Melbourne ProBlogger Event Recap, LinkUp and Looking Forward (#PBevent)

Last Friday was the second Melbourne ProBlogger Event, and I thought I’d take a moment or two today to create a bit of a summary of what happened on the day for those who weren’t able to be there.

Wow, what a day it was! A total of 271 bloggers descended on Melbourne from around Australia (as well as a couple from overseas).

Attendees were a real mix of people, with around a third flying in from interstate. The male to female ratio was 25% men to 75% women, and the niches of those in attendance was quite mixed—although a fairly large segment run parenting or personal blogs.

What encouraged me most about the attendee mix was the number of bloggers who had made the leap to generating a significant part of their income from blogging.

My hope with this event was to pack the day full of teaching, storytelling inspiration, and networking. While it was a big challenge to fit that all into one day, I hope we came close to those goals.

This year’s event we departed from what we’d done in the past by having a few “break out” sessions, which ran at the same time in different rooms. My hope was that we’d create a day that could be a little more tailored to individuals needs. The risk was of having some over full rooms and others a little empty—something we did see in one session (apologies to those who couldn’t squeeze in the “finding readers” session). Otherwise, I think this approach worked well.

Speakers were amazing—Chris Garrett and Sonia Simone flew in from overseas, but other than that, it was all local talent in the limelight.

The quality was high. I am so proud of the glimpses we saw of the Aussie blogging community, which is on a par with anything I’ve seen in other parts of the world.

We attempted to mix up the speakers at the event in terms of their niches—there were parenting bloggers, motor bike bloggers, fashion bloggers, food bloggers, and more.

The surprise guest of the day was Tim Ferriss kindly dropping by. I had heard that Tim was in town for another conference and shot him an invitation a couple of months back, but due to his schedule, I didn’t think he’d be able to make it. That was until ten minutes before he arrived, when I got an SMS message that he was on the way. Tim kindly gave us 20 minutes of his time for a quick interview—a highlight for many, and the perfect way to break people out of the stupor most people feel in afternoon sessions at conferences.

The two-hour networking drinks event at the end of the day was fun. Loads of bloggers hung around to get their fix of blogger talk. Quite a few apparently went on for a little Karaoke at the end of the night too!

Perhaps the best way to get a feel for what happened on the day is to read some of the posts from attendees. There are more going up all of the time (apologies to those who I’ve missed) but here’s what I’ve found so far:

The most common feedback I got after the event was people asking about next time. Actually that question started before the event began—there does seem to be a real thirst among attendees for more!

I have many ideas for future gatherings, but it is probably a little too soon to make big commitments about what’s next.

All I can say at this point is that I’d like to do it again and that the day we’ve just had taught our team a heap about how we’d approach “next time.” While this was a huge improvement on our first ProBlogger event (which we pulled together in a few weeks), I know we can improve a lot more.

We learned a lot about venues, scheduling, ticketing, and a lot of other logistical issues. We’ll also continue to ponder ways to get the balance of networking, teaching, story telling, and more, right. Of course it’s hard to meet everyone’s expectations, but it is something I’m keen for us to keep working on to provide gatherings that serve our attendees the best way we can!

Let me finish up by saying a huge thank you to all those who attended on Friday. The group of bloggers in attendance really made the day so special. The vibe in the room was overwhelmingly positive, friendly, and encouraging—I came home Friday night feeling really inspired.

Big props also to my team on the day. Jasmin and Nicole worked for weeks on this with me, in particular, and were supported on the day by a great group of others.

Also, thanks to our sponsors: Citrix (Go To Webinar), Sensis Yellow Pages, Coldflow, Nuffnang and Zendesk, as well as our charity partner World Vision.

Lastly, thanks to our speakers, panelists, and case study bloggers—you all rock! We worked hard to present a large variety of bloggers and the feedback on all of you was excellent. Special thanks to Chris Garrett and Sonia Simone, who flew in from North America for the day! Also to Tim Ferriss whose surprise pop in for a quick interview caused quite the stir in our afternoon session.

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Do You Spend Enough Time Looking at Your Stats?

This guest post is by Deb of Science@home.

Do you spend enough time looking at your stats?

What a statement to start with, given that the mantra seems to be to check once a week and don’t waste too much time on your stats. And I agree with what seems to be the reasoning—if you are spending all that time looking at your stats, what else could you be doing that’s more productive? There also seems to be an underlying feeling that for us little guys the stats might be just too darn depressing, so staying away might be good for your mental health and motivation.

Readers are people (image is author's own)

But I’m going to fight back for the little guys and stats junkies and say that if you use them right, stats are an extremely useful tool for building your community. Because for most of us, most of our community doesn’t talk to us. The number of comments, Facebook likes and Twitter replies is miniscule compared with the daily number of hits on our blogs, and when no one’s answering your questions you need another way to learn what makes them tick.

Your stats are the key to finding out what is important to all those people who have found you and like you but aren’t saying anything. I know it’s traditional to try to talk to those people and get them talking to you, but to get those comments in the first place you need to learn about the silent majority. The more you find out about them, the more likely you are to hit on what’s important to them.

Here are four ways your stats can help you learn about your community.

It’s obvious, but can be important. Do you need to be aware of the seasons, holidays, and traditions of your readers? Even though I’m Australian, many of my readers come from the US and a large number are from Europe. This makes me consider how to balance my stories of running around in the bush and make sure I offer indoor activities too when my readers are snowed in. Plus it determines when I post and tweet—my posts go live in the early morning to catch US readers in their evening.

The big players are search engines and social media, but sometimes you get a spike in traffic from a specific forum or web community. If it’s public that’s great—you can get in and talk to the people thinking of visiting your site. But even if it’s private, it tells you something about your visitors—if you’re getting hits from a site on baby names, can you do some posts aimed at babies to capitalize on their interest?

One day I had a spike on a post called “13 Things to Do When it’s Raining.” Sometimes you can capitalize and sometimes you can’t. But the image of mothers all over the US East Coast being stuck inside and searching for something to do with their kids struck a chord. It made them into real people with real lives and problems that I could relate to, rather than “readers” or “hits.” And that’s at least as valuable as knowing which social media network they prefer, because it makes me write for them, rather than numbers.

I had another spike just after the earthquake in Japan on a piece I’d written earlier about plate tectonics and earthquakes. That was emotionally confronting—at once I felt horrible it was happening, and guilty for doing well out of it, but at the same time I was glad I could help explain it to people searching for an answer. It reminds me to take responsibility for what I write, because you never know when it might stop being interesting and fun, and become important.

One of my most popular posts of all time is about starfish babies. A bit of digging showed me that most of the information out there about starfish either doesn’t mention babies, or is fairly static. Looking at this and my other long-term popular posts taught me a lot about my audience and what they want to know. They are parents, teachers, people who are looking for understandable explanations of the quirky details kids demand. And they’ve secretly always wanted to know but none of the “official” information sources would give the information to them! The strange searches that bring people to your site are not just cause for amusement (although that can be fun too)—they tell you who your readers are and what they want from you.

Once you start getting readers who aren’t personally related to you, just looking at numbers is a waste of time. But don’t avoid your stats completely, because if you learn to listen they are your community talking to you.

If you’ve ever wondered why Daddies are bigger than Mummies or other weird and wonderful questions, Deb has the answer at Science@home. Plus lots of things to do with babies, toddlers and kids whether it’s raining or not.

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