On the Web with Kim Vallee

When Blogging Becomes a Job

Kim Vallee — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:49:14 +0000

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

Twitter is Most Popular with the 18-44

Kim Vallee — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:50:44 +0000

Over the last 9 months in the United States, the percentage of Twitter users doubled in every age group except the 25-34 group. Therefore, the media age of a Twitter user remains stable at 31 years old.

The Pew Internet Project’s September 2009 survey data shows that internet users who use social network sites are more likely to use Twitter or another status updating service. The more devices you own, the more likely you are to tweet.

More Interesting Data

More women (21%) than men (17%) tweet in the United States. Overall 19% of American adults tweet. One fact is is interesting is that household income is not a factor. You get 20-22% of participation in every income bracket.

+ Pew Internet Project’s September 2009 survey report

What to Consider Before Creating a Facebook Business Page

Kim Vallee — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:57:26 +0000

With more and more businesses jumping into social media, it is important that you read this to avoid mistakes. There are some subtleties that a beginner may not easy grasp when comes the time to create a Facebook page.

First of all, businesses must create a page. Profiles are exclusively reserved for humans. You go against the terms of use of Facebook and many people, including me, will refuse your friend invitations. Think about it. Someone does not want to become friend with a brand, but they might be a fan.

How to Proceed?

You first need to sign in with the profile you want to use as the creator/owner of the page and then, create the Facebook page of the business. One fact that you need to know is that, contrary to group, people do not see who is the creator of a business page.

This is where it may be confusing to beginners. A Facebook page must be created by a person with a Facebook profile. The creator cannot be changed. If you are the sole owner of a small business, it is simple. The owner of the business creates his/her profile and then, the page for the business. What happens if you are a corporation or have multiple owners?

Choose wisely who creates the page

I repeat, the creator of a page have administrative power over the page forever. Therefore, if you ask a consultant or an employee to create a page your business make sure they do it right. Otherwise, they will always have access and control your page forever. It is easy to forget that important detail in the middle of the action.

I got the last piece of the puzzle (the ownership of the page) after a discussion with Jerome Paradis of Paradivision over dinner earlier this week. And we both discussed it with other social media experts. One may be inclined to create a profile that the business will control. One idea is a profile for a top position at the corporation, like the president or even the communications director where it is seen as the position, not the person who holds the title. Notice that it is against the terms of use of Facebook to create a profile for a person who does not exist and that a person cannot have 2 profiles. Facebook may imagine a better way to deal with the business page ownership in the future. Until then, you do not really have a feasible option.

Before you create your page, I invite you to read those texts written by Facebook about their Business Fan pages:

+ Who Owns Your Facebook Business Fan Page? – Talked more about the problematic than the solution
+ Facebook Pages: What are Facebook Pages? Should I create one?

Disclaimer: Jerome Paradis is my husband and I own shares of Paradivision.

7 Blog Design Rules To Know Before Selecting a Template

Kim Vallee — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:02:30 +0000

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:

Pictures sell. The trend is to go with bigger images. Aim for 500 pixels in width.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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

Social Media Changed Our Daily Life

Kim Vallee — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:25:58 +0000

Talking about social media feels so apropos since social media was central to my husband’s birthday party. Yahoo has its Big Idea chair photo shoot. We hosted our Favorite Social Media Couch photo booth. The concept was to hold the pillow(s) of the social media that is more important for us between Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

No need to say that I am a part of the social media revolution. If you read this post, you probably are. Social media is not a fad. I recalled last January when we traveled to the United States and my husband told me to turn down the data roaming on your iPhone. What!!! A week without Twitter and my RSS reader on the go. Luckily for me, Rogers added a US data roaming plan the week before so I was able to tweet after all.

We stay connected and share photos with our friends through Facebook and Twitter. You probably noticed that you use less the phone. It is more efficient to send a tweet or a text message. Social media has changed the way we communicate. And I feel it is for the good. And due to social media, I met online and offline new like-minded people; some of which have become good friends.

I want to know which is your favorite social media site or tool?

Social Media Revolution Statistics

If you need data to convince the unconverted ones, look at this video. It highlights key statistics about the growth and the impacts of social media in our everyday life. No need to write them down, Geek in Disguise did it for us.

Thanks to Liberty Post for reminding me about this video this morning. Thanks to Pierre Bellerose for noticing Craftsquatch, the seller of the pillows on etsy and for initiating the photo session. Vive the Social Media Revolution!

Café World on Facebook

Kim Vallee — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:57:12 +0000

Lately, I have been running my own restaurant on Facebook. Café World is another game by Zynga. You are the chef. Your friends/neighbors can be your waiters. As you advance in the game, you will be able to add stoves, service counters and preparing more recipes.

Organizing your room (kitchen and tables) is part of your success as the game determined the maximum resources (number of waiters, stoves and counters) that you can have. You can expand your restaurant at will, if you accumulated enough coins.

You can play at Café World the way you like but here are things that you should know:

Quicker to make recipe spoils more quickly. (1) Plus, look at the clock and your agenda before deciding what to cook. You do not wish to wake up at 3 am to serve the cheesecake that took 12 hours before being ready to serve.
Customers that were served in a timely fashion will add .1 to your buzz factor. Customers who cannot be served due to lack of available seats (3) or that are not served fast enough will reduce your buzz factor by .1
The buzz factor (thumb up) determines how many customers you will get. Keeping a window (from your browser) opens with the game playing speeds up the buzz factor. But make you have enough food on the counters because you will lose pretty quickly your advantage when the food ran out. (2)
You can close your restaurant to not run out of food while you are not in front of your computer. I close mine at night. Simply remove the door(s), that is put the door back in your inventory.
One server can serve 8 tables easily. Better to have more tables than risk that waiting customers leave unhappy.
Each table is for one person. No need to put two chairs. (4)
Visit your neighbors every day to earn extra cash and leave them a tip

Give me versatile decor elements

Unfortunately Café World is weak on the decor options. A part of the fun is to infuse your own style into your restaurant. There are many choices but nothing that will enable to create a restaurant style that you can brag about. For that reason, I will probably get bored of Café World quicker than usual. If I can not decorate my space to my satisfaction with the extra coins I accumulated, what is the point?

Why can game developers are too cheap (no excuse here, since Zynga makes lots of money) to hire a with interior design consultant to help them create amazing and versatile decor elements. Zynga assumes that you will go for a kit; so boring and passé! Clearly, the video game industry did not evolve on that topic since the first video games in 1980s. Maybe, we need more girls as lead game developers to change that.

+ Café World by Zynga on Facebook

US Women Are More Present in Social Networking Sites

Kim Vallee — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:02:19 +0000

It is not really a surprising news if you ask me. First of all, I told you about the female Internet in autumn 2008. At the time, I reported that Women’s community was the most visited and fastest growing Internet category, tied with politics according to ComScore Media Metrix’s year-end report.

I attributed these statistics to the fact that women are the ones who typically lead conversations, share information amongst themselves and create relationships with their peers. This is basically what social media is all about. What surprised me is what age groups haves the most users. As you can see, it is either 35 to 44 years old or 45 to 55 years old.

I added the more popular age group on the graph produced by Information is Beautiful. The data were compiled by Brian Solis.

+ via a tweet by Miss Rogue

Simplify Your Image Use Policy

Kim Vallee — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:34:57 +0000

I am always amazed to see how many brands and organizations have not adapted to the new reality of Web communication. Brands and organizations spent a lot of money on marketing and advertising. Yet they fail at the cheapest and probably the most efficient promotion tool: the words of their fans.

If a blogger decided, on their own initiative, to write about one of your products or your event, chances are that they give you free publicity that their readers will trust because it is their honest opinion. People prefer to write about what they like than what they do not like. So why are you making it difficult for bloggers to write about your stuff?

I go through my checklist before writing a story. The first thing on that list is the availability of great pictures. If they are none, I moved to the next story. This is because pictures sell a story.

Asking people to fill a form and wait for your staff to send me a password to access your media kit is so passé. Blogging is about what is hot today. What is hot today is what caught my attention at that instant. If I cannot find the material right away to write my story, I will pass to the next story. They are no shortage of good topics when you know how to research and have imagination.

As a blogger, I want direct access to promotional pictures that are at least 500 pixels in width (80% jpg or png-24). Simply protect your content under a non-commercial Creative Commons license and request that bloggers clearly give you credit and put a link to you (the source). If more people knows about what you are doing, you will be more successful. At the end, we all win.

By the way, the free Trend Briefings produced by Trendwatching.com is a must read. I am one of their 160,000+ business professionals in more than 180 countries who is looking for it every month.

Food for Thought on Blog Content

Kim Vallee — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:16:47 +0000

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

Best Way to Keep an Empty Inbox

Kim Vallee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:26:23 +0000

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

My Blogging Tips Sessions at PodCamp Montreal 2009

Kim Vallee — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:35:17 +0000

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

Sharing My Top Blogging Tips at PodCamp Montreal 2009

Kim Vallee — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:31:03 +0000

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.

On the Web with Kim Vallee

When Blogging Becomes a Job

My Quest for the Right Job Title

Do We Need a Job Title?

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Twitter is Most Popular with the 18-44

More Interesting Data

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What to Consider Before Creating a Facebook Business Page

How to Proceed?

Choose wisely who creates the page

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7 Blog Design Rules To Know Before Selecting a Template

Make your Image Google-friendly

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Social Media Changed Our Daily Life

Social Media Revolution Statistics

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Café World on Facebook

Give me versatile decor elements

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US Women Are More Present in Social Networking Sites

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Simplify Your Image Use Policy

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Food for Thought on Blog Content

Books as a Souvenir

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Best Way to Keep an Empty Inbox

Sort Your Emails by Priority

Make it Fit Your Needs

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My Blogging Tips Sessions at PodCamp Montreal 2009

Video of Top Tips for Better Blogging

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Sharing My Top Blogging Tips at PodCamp Montreal 2009

Top Tips for Better Blogging

Top Bloggeur Panel

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