I was proud to read what Genevieve wrote on O.xide Design’s blog about my coverage of working with them for my husband’s birthday party. Gen wrote: “Bloggers like Kim are more like editors of magazines”. Even if Genevieve only met me once, she understood what I do for living.

Her comment brings the question of defining my job title. How do professional bloggers differentiate themselves from the casual bloggers? How we differentiate the different types of professional bloggers? You get the corporate bloggers, the bloggers for hire and the bloggers like me who are creating their own publishing company.

My Quest for the Right Job Title

After months of telling people that I was a professional blogger, I noticed a flaw. It does not convey my business goal. I must not forget that I am entrepreneur. I founded KimVallee.com to be a publishing company, a recognized media authority. I am the founding editor of that brand and this is where I put my energy all day.

Being a small business owner has its challenge. When you are a blogger, you are at the front of the brand. So, how do you disconnect your role from the brand? I feel that my job title should take into account the positioning of the brand.

Do We Need a Job Title?

Some people argue that job titles have become irrelevant. Maybe! After all, I am a lifestyle and entertaining expert when I give interviews for newspapers or magazines. I am the editor of a women online magazine (or a blog) when I meet people in my daily activities. That distinction works fine.

Still, we need to quickly tell new acquaintances what we do for living. You must take into account that the people you will meet are not necessary savvy in your area of expertise. Therefore, it is easier to refer to job titles that everyone can understand. This is why I say more often that I am the editor of a women online magazine instead of the editor of a blog. Or maybe it is because I always treated At Home with Kim Vallee (my main blog) as a women magazine.

What are your thoughts? Any advices?

+ photo by Jérôme Paradis at Webcom Montreal

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Before you choose a blog template, consider form and function. Keep in mind that the Web is evolving all the time and we are always experimenting with new ways to display our content. And remember that content is king. The blog design is there to enhance your content, to provide a good experience to your readers and to convey what your brand/blog stands for.

Based on my experience and what I see in the blogosphere as of autumn 2009, I feel that:

1. Pictures sell. The trend is to go with bigger images. Aim for 500 pixels in width.
2. The the blog is becoming the hub of your social media activities. The blog layout is morphing and designers are experimenting with different options. There are no clear winner at this point. The multimedia blog template is an option. But clearly, we look for what will replace the magazine layout and the classic blog layout for your home page.
3. Make sure to display where to find you on other social media sites. Put a link to your Flickr and You tube account, a Follow me on Twitter link or a Twitter widget. The Fan box from Facebook works well to grow your fan base. You must leverage your participation in social networking sites.
4. Make sure your posts display well in Facebook when people add the link to their profile. You want to show the title, show the contextual picture and display the first sentences of your post. Click here for explanations. Any blogger should leverage the power of popular social networking sites to grow their traffic.
5. Assume that your readers use a screen resolution of at least 1024×768. On at my At Home blog, I get less than 2% of my readers with a 800×600 screen resolution or lower.
6. If you still prefer the classic blog layout (no harm in that), opt for a 2-column design since it allows your content to breathe. Allow a content column of 500 pixels or more to publish big pictures and properly embed You Tube videos. To give you an idea, the white section of my blog measures 1002 pixels in width.
7. If you publish many posts per week, display blog excerpts on your home page. This way, if a reader is not interested by the first post, you may grab his or her attention with the second or third post.

Make your Image Google-friendly

Do not forget to fill a short description of what the picture represents, think of describing the scene on the ALT attribute of the image. I am telling you, it makes a huge difference. As a bonus, putting ALT attribute helps on accessibility.

+ photo: Aperture multimedia blog template from WooThemes

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It is the time of the year where I re-evaluate what I am doing on my At Home with Kim Vallee blog. Remember that I told you that you should review what you are doing 3 to 4 times a year. I am thinking about what I will do next to improve the content. Like I said at PodCamp 2009, having a great looking blog is important but what will really insure that readers will come back is superior content that served the needs of your readers.

I go back to the basics and review everything with the current state of the blogosphere. I look at:

• How I can stand out from the crowd in my niche?
• What the competition is doing?
• What is missing in my niche, what angle is not covered by others?
• How I can make my content better and more useful for my readers?
• What else can I do to grow my traffic?

Books as a Souvenir

This morning, Mitch Joel tweeted about a talk that Seth Godin gave last year about how he used New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books. Seth Godin is in the idea business, not the book business. Seth gave away partial content before he published his books. He made the point that his books are, for many readers, a souvenir of their experience surrounding the book. It is more powerful to spread ideas first and encourage people to talk about them. Then, the books become a by-product that fans want to own.

Watching this Seth Godin’s presentation triggered new ways I could do things to further develop my brand. I invite you to watch him since you could probably transpose many concepts into your own industry.

MORE:
+ Seth Godin
+ Seth Godin’s presentation
+ via Mitch Joel on Twitter

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Like many of you, I lost control of my inbox over the last months. I received too many emails every day. Once in a while, I would try to sort everything but I often gave up after an hour due to this immense task. Not anymore! My inbox is empty and it will stay that way.

Sort Your Emails by Priority

If you switch to the priority technique, you will never have to deal with a full inbox. The revelation came from the fact that you need two sorting systems for your emails. First, you sort your emails by assigning a priority level to every email. Once a task is done (email is answered), you move the email in the right filing category. This way, your inbox stays empty at all time. As a bonus, you will not forget important and urgent things.

Make it Fit Your Needs

Define your own priority level. Do it in function of what you do for living. You could have 3 levels: Urgent, Important but can wait, Later. This is the simplest and quickest way. You can find inspirations on organization office supplies, like the Make it Work bundle that I am showing you.

I define instead a 7-priority level system that is task oriented for my work as a blogger.

• Rush
• Must respond
• Daily Reads – I create a filter on Gmail to immediately send my favorite newsletters to my daily reads
• To Do – it is a mix of current meetings and tasks
• To Write About – to remind me of potential stories
• To Read when time
• Project.

Everything else is deemed trivial. I either archive the email, with or without further classification, or delete the email right away. I went over my full inbox in 2 hours using these rules.

My inbox was full because my old classification system required too much thinking to determine how to file each email. Plus, it failed on the urgency of the emails. Assigning by priority forces you to take an easy decision. I am convinced my inbox will stay clean from now on.

I wish to thank my good friend Nathalie Rivard for telling me about the task oriented sorting mechanisms. Nathalie got that advice from Isabelle Lopez, who got it from a friend. We can all learn from each other.

SOURCING:
+ Make it Work Bundle by Knock Knock $30.60 USD

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I had a great time at the second edition of PodCamp Montreal. I am happy with all the sessions I went to. The exchanges provide great food for thought both from the presenters and the participants. People discussed several ways to stay authentic and transparent in CT Moore’s talk about transparency and personal brand. It was fun that it used Donald Drape as a reference character.

My two own sessions went well. I believe that you should review your blog 3 to 4 times a year and make adjustments. Preparing my Top Tips for Better Blogging session gave me the opportunity to review what I am doing. To answer Julien Smith’s question: doing it helps them and me.

I am also thrilled that our “Top Blogueur” panel was about design bloggers. Social media unconferences are not only for the earlier adopters of social media. Everyone is welcome. But people outside the social media crowd seem hesitant to participate and even more to submit a presentation. Having speakers that are not part of the usual circle is showing that things are changing. If you speak French, you can watch the panel here.

Video of Top Tips for Better Blogging

The sessions were recorded on live streaming, which is not always reliable. A little bit more than half of my presentation was recorded. Since it is the first half, you will not be lost.

PHOTO CREDITS:
+ Eva Blue and Jerome Paradis

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I will be a speaker at PodCamp Montreal that will happen this weekend. In fact, I will be in two sessions.

Top Tips for Better Blogging

First, I will share my Top Tips for Better Blogging at 10 am Saturday, September 19th in room DE-3230. The blog universe has evolved and we have to adapt to the new reality. Based on my experience running At Home with Kim Vallee, my talk will focus on what it takes to create great content. I will tell you what works today to grow your traffic and free ways to monitor the social conversations.

I designed this session for all levels of bloggers. I made it so that recent bloggers can learn and seasoned bloggers can brush up their knowledge. I guarantee that you will learn a few new tricks or that attending will put things in perspective to address to current trends and challenges of the blogosphere.

If you cannot make it, my presentation will be live streamed. See you at 10 am this Saturday.

Top Bloggeur Panel

Right after lunch Saturday, I will be a panelist with the talented Éric Bolduc, Gabrielle Chalifoux and Cindy Laverdière. The talk will be in the language of Moliere (French). Michelle Sullivan will be the host of our Montreal-based design panel.

I am thrilled that lifestyle, fashion and art bloggers are represented at PodCamp Montreal. I said many times that design bloggers should mingle more often with geeks. We will exchange on our approach to blogging, the importance of networking, our strategy to build trust and awareness, plus our views on monetarizing our blog.

Panel ‘Top blogueur’ will start at 13:30 in room DE-3240 Saturday, September 19th. If you live out of town or are unable to go, our panel presentation will be live streamed.

It costs nothing to attend PodCamp Montreal.  You simply need to register online first. Check out the schedule to discover the other awesome presenters; it’s should be great! If you wish to tweet about PodCamp Montreal, the official hashtag is #pcmtl.

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In an interview he gave to Read Write Web, Jeremiah Owyang told something that makes a lot of sense. He answered a problem I had lately. I struggled to find time to read my RSS feeds. Sadly, I knew about the problem but never took the time to review a typical day schedule to see where I went wrong. I told myself that it must be because I write more posts or pass to much time on Twitter although I had the feeling the problem did not lie there.

Owyang told Read Write Web:  “I started my blog as a practitioner at Hitachi. I budget time every morning to read and blog. I do that before I check my personal email or work email. I believe you have to pay yourself first. When you open your email you pay someone else, because it’s usually people reaching out to ask you for something. Taking the time to read blogs, synthesize and add value, that builds your community. That’s paying yourself first.”

When I started blogging and for a long time, I read my RSS feeds first thing in the morning. I then write a post, as it is crucial to have one post out before lunch. I pay myself first. Over the last 6 months, I felt an obligation to open emails first. I received many emails. Most are pitches. I told myself many times that I should revert to my old habit since it helped me grow readership but for some reasons, I felt compel to serve other people first. Not anymore. Thank you Jeremiah for your insight.

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One thing that is difficult for many bloggers is to define their niche. As the competition on the blogosphere becomes fiercer, you need to position your blog in order to stand out. People needs to quick get what your blog is about and how it is different from the pack.

Whether you talk about one topic or many topics in your blog, you need to find one direction that summarizes what your blog is about.

Give Room to Your Niche to Evolve

If you are starting out, think about how to categorize your blogs in directories. Take my At Home blog. It is a design blog for women well positioned as a stylish living blog. It started in 2007 as a blog about entertaining at home with style. In time, I found out that it is the stylish living aspect that my readers are attached to.

Think about directories

In a real conversation, people would easily describe the scope of At Home. But I have a hard time selecting a category for it in Web directories. Lifestyle blogs are not exactly what I am since I do not cover cultural events or musics. I am not only about food or home decor. I also touch family life without being about kids and parenting. Women magazines are rarely there and when they are, it is often filled by feminist blogs or women issues blogs.

There is also another impact. I consider myself a design blog. But when they are blog awards on specific topics (interior design, food, etc), I realized that people would not instinctively think about my blog. I am not complaining. I am happy with my positioning. I just point it out so you could fully grasp the extent of your decision.

Examine Your Content

Ask yourself that question: Are you mainly

• a creator of new content – ex: a crafter,
• a collector  – blog is about what you like,
• a curator  – like I am
• a news publisher – being the source of all the news about a specific topic
• a problem solver
• one that inspires people to act or create
• a commentator, someone who shares his/her perspectives on issues and ideas, etc…

The content you produce may also influence how you define your niche. Lastly, you need to consider your competition since you need to differentiate yourself.

Remember that helps growth and maintain a readership:

1. Regularly write posts with original content
2. Concentrate on being useful for your readers
3. Be active in the social media community, not just in the blogosphere

For the last point, I refer you to an excellent post about how to get noticed by the right people written by my friend Lara McCulloch of Ready 2 Spark.

+ photo that I took when I went to the after-party of the Social Gaming Summit 2009 in San Francisco

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We installed BackType Connect to integrate related Twitter conversations into the post comments. It is not hard to do by yourself. Adding a plugin in WordPress usually works like a charm.

Since we are perfectionists, I asked my tech guy to fine-tune a few things that required his programming skills. One thing, Jerome did what to add the @ character before the username of every tweet (see the arrow on the image). This way, it is easier for you to notice that the comment originated from Twitter.

If you are a blogger, you probably notice that comments on blogs are broken. They are because many people say they like your post on Facebook or share their opinions about your posts on other social networks. I personally concentrate my efforts on Twitter and Facebook. Since Facebook is a closed network, we cannot export the comments and likes.  For Twitter, you can retrieve the relevant tweets. On tools that enable you to do this is BackType Connect that works for WordPress blogs.

Besides Twitter, your can include comments from Digg, FriendFeed, Reddit and Hacker News. Here is a small description from the information BackType is gathering per social networks.

• Twitter – whenever someone tweets one of your posts
• FriendFeed – whenever someone comments on an entry for one of your posts
• Digg – whenever someone comments on a submission for one of your posts
• Reddit – whenever someone comments on a submission for one of your posts
• Hacker News – whenever someone comments on a submission for one of your posts
• Other Blogs – whenever someone comments on a post that links to one of yours (I do not recommend this option)

For my blogs, I feel that only tweets are making sense. Analyze what it is best for you. There are a few preferences amongst which I choose to:

• Not include retweets with no additional comment
• Do not include connected conversations from my own blog
• Mix comments by time stamp. Since I believe in the life stream effect, I feel it is easier for people to follow conversations as they happen. The other option is to separate the tweets from the blog comments.

The only thing I wish there was available is to eliminate my own tweets. Since I promote every post on Twitter, I feel it adds noise.

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Look at your fan page as a destination for your fans to connect with your brand and amongst themselves. If you accept the fact that the content of your fan page does not have to be just about your brand, it reduces the amount of original content you will need to produce. Here are two ways to make it easy:

1. allow your fans to post their content
2. put content produced by others that is relevant to your readers.

By letting your fans posting their content, you will learn more about them. It gives you a chance to discover:

• what they care about,
• what they do,
• what they like about your blog or your products/services,
• what they want to know.

Their content can inspire new blog stories. If you are a business, letting your fans speak freely enables you to discover how people really use your products in their daily life and what are their expectations. It is also a good tool to discover influencers.

Fans are not necessary Your Blog Readers

One thing I noticed as a blogger active in my local community is that not all my fans read my blog. My case may be special. While these non reader fans are a minority, I welcome them.

I noticed that the gender split of At Home with Kim Vallee’s fans is different from my readership. The reason is that many business bloggers that I am friend with and often met at conferences decided to show their support by becoming fans of At Home with Kim Vallee.

These social media and tech bloggers do not read At Home with Kim Vallee. Reading my tweets, seeing my post links on Facebook and knowing me personally enabled them to determine that my blog was worthy of their support. Although they are a minority, having their support gives my blog (and my brand) exposure outside my targeted circle. Having their trust adds to my credibility. This is one thing a fan page can do to support the growth of your blog.

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This is the follow-up interview realized by my friend Christian Aubry with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. In this second segment – a third is coming – Matt Mullenweg talked about how he started WordPress and how the open source community swelled the popularity of WordPress. It is a case where the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Over and over at WordCamp Montreal last weekend, people talked about the fact that WordPress, WordPress MU and BuddyPress are platforms, an infrastructure of which you can build upon. The added values emerged from what you can do with it. WordPress is used to achieve different objectives, to suit an infinite number of markets and is applied in many creative ways. You benefit from not reinventing the wheel. Instead, you concentrate on how you can serve your community. In fact, this is the main reason why I migrated At Home to WordPress.

Matt also talked about the importance of helping each others. If you think about the unconference movement and about blogging, it is mostly people sharing their expertise for the good of others. At the end of the day, it makes a better world where we feel empowered. Be prepared to be inspired.

You see in the background, a group of partcipants at WordCamp Montreal. A third part of this interview is coming soon. If you are looking for a guy to hire for your video reportage, put Christian Aubry on your short list. He has many years of experience.

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I had a great time this weekend at WordCamp Montreal. The conversation with the founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg was inspiring and calming. Matt was really zen while he answered questions from the crowd. In the after-talk, many people pointed out to me his soothing voice. Amongst other things, Matt shares the core value of his company. To give you an idea, check out this short interviewed realized by my friend Christian Aubry.

About Our Presentation

I like going to this type of conference because you always get back from them with some ideas. Several talks gave me food for thought. Plus there is the fact that being a speaker forced me to reflect on my blog design and features. Jerome Paradis and I talked about my migration from subText to Wordpress.

We devised the presentation to highlight the perspective of the blogger and the preoccupations of the developer. I am happy because people seemed to appreciate that duality. I made the envy of a few bloggers to have free access to such a talented developer. Without Jerome, I would have never been able to have made this transition as perfectly as he did.

Now that I migrated to WordPress, I can envision the future. What to do next? I started by increasing the width of the pictures on posts. A lot is more to come. And I think it will be exciting for you.

I cannot recall the name of the caterer but the food was excellent. It is the best food I ate in an inconference in Montreal. Thank you to the organizators and the participants for making it a success.

PHOTO CREDITS:
Except for the laptop image, all the images were taken by the extremely talented Eva Blue. I invite you to see her WordCamp Montreal 2009 photo set, you will not regret it.

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