It’s important to keep those bloggers happy=)
Me. An official blogger. I guess it doesn’t get more official than that title. I have been blogging from digital conferences for a long while but during the 3 last years, it has been as an official European blogger – running around at conferences like mad, producing content like videos, interviews, pictures, and articles.
The content is produced around what’s happening at the conferences and what kind of key takeaways I have. (my blogger partner-in-crime during the last couple of digital conferences has been Annika Lidne, but also Erno Hannink and Adam Tinworth are some of the ones I see on, well, a more regular basis than my friends).
I blog for work purposes because I think it’s a vital part of my creative social web studio to stay ahead, but also to be around cool people from the sphere. Denmark (and in particularly Helsingør) can become a bit narrow over time. (and I normally compile some of the key takeaways in my tendency reports – here’s the latest one for you =)
Anyway if you’ve been reading this blog for the past couple of weeks (or subscribed to my danish or english newsletter) you will be knowing that for the past week I have been in Berlin – first for re:publica and later for NEXT berlin – I decided to round up the bloggers in our group on the internet and ask about some piece of advice that I could post on my blog so you could see what really makes an official blogger happy!
The official blogger happiness list
Have a blogger list where every blogger is listed.
We’re all curious about who else is going to cover your conference. – A blogger group or mailing list – we used a Facebook group for Next Berlin – It worked really well and the activity is still buzzing in there.
Get roaming and wifi through all of the stay for the bloggers
- heck do it for all the participants. Often a Telecom is one of the sponsors and this will not only keep the internationals super happy, they will also create more data around the conference (I remember being at a LIFT conference in Geneva at one point where we got wifi and roaming all over the city – it was a blast. –
Put the Livestream of the conference on youtube instantly after the talk is over
I’m still waiting to see the alexander bard speech again – one that I think will be covered here in several blogposts – it was nothing short than fantastic =)
Connect the bloggers to the startups before the conference
We can take more input before and it could be that we could plan more interviews and articles at the conference if we had a plan before we went to the venue.
Wifi is essential
Really, you get pissed bloggers without wifi.
A blogger suite at the conference is also nice
We need a place with fatboys, coffee to edit our stuff. I said suite – not a couple of tables in a corner – the nicer suite the happier bloggers. The best one I’ve experienced was sponsored by Yahoo at Le Web in 2010.
A recording studio overlooking the venue for interviews/videos
It will make your conference appear more professional, and also it makes bloggers happier because they don’t have to use hours finding a somewhat remote location to shoot their videos – without the noise of 700 people in the room. Basically some places where we can talk to people/record video without interferences. Over the years the main form of content production has gone from being articles to be video and sound. So this is really important.
Special blogger/speaker events (some of them should be combined
There was one the day before the next berlin conference sponsored by moccu and adtiger – it was cool, however not a lot of bloggers was in the city at that point, so maybe one during the conference as well ? – Bloggers and speakers should be together – maybe a joined area for both and the a speaker and a blogger suite attached ?
A few fixed meetings for bloggers or an official contact list
Accessible to anyone who would like to meet the blogger crew.
Team to take care of the bloggers and help them with requests – pr-ip did an AWESOME job taking care of us around NEXT Berlin they have a top recommendation from me, they were omnipresent and super helpful and fun to be around =).
Accommodation options for Bloggers
pr-ip hooked some of the bloggers at Next Berlin up on AirBNB with an apartment – it was awesome).
Do everything you can to facilitate interviews between speakers and bloggers
Again – you have some of the coolest content producers present give them EVERYTHING to feel they are important.
Some sort of consensus on what it is you want from us would be awesome
Make it clear how much you expect from them. Literally there are some bloggers that covers a conference in 1 post and some that covers it in 50 interviews. Also mention what language preference you have. Thank you to my fellow official bloggers at Next Berlin (Fredrik Wass, Dimitris Kalogeropoulos, Sèbastien Flury, Anja Rauch, Luca Sartoni and Erno Hannink – ) for helping me out with this list.