Prim Perfect and Blogging on Orange Island

Yesterday was the second day of the Orange Media Week on Orange Island, and the theme was blogging! You can see more details of the event here.

Saffia Widdershins, editor and publisher of Prim Perfect, took part in the panel, and then presented a workshop on Using a blog as part of a media strategy.  You can see a pdf of the presentation here, or the powerpoint slides here.

It was followed by a question and answer session – a very rough transcript of which we are appending!  (The original was in Voice)

Aki Shichiroji  => Does WordPress charge extra for uploads?

Saffia: The basic account is free.  You have to pay a small amount if you want to tweak your CSS (cascading stylesheet), which I did.  You also have an amount of storage for images etc, but I began by using my own web account for this, and later changed to Flickr for image storage, as I was able to buy a pro account there for a fairly small sum.

I also have a Google Picasa account, which we use for transferring large photos for the magazines.  We find that offers good storage and fast downloads, but Flickr works best for storing and linking blog images.

Rhiannon Chatnoir => How do you look to new content.. or garner submissions for your blogs/publications?

Saffia: Most people who want to write for us start off with the blog.  They don’t get paid for that – the only people who are paid for blog writing are Qwis, who writes the regular treasure hunt posts and Jvstin, who is the editor of the Connolly Telegraph (the blog that supposrts the Primgraph).  However, if you write for the blog, you are generally asked to go on and write for one or other magazine – and that is paid.

Prim Perfect has a set formula – although there is some flexibility; we’re always open to new ideas being brought in.  The Primgraph is currently much more open, and we’re looking for new writers and ideas.

Anyone who is interested should contact me or Alesia Markstein (the editor of the Primgraph) either inworld or through email: primperfect@gmail.com or Primgraph.Editor@gmail.com

Verde Otaared => What are the ways you can advertise your blog?

Saffia: I haven’t really done a lot of blog advertising, as the blog itself is in support of the magazine!  But I do use Google Alerts for Prim Perfect to check coverage.  That tells me when anyone has talked about Prim Perfect.  Of course, it also tells me when the words ‘Prim’ and ‘Perfect’ are used on the same post – which means I’m alerted to quite a few other things as well, such as fashion blogs, where people are talking about the latest item that has a certain ‘prim’ count and is just ‘perfect’!  This is not always a disadvantage – the outfit you see me wearing today I found through one such Google alert!

Obviously, if you have more unique terms like ‘Primgraph’, your focus would be better!

Keokipele Ansar => Along the lines of Verde’s question . . . how does one optimize the blog for search engines. Is it a matter of consistent posting mostly?

Saffia: Yes, definitely.  Posting three or more times a week helps.  As do links.  One of my main uses of Google Alerts is to look at sites that reference Prim Perfect, and add links to their pages from us.

Serenity Mercier => How would you deal with disruptive or even mud-slinging blogging? in the SL fashion world, there are sometimes very viscious blog posts made based on rumour or shreds of evidence which can often damage the reputations of very good designers. Are there ways to deal with this?

Saffia: Yes – moderate comments.  That’s very important, as it can also screen for spam.  We get posts that say things like: “Wonderful information about garden furniture – thank you!  Now come and see my fascinating herbal health pills!”  Erm… no, thanks.

We have, touch wood, been largely free of the drama that can crop up on fashion mags.  That’s largely because all the Prim Perfect team know that we aim to write positively.  A long time ago, I remember reading an article that said that the fashion magazine editor had two weapons: silence and space.  In other words, you give a lot of space to things that you like, and you ignore things you don’t like.  Now, not all fashion magazines and blogs in Second Life follow this rule, but we try to at Prim Perfect, and it has kept us relatively drama free.  And that’s what we want.  Watching train wrecks may have its appeal to some, but we’re not in that business.

Verde Otaared => How much time do you think keeping a good blog requires?

Saffia: As much as you can give.  Definitely around a couple of hours three or four times a week.  I’m in awe of people who can turn out long, detailed and informative posts every day (or several times a day), but I can spend have a day on a seious, indepth piece.  Something like my pieceon content theft took even longer.

(Someone raises the question of creating references)

Saffia: Yes, that takes time.  So does the business of images; they need to be cropped, edited, uploaded, accessed and tagged.  That eats up time.

With references, I find Wikipedia is my friend.  If I feel I need to give more information to blog readers – say I’ve thrown in a reference to Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and people might ant to know more – I generally link to the Wikipedia page and people can take it from there.

(Someone points out that Wikipedia needs to be checked)

Saffia: Yes, indeed.

Verde Otaared => How important do you think it is to read all other related blogs?

It would be lovely – but impossible!  Mal Burns is my lifesaver though – he reads it all, so I don’t have too!  I really recommend people following Mal on Twitter (http://twitter.com/malburns) – he supplies great links and information.

In fields more related to Prim Perfect, I think I’m really fortunate that there aren’t really any other homes and gardens blogs.  Writing a fashion blog must be a nightmare – there are so many of them!

Verde Otaared => How many readers do you have for Prim Perfect?

Actually, I was checking the stats last night, and I was really delighted with the way the magazine is going.  We reckon that about 60% of our ‘sales’ currently comes through the pdf download, and we’re really interested to see how our choice of Calameo (which is very recent) affects this next month.

Our official position is that we average 10,000 ‘sales’ per month, although some months we have ‘sold’ far more than this.

NB ‘sales’ etc is in quotes because the magazine retails for L$0 – this is, in effect, our circulation figure.

There’s still time to catch the events for the rest of the week at Orange Island!  The programme looks like this:

Wednesday July 30th

12.00 pm SLT: Discussion: Podcasting (Voice chat)
Speakers: John Swords, Torrid Midnight, Stuart Warf, Mackenzie McArdle
Moderated by John Swords

Thursday July 31st

12.00 pm SLT: Discussion: Traditional Media in Second Life
Speaker: Eric Reuters
Hosted by by Nick Rhodes

1.30 pm SLT: Discussion: Broadcasting Second Life
Speakers: Starr Sonic (SLCN), Malburns Writer , Draxtor Despres
Hosted by Jade Lily

Friday August 1st

12.00 pm SLT: Discussion: The future of Augmented Reality
Speaker: Eric Rice
Hosted by Jade Lily

1.30 pm SLT: Discussion: Web on a Prim: how does the web integrate into SL?
Speaker: Samuel Linden
Hosted by Nick Rhodes