I attended a couple of offline blogging events recently. Getting out and meeting other bloggers is a great way to build your network. You can get a lot on new ideas and inspiration, you can meet bloggers who can allow you to guest post on their blogs, and even get links.
I met Murray Newlands at a one of these events and was impressed by the way he made connections with people. So I asked him if he would like to share his experience and help bloggers get most out of their next offline event, be it a tweetup or a London blog meetup. If you want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog, please check out more info here.
Wetworld Blogging
By Murray Newlands
Meeting bloggers in person, communicating and connecting with other bloggers is not just important to many bloggers. It can make a blog.
While a blog can be used as a medium for simply outputting your ideas, most bloggers want interaction and communication. It therefore follows that most bloggers are communicators. Bloggers use their blogs as a communication medium – networking events are just communication in the real world, wet world blogging.
Attending blogging events enables you to meet other bloggers in “real life”, “wetworld”. I have met many cyber friends who I communicate with daily and now know well. Meeting someone in real life enables you to build a relationship much faster. People connect with people and via people to blogs.
What are the benefits of meeting other bloggers?
Meeting another blogger enables you to connect with the aim of becoming what Chris Brogan would call a Trust Agent, someone of interest and a valued authority in your field. The bloggers you have met are writing a post they will, you hope, reference and link to your blog.
The benefits to being referenced by other bloggers are many:
- Audience share: the reader of one blog is likely to have a propensity to read blogs and read yours. You will get traffic.
- Audience share: if someone likes the blog you are referred on they are likely to like your blog.
- Trust share: if the readers trust the blog they are reading and they referred to you, they are more likely to trust your blog.
- Google Trust share: Google will trust your blog more if there are more links to it, which will lead to you getting more traffic from natural search.
How to succeed in becoming a wet world blogger?
Your primary objective should be to break the first rule your mummy told you: talk to strangers. I recently met a famous journalist and successful business woman. She told me that one of her rules to success was to talk to strangers; you never know the opportunities which will arise. You are there to connect with other bloggers. The only way you can do that is to talk to as many as possible.
A little secret: they are keen to meet people too. Another little secret is that if you are scared to talk to people they are probably more scared, and you seem confident, as you are the person who opens the conversation. The more people you talk to the more you will realise this, and the easier it becomes.
Once you are actually talking with people, the next stage is to get them to like you and connect with them. Ask them about their blog and be ready to give them a simple and interesting description of your blog. If you cannot describe your blog, how are they going to remember it or trust it as a source of information? If you find this hard, ask your friends to describe your blog, and work with them to prepare a description you can tell people.
Enter conversation with people and be part of ongoing conversations. You need to build friendships as well as demonstrate that you are a valuable source of information, and that your blog will be too.
How can I help you?
“How can I help you?”- the best question in the world. Why? Because you can help lots of people. The more you help people the more people will help you back. You will find the people who reciprocate and they are the ones you want to build relationships with, because they will be the people connecting with other connectors. There are pools of connected people all working together to help each other successfully and you want to join these.
How can you help them easily, blog about them, interview them on your blog, exchange guest posts (see Blog Consultant), introduce them to other people they can connect with who you know work in their area.
Exchange information. You must have a business card with your information on it. If your blog is a part time interest get some moo.com cards with the details of your blog on it. You want to be able to follow up after the meeting and connect.
Follow up. It will all be in vain unless you connect after the event. Ideally you will follow up with an email the next day. Try to connect through Facebook and Twitter.
How can you help Marko and me?
Connect with us: we are both looking for guest posts, and opportunities to guest post and connect with other bloggers.
Murray launched his Affiliate Blog in the spring of 2009 and has fast become one of the key players in blogosphere, a micro celebrity blogger. Murraynewlands.com covers topics from affiliate marketing to social media marketing.
Image by Peter Marshall.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this post. I am going to my first LIVE or “wetworld” blogging event next month when I attend Blogworld 09 in Vegas! I go back and forth between super excited and super nervous for some reason. I actually won a weekend pass from John Chow, so it’s extra special.
I’d already planned on taking biz cards and I definitely need to brush up on my elevator speech, but you had some other great ideas like interviewing other bloggers on my blog. It’ll be nice to see & be seen in person!
Great to hear you’re looking for some guest posts…what an awesome opportunity! Hoping to put something together & submit it this week!
Coree
Thank you for your positive feedback I am glad you liked my post. I like your blog, would you like to interview for murraynewlands.com?
Murray
Reminds me of one of the best books I ever read – Barbara Walters “How to Talk to Anyone about Anything.”
Good post, thanks.
I love it Murray! I guess I never really thought about going to one of these events. Thanks for the very good information!