Bloghercon debate on the "rules of the game"
We're live blogging at Bloghercon. Charlene Li, Halley Suit and Lisa Stone are debating how best to use the power that women bloggers have at their fingertips. The question posed is, should women play by today's rules or change the game?
Lisa has been working with various media companies to help them identify bloggers in different subject matter areas. When you go on Technorati or Google, the visibility of women bloggers is only as good as the search results.
Charlene Li says it truly matters because the game is out there and is being played, and there are certain rules –80% of traffic is generated by 20% of the blogs. People have the inclination to go where people have gone in the past. If you do care about visibility of your blog, you need to learn the rules.
Charlene thinks about bloggers as follows – wanting to be an A list blogger, those blogging for themselves. The hardest thing is playing by the rules and not “checking yourself at the door”.
Halley Suitt says we should go back a bit about blogging – which is about not playing by the rules. It’s a brand new medium, and it’s kicking conventional rules in the ass, and isn’t it high time to do something different. Blogs came of age on September 11. The NY Times set a series of essays going about 9/11. And the tone of that language was blogging. And we saw the reverberation of this within mainstream media.
A question from the audience: what are the rules of the game? This conference changes the rules, according to Charlene. First – women need to network. Two things: tell people what you can give and how you can help them, and tell people what you need. Be good at networking and that’s how you get links. Second – be relevant. People find bloggers from the A-list.
Halley says her traffic came about the same way – in the beginning she happened to know many of the A list bloggers and said would you please mention the stuff I am writing about? She kept going back and asked for exposure. She is shocked that women generally don’t ask. Halley so who cares if people find it offensive that you are asking for links. Ask again and again, because people are busy, and send them a link to use.
Comment from audience is that a lot of the top bloggers are friends of the people who created the technology for the feeds. Halley says if you keep asking, they will give you traffic. Push-back from audience members that have asked for links and been unsuccessful
Charlene says that A list is not Technorati 100. It depends on the field. Network, be relevant, and be unique.
Halley says whether male or female, don’t limit your vision of blogging to politics. It’s a technology developed to go beyond this and be very specific and far afield.
Comment from audience – do we need to be validated by traditional media? We are our own validation. We have done far more for ourselves than has been done for the past. Charlene challenges, how much farther could you go with that validation, to take it further and get your voice out?
Comment from audience – men and women network differently. Women have dense networks, while men spread out with more contacts and less depth. So be aware what the concept of “network” means in this context.
Comment from audience – people need to think about their goals, in terms of who you are writing to reach, as opposed to just getting traffic.
Comment from audience -- say something relevant and become the source on that, rather than worry about overall "top blog" lists.
Charlene Li makes the point that Technorati is becoming mainstream media.
Comment from the audience – look at what the guys are doing to make it. To become one of the blogs in my field, I joined a network and offered to write for other blogs. So we should create new networks of blogs.
Comment from the audience – define your own A list. Figure out who the contacts are in your industry in order to be successful.
Comment from Mary Hodder of the Napsterization blog – she points out that Technorati scrapes the front of your blog. So people who have been around for a while have a lot of blog roll links that drive this. She wants to make a community algorithm, within topic communities and linking communities, to figure out better ways to do this than through in-bound links, which she views as an old-media method. Other metrics might include number of out-links, comments, and other socially meaningful metrics. She has posted about this and is soliciting feedback.
Comment from Mena Trott, president of SixApart, as a female doing this, she says she is often dismissed as an exception.
Comment from Mark Cantor: To do list – Blogher 100. Use your own power. Forget about the men.
In conclusion, Charlene Li says asking for a link that's a relevant link is totally legitimate, as opposed to just asking for exposure.
Halley Suitt says keep pusing the medium. Do something so radical that there's no list for it yet. As Mark suggests, do your own thing, start your own company, and get beyond all lists.
TrackBack URL for this entry:
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 'Bloghercon debate on the "rules of the game"' from Silicon Valley Media Law Blog.
