What is your Online Mission? SOBcon 2007

Posted by Lucia on May 14 2007 in . There are 17 comments. Add yours!

WHAT is your mission.

What is your mission is probably the best message I took away from the SOBcon conference this week end in Chicago.
It was really great to sit back and be motivated by some great bloggers, with loads of passion.

The first speaker was Phil Gerbyshak a self proclaim relationship geek, who motivated the crowd and got us started on thinking about the relationships we build with people on and offline and how to balance connecting with people while being your authentic self.

Liz Straus was next, she said some powerful things:

• If your not having fun your not doing it right


• Anything that has ever changed the world, anything relevant had been started by a person’s idea


• Do what you live in service… to the people that love what you do


• Publish button


• Difference between business & relationship. relationships last longer and are more fun


• Conflict Resolution happens when your open to learning something that we are sure we don’t want to know.


• We create dialogue when we are willing to learn


• You don’t build a community, you make room for one. If you make laws, you are inviting people that want to break them

Next up was Dave Armano, he spoke about blogs as an extension of your personal brand.
He gave advice on making a better blog experience for the users with points such as:

• Don’t provide all the answers, engage the community in your story – post a pic and ask them to write the story


• Create things that are meant to be shared and people share them


• Don’t think of yourself as a blogger, we are people, individuals that do x.y & z


• Bloggers are one dimensional , there is a blog stereotype, but we are not one dimensional.

Andy Sernovitz was a great speaker on branding and word of mouth marketing. His book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking is a must read.
He discussed his steps on word of mouth marketing – 5 Steps to Word of Mouth marketing
1. Talkers: find people who talk
2. Topics: Give people a reason to talk
3. Tools: Help the message spread
4. Taking Part: Join the conversation
5. Tracking: Measure & Listen

Wendy Piersall discussed how important it is to get out of your comfort zone and how when that happens, great things happen. Her examples were heart warming and inspiring.
Other speakers such as Mike Sansone, Mike Wagner & Drew McLennan helped us all work out the pros & cons to our web presence and what next steps we could take.

While Vernon Lun, Robyn Tippins and Diego Orjuela enlightened us on their plugins and products.

Rodney Rumford and Ben Yoskovitz spread their knowledge on pod-casting and video.

Every speaker focused on connecting with readers and other blog writers to take your blogging to the next level.
It was great to be at such an interactive event where not only were the speakers great, but the audience really participated and offered great advice and tips for all.

What amazed me was the stats from the audience about the social media industry and how 70% of reporters got their information off blogs. That was a real eye opener for me.

Thanks to all that attended, it was great to meet bloggers that I’ve corresponded with on line for so long: such as Tim Johnson a great project manager who writes his posts in such a story telling way that getting his message comes so easily.

I look forward to next years event being even bigger & better.