Mark Lyn­der­say

On De­cem­ber 11, a group of blog­gers met at Drink Wine Bar to dis­cuss the busi­ness and craft of on­line me­dia.

The event was part of Caribbean Blog­gers Week, a re­gion­al cel­e­bra­tion cham­pi­oned by Ja­maican ICT evan­ge­list In­grid Ri­ley and man­aged lo­cal­ly by Mel Gabriel, cre­ator of the on­line fash­ion mag­a­zine Caribbean Look­book.

Gabriel is a hard­work­ing and pas­sion­ate on­line au­thor, but the event found it­self stuck rather firm­ly in the fields of fash­ion, food and lifestyle that are her pri­ma­ry fo­cus and the au­di­ence, dom­i­nant­ly fe­male, was suit­ably ap­pre­cia­tive.

The event al­so fo­cused rather ro­bust­ly on the idea of blog­ging and spent sig­nif­i­cant­ly less time on the me­chan­ics of the process and spe­cif­ic strate­gies for de­vel­op­ing in­come.

There's noth­ing wrong with that, giv­en the dearth of re­al time, meat­world dis­cus­sions about on­line pub­lish­ing, which, in­ci­den­tal­ly, is my pre­ferred term for what most se­ri­ous peo­ple are do­ing with these con­tent man­age­ment plat­forms.

There's re­al­ly no way to rec­on­cile what Gabriel is do­ing with Caribbean Look­book and the ef­forts of peo­ple like Du­ane Boodas­ingh with Trini­tuner and Lasana Liburd on Wired868 with the pop­u­lar con­cept of a blog as some­one post­ing ar­bi­trary mus­ings on­line for gen­er­al con­sump­tion.

Add to that the main­stream me­dia's ap­par­ent in­abil­i­ty to dis­cern the dif­fer­ence be­tween a com­ment on a post and a work of in­de­pen­dent au­thor­ship and the state of con­fu­sion deep­ens.

Such reser­va­tions aside, where the event was strong, it was ex­cel­lent.

Risanne Mar­tin, speak­ing on the first pan­el ex­plor­ing link­ages be­tween on­line work and per­son­al brand­ing, cut to the heart of the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of the process.

"I'm still try­ing to find out why of­fi­cial posts don't at­tract the same kind of at­ten­tion as the per­son­al posts and my per­son­al page," Mar­tin said.

"Per­son­al­i­ty and peo­ple sell brands," she said, un­der­lin­ing the im­por­tance of in­vest­ing an on­line project with a sense of unique per­son­al­i­ty.

"There are some ar­eas, some sub­jects that are go­ing to get trac­tion quick­ly," De­sign­er Is­land's Tanya Marie Rhule said.

"Fash­ion is one. It's some­thing that peo­ple want to be a part of."

"Fig­ure out what is it that you want to do, what you want to say. If you be­lieve in it, stick with it and work at it."

Both Mar­tin and Rhule had sol­id prac­ti­cal ad­vice for pro­duc­ing sol­id ma­te­r­i­al on an im­pos­si­bly slim bud­get.

"If I go to a busi­ness meet­ing in To­ba­go, I'll plan a swim­suit en­sem­ble and have it there," Mar­tin said of po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties to show her fash­ion in re­al world sit­u­a­tions.

"Even if I nev­er make it to the beach, I was ready. You have to be ready."

On work­ing with pro­duc­tion part­ners, Rhule said, "When I se­lect some­one who I want to work with, I want to work with some­one who shares my work eth­ic. Peo­ple must want to be a part of the thing that I'm do­ing."

"A good sto­ry sur­pris­es, de­lights and prompts feed­back," said Judette Cow­ard-Puglisi dur­ing the pan­el on vi­su­al sto­ry­telling, "I'm not sto­ry­telling in a vac­u­um."

The Eat ah Food blog be­gan as a thread on Triniscene for Baidawi Ass­ing and QD Ross.

"The orig­i­nal strat­e­gy was to en­cour­age young men to start cook­ing at home," Ross said.

But that didn't stop them from be­ing schooled af­ter a post about mak­ing soup at­tract­ed some stern ad­vice on the mer­its of fresh sea­son­ing in­stead of pow­dered fla­vor­ing.

That led to a dif­fer­ent lev­el of en­gage­ment with their read­ers, an ex­plo­ration in­to col­lect­ing fresh pro­duce and a re­la­tion­ship with Mar­ket Movers, who de­liv­er those goods.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mar­lon James was asked about us­ing pho­tog­ra­phy.

"Some sto­ries aren't be­ing told prop­er­ly," he replied.

"Every­one has a cam­era, but not every­one has the un­der­stand­ing."

Per­haps the best en­counter with the tough re­al­i­ties of on­line pub­lish­ing came dur­ing the fi­nal pan­el on in­flu­encer mar­ket­ing and the best of those tough words came from Dale Lutch­man of Trib­al DDB, the dig­i­tal arm of Ros­tant DDB Ad­ver­tis­ing.

"A mar­ket­ing man­ag­er will ei­ther no­tice you and en­gage you to pro­mote their prod­uct, or they will milk you and just leave you there and say, well, you al­ready like it so we don't have to both­er," Lutch­man said with cool can­dor.

"There is a need for more col­lab­o­ra­tion on the price and val­ue of things."

"In the stan­dard ad­ver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tion space there is an ex­pect­ed cost for dif­fer­ent kinds of place­ments and en­gage­ments. There needs to be more com­mon ground and un­der­stand­ing on what is charged for what in the dig­i­tal space."

"Au­then­tic­i­ty is key in this sec­tor," said Mel Gabriel.

"Agen­cies and brands may want to rail­road your rep­u­ta­tion and reach, and I don't ever want to com­pro­mise that."

"The con­sumer has to sift through so much clut­ter," added so­cial me­dia con­sul­tant Cheyenne Bap­tiste.

"We've come from be­ing gullible to be­com­ing ex­treme­ly skep­ti­cal."

"The peo­ple we are talk­ing to about sup­port and ad­ver­tis­ing are old," said Gabriel.

"They don'tun­der­stand so­cial me­dia. They know they need to do it, but they re­al­ly don't know how or why."