Techfluff.tv

With geeks being the rockstars of the future, I thought it was pretty fitting that June’s Social Media Club Melbourne was held at the end of AC/DC Lane on Tuesday 8 June.

It was a packed house at 24 Moons, which was filled with Melbourne’s Twitterati and social media enthusiasts keen to hear from some of the most successful people making a living from bashing away on their keyboard. The draw cards included the wise and experienced Darren Rowse aka @Problogger, the tell-it-like-it-is Editor and Publisher of The Inquisitr, Duncan Riley, aka @DarrenRiley and the arty but beautifully crafty Pip Lincon aka @meatmeatmikes The panel’s MC was former Miss Megabyte, Yvonne Adele aka @IdeasCulture.

Now these three super bloggers couldn’t be more different if they tried, and each speaker speaker gave a refreshing view to the secrets of their success. I sent in a question to the panel about video blogging and was surprised by their contrasting experiences.

In short, once @problogger started putting videos on his site, he started getting comments from people who told him they have been reading for a year, and had never left a comment – until watching his video blog.

For @meatmeatmikes, it was slightly different, because she posted a How-To crochet a ‘granny square’ video which – surprisingly for her – it got her sites a lot of hits because a lot of her readers can’t read a patten and they really appreciated the video tutorial. Finally, @duncanriley has a different approach to video blogging, and put simply he suggested it was too hard and took too long. Though he did have time to make this little video (leave Zuck alone!)

Yes, video, can take a long time to produce – much longer than most people think – but the rewards from using video is more than just ‘pretty images’ but that bloggers can really engage and connect with some of their readers on a much personal level than words written on a web page.

What I really learned from the panel, is that audiences responsed to different mediums, and that bloggers should accomodate for their readers and try to be adaptable for their ever growing readership and dabble in a little bit of everything i.e. from written posts, to video blogs to podcasts etc Or you can do a video blog, post it as a transcript and a podcast in the one entry

I also learned a great deal more that evening -but I’m going to take a short-cut and reference a few bloggers who did a great job of jotting down some notes and insights – which they generously shared with the wider community. Think of them like cheat sheets for the knowing.

Cath King for Seeking Digital here.

Samantha Bell for her blog Inner Greatness here.

Brent Hodgson for his blog here.

Sharon Nathani’s blog here.

And you can watch the full panel here on SMCmelb’s youtube channel here.

A couple days later, I caught up with Tim Beveridge, Planning and Insights Director at E-Services, and one of the organisers of SMCmelb.

I first heard about this group when I googled ‘social media’ and ‘melbourne’ and volia – I was taken straight to their website. I sent all the organisers an email introducing myself, and letting them know I was doing to be down under for a while, and that I wanted to interview one of them for Techfluff.tv and Tim was one of the organisers who was very kind to give up some of his time and have a chat with me about the group and what he thought of Tuesday’s event (ahhh the beauty of social networking). So I went to his high rise offices on St Kilda road – to not only admire the view – but to get his Insight and Ideas (which also happens to be the name of his blog) on social media and stuff!

I came across an article in recent months from Nielsen.com, which reported that in December 2009 Australians use social media the most – you can read it here. Interestingly, Tim suggested the reasonings behind this figure was that Australia may have been a bit late joining the game and that the statistics reflected that international markets have matured relatively quicker than down under. But what is encouraging that Australians are clearly engaged with social media platforms and it validates their usage.

One of the things that caught Tim’s interest after listening to the panel and chatting with people during the evening, was the general theme that blogging is a lot of hard work and that bloggers need to post consistent, content-rich information. He also learned from the Global Power Bloggers that blogging can be treated like owning a business and that you can learn from an entrepreneurs’s approach i.e if at first you don’t succeed, try again and that you are never know your market, until you are swimming in it!

You can watch my full video report below.

Thanks to #SMCmelb, and to the speakers for their time and wise words – next time I’ll capture on my flip for Techfuff.tv

Oh and one last thing, for those about to blog, we salute you!!

You’ve been reading some chatter from @ThatGirl_Chloe and you can follow me to find out more about news tech and bit more fluff here.

Share on Facebook