Of course, they don’t just work on content. They’re able to help you out with the more technical aspects of optimizing your tags and such, too.

Unique Blog Designs made their mark at BlogWorld Expo at a booth sharing their knowledge and expertise with those of us who are so hopelessly unskilled at this type of thing. I just love a man who tells me he can design for WordPress . . .

Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’re ready to get your press release out, it sounds like PR Web has some services that might be helpful. We’ll let Mario tell you more about it:

Jim points out that online video is really not that difficult. He uses a $150 Flip Video Camcorder and a $50 work light from Home Depot!

If video is in your online future (and it probably should be) you’ll definitely want to pick up his free online video toolkit!

Tim also points out that excessive action is a form of laziness. In other words, many home business owners work long hours because they don’t have anything else to fill up all those hours. Timothy encourages home business owners to consider the importance of reallocating their time to those things and people that bring them the most meaning and gratification.

His answer might surprise you!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meeting the other Sparkplugging authors was a great experience. Great people; great minds. Here, I was able to catch a video snippet of Kristie explaining the value of thinking outside of the box when you create your business blog.

Enjoy!

We heard from Twitter experts Stowe Boyd/@stoweboyd, Laura Fitton/@pistachio, Tony Hsieh/@zappos, Lucretia Pruitt/@geekmommy and Erin Kotecki Vest/@queenofspain.

Part 1
Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 2
Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 3
Click here to view the embedded video.

Go & check out our BlogWorld photos on Flickr. If you have photos on Flickr (or anywhere else) from BlogWorld08, please leave a link to them in a comment on this post!

Panel: Rohit Bhargava, Timothy Ferriss & Mike Shinoda

Some shorthand notes:

Mike Shinoda (of Linkin Park):

Know how Linkin Park got their name? It involves a park in LA and changing the name to get the “dot com” for their website.

Tim Ferriss (author of The 4 Hour Work Week):

He wrote his book first, and used the blog to create buzz around it.  He noticed that blogs were more up and coming than other traditional media at the time, so bet on blogs. He also feels that it pays more to be interest-ed than interest-ing.  He also confesses to not pitching to bloggers, but to asking a lot of questions.  He observation through the process was when vulnerable about your shortcomings (and honest about who you are) people are more willing to help.  He reached out, asked lots of questions and developed relationships in this organic way.

Lastly, he also gave a tip on soliciting bloggers: like not sending “template” email pitches.

What you did hear on this video was what Timothy said about being nice: be nice to people on the way up, because you’ll meet them again on the way back down.  It pays to be nice, even when you think it doesn’t matter. Well said.

Corrections (via Maria Thurrell):

1. “They are products by small entrepreneurs, for moms (in the video I said by moms, for moms — it sounds good but isn’t exactly true)”
2. “The hard launch is Nov 3 (in the video I said Nov 1)”

A little over two years ago, I heard a recording of a guy talking about how to start a small business blog.  It sounded interesting, and a couple weeks later I started my first blog, “Organize.Simplify.Transform”.  That guy was Rich Brooks, and I had a chance to catch up with him at BlogWorld this year.  Here’s the recap of my interview.

Rich started out by saying how blogging and social media can help small business.  When using social media as a means of connecting with people, having a blog is a great tool to have to refer that audience to (from Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

Rich doesn’t feel that there are any hard and fast rules when it comes to using social media.  He felt that social media (and blogging) are ways of providing information in a give and take relationship.  He also feels that talking about what other people are talking about, and what your audience is looking for is paramount.

Want to learn more?  Here’s how to find him:

Web: www.Flyte.biz

Blog: www.Flyteblog.com

Twitter @therichbrooks (He’s changed his profile name since this interview was filmed.)

Here’s what Erin shared about her experience at this year’s BlogWorldExpo:

Some of my takeaways were:

1. Be yourself and build relationships, but don’t post anything you wouldn’t want a boss (or your mom) to see.

2. Utilize the Facebook Page feature and the Groups feature to build your brand and your business.

3. It’s all about communication and relationships.

Here is a short snapshot of the presentation:

Shama can be found at www.AfterTheLaunch.com

John Andrews, Walmart’s Senior Marketing Manager Emerging Media talks about meeting the Mommy Bloggers at BlogWorldExpo and some of the exhibitors that he found compelling.

His latest project for Walmart is the ElevenMoms campaign.  With a YouTube branded channel, Walmart has enlisted the help of Mommy Bloggers to kick off their campaign where 10 lucky winners will win a year’s worth of groceries.

John was especially excited to meet some of the Mommy Bloggers involved in the campaign.  Four of them were at BlogWorldExpo including Colleen from Classy Mommy, Jenn from Frugal Upstate, Lucretia from GeekMommy, and yours truly from JessicaKnows.

While I was interviewing John he had his iPhone in hand, hoping for a tweet about where the Zappos party was taking place that night.

John also mentioned he thought one of the exhibitors, Lijit, was really cool.

You’ll also notice watching the video that John is wearing an Op t-shirt he got at, where else, Walmart.

With a name like that, the magazine obviously focuses on sites, but it seems that it will be going pretty in-depth. I love the fact that their next issue will be focusing on e-commerce. Between that and our own eBay and eCommerce blog here at Sparkplugging, maybe I’ll let go of some of this fear and try my hand at some new things.

Anyway, I subscribed to the magazine, and I like it that they’re planting trees to offset the print versions.