blog sessions. In cases like SES, where there are 3 - 4 days with 4 tracks of sessions, the result exceeds the exceptional when his volunteer reporting team produces nearly complete coverage.

Everyone has their own style. Perfect copy is not a requirement, nor a demand. (I tend to push out the first draft and then go back and edit for clarity and errors.) While the lack of perfection has been sometimes criticized, I feel that many people don’t realize that none of us are paid to do this. We pay for our own rooms, food and travel expenses to “give back” to the community in this way. We try to not make mistakes (like when I got dates wrong on Tuesday), but when we have a chance to breathe, someone from SER manages to go back and catch the errors readers haven’t already pointed out.

Lastly, I do this work wearing my jeans and sneakers if I wish to. (Thanks so much for that!)

Barry’s Recap of Sessions is here

SMX was a two-day, one track conference. The following were covered (all sessions except the last one on Wednesday, which was a clinic. We also don’t report Q & A, which follow each session.)

Social Media Marketing Essentials
Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
Keynote Q&A: Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
Evangelist - The Marketer’s Role in SMM
Micro Communities
Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing

I also linked to additional coverage and photos in Photos Are Up for SMX Social Media NYC

As I’ve mentioned, this is the last conference I can afford to volunteer for. It’s been an honor to serve the Search Engine Marketing industry in this way.

……………………………………

Related:

SMX: Was it worth it? Did I learn anything? Will I go again? by Brendan Picha.

Photos from Liana Evans’ SMX Social NYC 2007 pictures set.

For those of you interested in some of the topics on blogs and journalism or the influence and study of social media behavior, here is lead I got to a blog post that digs into some of it. Weinberger NCF keynote: users take back power are Paul Gillin’s notes on a talk that sounds like it was fascinating and filled with food for thought.

The Web is a permission-free zone.

Marketing, business and media are all about fake, phony voices. Conversations are open and honest.

Blogs aren’t journalism. They’re blank pieces of paper. The fact that they’ve been judged in the context of journalism is because the media can’t get past itself.

Bloggers with just a few people linking to them are little knots of community. Every blogroll link is a little act of selflessness. The Web was built out of these little acts of generosity.

Hatip (thank you!) to Lipsticking for pointing me to Paul’s book, The New Influencers and thus, the Wienberger piece.

What brings people together isn’t always understood, but I’m starting to believe that when we’re touched deeply, there is a hook of some sort, even if we can’t label it. It’s something we feel but can’t always put into words.

What keeps us together, returning, or tied to each other may be something unique, confusing, private and unexplainable. The incentive to hold on can change, even on a whim. It’s this way with relationships of any kind.

It’s this way with blogs, forums, and anywhere people interact on the Internet. We’re hooking up with each other, but how we do it is all over the place. We’re even cruel, if that gets the job done.

How to Blog

All the advice you read about how to be a blogger conflicts. I can’t remember a time when I ever bought into any of it. This particular Blog reflects me as a business owner, consultant and professional person. It also let’s readers sit on my deck, relaxed and ready for off-topic stories. I always provide them here, mixed with something useful.

I sometimes wonder why people stop by. Have I hooked you somehow? Why do you return? Did I tick you off? Was something I said important and what I find most fascinating of all, did I connect in a way you can’t even understand yourself?

My posts are all over the place. Many are like this one. They come flying out of nowhere and you wonder what I’ve been smoking. I once told someone that though dead tired, I still had to write in my Blog. For him, it is work to post in his Blog because he targets clients. I target everybody, and that’s a huge risk.

When I need to express myself, I write because I have great trouble with verbalizing what’s in my heart and mind. Whenever I try, I convey big ideas at the level of a third grader with brilliant phrases such as “I have no idea”. It took awhile to get up the courage to put personal observations or thoughts here, of course. It’s always debatable whether or not I have something worthwhile to say, that anyone could relate to. Some readers just want a professional stream of straight news or information.

What Relationships Are We Developing Now With Blogs?

How blogs are used by journalists is a topic Tamar Weinberg wrote about in Does Social Media Have an Impact on Today’s Journalism? You Tell Me.

She feels that today’s journalism is directly effected by social media and blogs. It may be so, but if it is, I’m alarmed because facts don’t live in social media and blogs. Our opinions do. Our observations. Our reactions, biases and feelings live in the social Internet. How can you trust that a story originating from a Blog is written clearly, so that no misunderstandings can occur? How do you know what a Digg article claims is actual fact?

A Blog can post a breaking news story, with something more inside it that wouldn’t be permitted by traditional news media. Maybe we are making a mistake. Are we dumbing down the news by becoming sources for it?

We already know that articles aren’t always factual or correct. Bad information is spread by articles. It’s also found in forums, which is why expert moderators are needed to weed through the nonsense. Many articles are simply pointers lifted from something someone else wrote. Some of my best articles come from field work. The mistake is taking the information and calling it gospel, setting standards or guidelines by it and telling people to apply rules that for business requirements reasons should never be considered.

There’s something more going on and I’m not convinced we’re paying attention, so I pulled out a song.

There’s Something More Than This

I’m a huge fan of October Project. One song, Something More Than This , makes me cry every time I hear it because I relate to it on such an intense level. Here are some of the words and I’ll ruin the moment with some thoughts:

In the shadow cast as you were leaving
In the beauty of the ending day
There is always something to return to
Something you allow
To slip away

The “something you allow to slip away” punches me hard every time I hear it. It’s the emotional hook. That emotional hook separates some blogs or blog writers from others. There are readers who want to be moved or touched by us.

In the empty corners of the evening
In the vacant beauty of the wind
There is always something to remember
Something to remember
To begin

I tend to feel pain and usually start to grieve whenever this part is sung. It’s the recognition of something I can relate to, but I have no idea precisely what it is. Obviously not all blogs will give you a stomach ache or make you hyperventilate. However, a good one is one that you recognize yourself inside.

Whatever you fear
Whatever you hide
Whatever you carry deep inside
There’s something more than this

The first time I heard these words, I could no longer breathe. We do close ourselves off, don’t we? We’re not always open. Not free to be touched by someone or something new. We don’t believe in a “something more” because we refuse to give permission for that to happen. When a blogger connects with a reader, it can be an extraordinary experience. We don’t hear much about these moments, but I believe they exist because people are writing blogs.

Whatever you love
Whatever you give
Whatever you think you need to live
There’s something more than this

By this point, I’m in tears because I’m no longer here anymore. I’m at the experience it’s forcing me to remember or re-live. If you can do THAT with your Blog, you’ve taken this whole blogging thing to a new level.

In the shadow cast as you were leaving
In the beauty of the ending day
There is always something to believe in
Something…
As I watch you slip away

Maybe I’m more willing to go places with my heart. It’s pretty obvious I’ll take anyone with me who wants to come for the ride.

All I’m saying is there’s something more to blogging. Whatever it is, it won’t be accepted by the Blog Rules Police. It’s more than journalist breadcrumb trails, corporate showing off, an articles repository or a free instruction manual.

It’s how I’ll reach out for you.

As a parent with a teenager who runs a quick errand with my car and returns 4 hours later, I understand how difficult it is to hand over your beloved “thing” to somebody. There are trust issues. There’s learning how to share.

One of the first lessons we taught our kids as toddlers was how to share their toys. It’s a code we instill from early on. Sharing toy trucks and stuffed bunnies is far easier than an automobile or a blog, however. By the time we’re grown ups, we’ve figured out that we need to work hard for the things we want and it’s not so simple to let someone come in and borrow it.

If you own a blog that has a good following and you wish to leave for a business trip, vacation or another reason, would you consider permitting guest writers to come in and write for you in your absence?

There’s a new service, in Alpha (not Beta?), called Guest-Blogger.com, that hopes to provide a writing stable of sorts for bloggers. Lisa Barone, blogger for Bruce Clay Inc., challenged the theory in Your Blog Is Your Baby, Don’t Leave It With Strangers. She also raised questions, and rightly so, on the value of paying for blog comments.

It may or may not be easy to step into someone else’s blog shoes. On the one hand, if you leave and prepare your readers for guest writers, that consideration may be rewarded by steady traffic while you’re away, especially if the writing is by known bloggers. If those writers are complete unknowns, how will your readers feel, even with the warning?

I wouldn’t do it. I don’t get strangers to feed the cats in my house when I’m away. Why would I let a stranger write in my blog?

Sometimes guest blogging is the perfect solution. When Rae Hoffman let her blog be taken over by friends from her industry, it worked for her. Firstly, her regular readers were more likely to already be familiar with the guest writers. Secondly, she has a raucous blog with colorful language and her guest writers were free to not only emulate her style but take it to new levels if they wanted. The result was shocking, hysterical and my guess one of the most successful weeks, traffic-wise, she had and she was traveling!

The downside of that example is that guest writers who write in a different style to fit into the new blog may risk losing respect or potential business. Search engines save everything and a search on your name by a potential employer or client that displays a side of you that only comes out when you’re dancing with a lampshade on your head may not be the kind of publicity you want.

Inspiration

Aaron Wall wrote about blog inspiration and offered examples in, 11 Unique Content Sources in Saturated Markets. He offers fresh ideas that I hadn’t considered. Those same ideas can be used by guest bloggers that you invite.

When Rand Fishkin, of SEOmoz.org let his fiancé, Geraldine (aka “Mystery Guest”) write in the company’s blog, she immediately garnered herself a following. Her writing style is relaxed, fluid, funny, brutally honest and intelligent. She didn’t barge in as a know-it-all. Rather, she took little steps as if entering a crowded room and politely introduced herself, her opinions, her observations and respectfully tip-toed back out of the room until she was invited back.

Today, whenever she writes, I don’t hesitate to see what she has to say. It makes no difference what her topic is and if it’s off-topic, all the better. She’s too fun to read. Should you find a truly talented guest blogger, you may not want to let them go. She was no stranger plucked from the Internet ocean. They knew who they had and ran with it. You may not have the same luxury with a guest blogger service unless there are samples of their work. By the way, Happy Birthday Rand Fishkin!

Can You Be Replaced?

Some blogs are known for the personality of the blog owner/writer. I’ve never considered inviting anyone to write for this one. It’s not like I don’t have a lot of friends who could do it. Rather, I’m so fiercely independent that I get stuck in that mode and forget to let others “in”.

If I did, I would want to try before I buy. For the Guest-Blogger.com service to work for stubborn folks like me I would need writing examples, bio, blog history and as if that isn’t enough, proof that the guest wouldn’t come in and trash the place.

Customer satisfaction is important for any service. It’s not hard to prove good writing, but trust and integrity are. A picture isn’t enough to prove authenticy, nor is an example of writing style. I’m reminded of a recent post from SiteLogic called Are You Creating a Customer Experience?.

There’s a perfect illustration of attempting to purchase wind chimes online. Sure, pictures can be pretty. But what do they SOUND like? I have a good assortment of chimes at my home, of many types, and still make poor decisions on where best to put them because information on how much stress they can take is never part of the product description. Can they handle rain? Hurricane strength winds? Will a gentle breeze tangle them up?

Can You Control the Discussion?

When you’re not posting in your blog, and nobody else is either, there’s safety in the silence if you moderate your blog comments.

Will a guest blogger have comment moderation access rights? What if they allow language or discussions you would never allow?

Blogs are a form of social media. Some of them have rollicking “discussions” in the comments section. Comments are not only for sale, but resemble the pioneer days of the American Wild West.

You may come home and find your beloved blog has turned into a Saloon. This may or may not be a bad thing, especially if you’ve been bored and want to reinvent yourself.

I’m thinking Calamity Kim in chaps, leather vest with flowing fringe and some nice silver spurs on my boots, yes?

I hate to admit it, but there are days when I take a look around at my so-called presence on the Internet to see how I measure up and, truth be told, I suck. One good Digg does not a famous person make. Usually I won’t be caught dead checking data, graphs, or incoming links. Why ruin a perfectly good day?

Alexa is worthless, and yet now that the arrows are going in the down direction, I wonder that if worthless Alexa contributes to making me feel worthless, than I have a serious problem with blog self worth.

I look forward to reprints of my blog posts in the very same way one might feel after they wash and blow dry their hair. For a brief moment, you feel incredibly worthy of walking out your front door.

I like blog comments and when none arrive, I figure I wrote something boring. And yet, we know I’m not. My site data has been amusingly tracked by Matt Bailey, who with a compassionate sense of “Sheesh, should I warn her about this?” in his eyes, announces that my most popular keywords for this blog all have to do with sex.

The other keywords are for people like Rachael Ray, MsDewey, and Daryn Kagan, because I wrote about them.

A - I can’t possibly be the only person who has.

B - If I write about Kim Krause Berg, will searches for her lead to this blog?

c - If nobody searches for Kim Krause Berg, and keep searching for MsDewey instead, will this just totally mess with my head?

Lesson

Self worth is not a pretty thing. We base ours on any variety of things. I have blog-self-worth. I have mom-self-worth. I have other self worths I can’t tell you about because it would attract the sex goddess keyword (another favorite one, which I nourish and feed, for my own pathetic self worth.)

I got a unique example of self worth over the weekend.

My daughter’s boyfriend of nearly a year broke up with her the night before the Junior prom this past Saturday. Via text messaging, because that’s how kids do things nowadays. Furious and worried about her, I stayed by her side all day as she mustered the most incredible courage to get her hair done, find the right shoes and earrings to go with her dress, and find a group of friends who loved her and were willing to drive her, solo and dateless, to her prom.

In other words, she went anyway. And, she had a great time.

The breakup was finalized, in person, last night. It’s hard, as a parent, to witness these things, but she’s showing everyone that she will survive this. She has many “just friends” who are boys, who have been to the house to offer hugs and a shoulder to lean on. She likes them because “boys don’t come with the drama.” Her girlfriends always find me so we can have “what to do with Ari” chats, and then they drag her to the Mall, or (as in the present moment) going to get their nails done.

I concluded that no matter how ridiculous I feel about this blog, or how guilty I feel when I don’t post and the lines on the graphs all point downward, I still must be doing something right.

She went to the prom, without him.