Impacts

What I learned from 170 Aussie mummy bloggers

Strategy | Comments | Last built on 23 March, 2011

I recently attended the Aussie Bloggers Conference. From what I know it’s a first of its kind in Australia: a large-scale blogger event put on by bloggers, with year 1 definitely belonging to the Aussie mummy blogger.

As a collective they share a real drive to make an impact together. There’s frequent fearlessness in what they write about as well as relief that their stories have found an interested audience.

Three things in particular struck me and have stuck with me since:

1. How to moderate a panel

Like many of you, I attend various events and conferences. The content of the panels and moderation approaches vary wildly. You may get one good speaker out of three, one who pitches despite being briefed not to and someone who doesn’t really know why they’re there, possibly presenting their agency’s thinking.

I didn’t get to see every session but I thought that three moderators, in particular, stood out: Allison Tait @altait, Nicole Avery @planningqueen and Sarah Pietrzak @SeraphimSP. I want to be clear that I’m not just saying this because I attended and am bathing in the afterglow of the conference (there is a massive afterglow happening, by the way!). This is not a ‘wee in your wetsuit in the middle of winter’ moment. They were truly very good. And I started to think about why I enjoyed their approaches to moderating a panel more than most moderators I’ve seen lately (including my last moderation attempt at ad:tech recently – Resourcing social media effectively using the entire organisation).

Here’s why I think they did so well:

i. Vested interest

These ladies are part of a massive movement seeking to create careers out of blogging; some are also in the organising committee of the event. I think this increases the pressure and incentive to do it right, and, as research has shown, it’s not just individual incentives that make for great performance, it’s group incentives (see this New York Times article halfway down the page: “If you want a person to work harder, you should offer to pay on the basis of individual performance, right? Not usually. A large body of research suggests it’s best to motivate groups, not individuals.”) The group vested interest here is manyfold: the success of their blogging community, the success of their event from a business point of view and the success of their panel.

Implication: Perhaps marketing events could improve if they play more to these group incentives and dynamics rather than individual dynamics. I think panels where each person gets up and presents allow the individual to stand alone from the group so that there is little vested interest in the panel being great – just their presentation.

ii. Passion

These moderators love blogging, they love talking about blogging, they love meeting bloggers. Sometimes, moderators at marketing events are people who just work in marketing – it’s not something they’re passionate about. Talking or managing a panel is good for the CV. The mummy bloggers will get that benefit too but it’s more than that for them.

Implication: Ensure your moderators are demonstrably passionate about the theme you want them to host. I’ve turned down panels because I often don’t understand the topic (sometimes I think they’re made up in some Serbian prison as a joke: ‘How to optimise the optimum optimisation of optimum-ness’) or find it very interesting for this reason. If you’re organising events, perhaps choose a handful of moderators and work them on who they’d select to talk and then shape the topic and session with them rather than just feed it to them.

iii. Depth of hands-on knowledge and experience

All three moderators are active in the topics they were moderating. Sometimes I’ve seen journalists moderate panels but they can only ever be an outsider at a marketing event. This can be an advantage and they will have skills and experience that others don’t but it makes such a different when people who make the stuff that’s being discussed moderate a panel. They can plug gaps in conversation, lead people if they get stuck, talk about subtleties others are unaware of.

Implication: Try to find moderators who are very active in the topics you want to cover.

iv. Personal familiarity

I don’t think the moderators knew every single one of their panel members intimately but they’d obviously become familiar with their blogs, Tweets and Facebook updates over a period of time so that they could ask specific very specific questions. Panels come alive where there seems to be a group rapport already established (even if there’s debate).

Implication: If you’re hosting a panel, ensure you follow the panel members over a few weeks before the event, try to speak to them individually and consider getting them together before the event as well as before the panel session.

v. Directional and pace-setting

Sarah, Nicole and Allison were also very directional. Usually, they’d ask a question directly to one person rather than just ask something and have people awkwardly stumble over each other in their responses. They kept the pace up and were confident in politely moving the conversation on if it stalled.

Implication: This approach reminds me a bit of a personal trainer – you’re almost coaching people into the discussion but being sharp about how long they stay in and keen to keep moving.

vi. Zeitgeist-aware

Again, as people who are active in the scene and craft, they know the hot buttons that outsider moderators wouldn’t. Who’s reading what, what the mum bloggers think of other particular mum bloggers, what ambitions mum bloggers tend to have and so on.

Implication: Get moderators who are embedded in the topic you want to explore if you’re putting on an event; if you’re hosting something, then you better connect to the Zeitgeist quickly!

vii. Articulate and opinion-carrying

I think most of the moderators were nervous on the day but these three didn’t show it. They could all host a TV show in time – Nicole Avery appeared on Channel Ten the following day to talk about it all.

Implication: Confidence matters and can carry a room. Hopefully, if you moderate, you have the previous 6 things as well!

2. That completely unrelated communicates share similar dynamics

i. A Woodstock moment

The Aussie mummy blogging scene right now reminds me of the Sydney hip hop scene in 1998. In 1998, we had the first big multi-day event, Urban Xpressions. It was this epiphanic moment where goodwill, ambition and collaboration monopolised the mood of attendees. The 2011 Aussie Bloggers Conference reminded me of this.

If what happened with the Sydney hip hop scene happens with the Aussie mummy blogger scene then it will be interesting to watch. People quickly disappear, new people pop up. Some go onto great and marvellous things, others will believe it should have been them. There will be in-fighting and name-calling but also moments of sheer brilliance. It will splinter in separate groups with separate leaders and separate agendas. There will be ‘where is she now?’ blog posts and discussions. I hope the ugly side of communities doesn’t happen with the mum bloggers – but history implies it may. I don’t mean to be ugly about this – I hope I’m wrong.

ii. OMG! People like me exist!

This was a sentiment that flowed during Urban Xpressions – people who, in some cases, were one of the few people at their school or in their peer groups that liked hip hop met others who shared their obsession. This current ran through the conference – people were visibly elated about meeting likeminded mums.

iii. Memes, mnemonics and word debates

The hip hop scene used to debate real hip hop vs fake hip hop, underground vs commercial, felafel and hippy rappers vs real rappers. People talked about the four elements of hip hop as a way to work out the purists from the visitors.

In mummy blogger world, the MC vs rapper discussion seems to have a cousin in the blogger vs writer debate. An MC is supposed to be a more well-rounded wordsmith who can rock a party and has a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the culture. A rapper just raps. Similarly, some people who identify as bloggers fear a lack of credibility as a writer even though blogging is the act of writing. Anyway, I found it interesting.

iv. Business cards and URLs vs demo tapes and CDs

In the hip hop scene people gave out mix CDs, demo tapes and CDs. The mummy bloggers, on the other hand, give out business cards and URLs. Some gave out cupcakes too.

3. The difference between a business event and a community event

One of the biggest things I appreciated about the event was its energy and ambition. Not everyone was a mummy blogger but most were and they were all there to celebrate themselves, each other, their hardships and successes. Hopefully as the event grows (and it will grow!), they hold this uniqueness close to them.

Congratulations to the organisers – it was an ambitious event but you pulled it off. Oh, and thank you for having me. It was utterly refreshing.

You can read the details and reviews about the event here: Aussie Bloggers Conference

Here’s a transcription of the panel I was on: Social media and you

As has been Tweeted, the article about Sarah referenced is this one: How to position your business in 3 sentences