As fate would have it, I’ve been hanging out with problogger John Chow here at Affiliate Dot Com Live in Las Vegas and he’s shown me why he’s one of the best live-bloggers in the world.
Live blogging is covering blogging an event you’re attending as it happens. Here are some powerful live-blogging tactics from John Chow that will sure to make anyone a better live blogger:
Always be present.
I’m not trying to oversimplify this, but it’s priority number one that you fully participate and be present in the event. This means not doing things the night before that you know will ruin you the next day.
John is one of the first people to be in the speaking room every morning. This gives him several advantages: he gets the best seat (front and center, of course), he allows plenty of time to set up his equipment and—best of all—he has time to relax.
There’s nothing worse or more embarrassing than entering a room late when everyone is sitting down and listening to the speaker. Then there’s the irritating part of setting up your laptop, trying to catch the stuff you missed and basically looking like a jackass.
Publish often.
Call it guerrilla blogging. Covering a live event means you must write, edit and publish as fast as you possibly can.
Live blogging is much different than regular blogging in that you have to be very fast — there’s not much time for deep thinking or philosophical ramblings. That’s stuff you can do after the event is over (which I recommend you do).
Yesterday I watched John publish 6—make that 7—posts! I tried to keep up with him and just couldn’t…at least yet. And it wasn’t a matter of better equipment — we roughly had the same hardware (although I must admit his gadgets were much newer than mine).
Have the right equipment.
I didn’t say the best equipment, I said the right equipment. John and I were both armed with these live blogging essentials:
- Laptop and charger
- Video camera (I had a Flip Ultra HD and John has a Canon HFS100)
- Digital still camera (both Canos)
- iPhone (as backup camera or voice recording)
Our room didn’t have wireless, but of course John had already solved that problem. He brought a Virgin Mobile mifi mobile “personal wireless hot spot enabler” (he made up that term), which he features on his Dot Com Pho Affiliate Dot Com Live edition.
With the proper tools you can actually enjoy live blogging instead of getting fumbled up over petty glitches.
Bonus Video
After lunch John went right back to work and edited his DotCom Pho movie, which he just shot minutes ago. I caught him in action and asked him about live blogging (raw video):
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