Dog bloggers, humans who blog about pets and some flat pets gathered Friday and Saturday to learn more about social media at BarkWorld Expo in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  The conference combines learning about working in and with social media and pet-related activism. The phrase “social petworker” really sums that up.

“We have twice as many people this year as we did last year,” Denise Quashie, founder and organizer of BarkWorld, said. “Four guys even showed up without reservations from San Fransisco. They said they just found out about BarkWorld and they had to be here.”

Pups and people started out at a tweet-up Thursday night, and the learning began Friday.

Ted Rheingold talked to attendees about establishing a space for pets in the early days of the Web with Dogster.com and Catster.com. Dogster and Catster now have 75,000 visitors per day and the sites have become major locations to query the pet community for advice on health and behavior topics, to organize transportation for long-distance rescues, to raise money for pet causes and needs, to read about the adventures of 100,000 pets in their diaries and to look at cute, fun pictures of cats and dogs. Rheingold wanted to build a safe, fun place for people to talk about pets, and Dogster and Catster have succeeded way beyond his original goal of making $400 a month and facilitating fun for 10,000 pet-loving people. Rheingold advised attendees at BarkWorld to go deep into the experience of their pets for their blogs, to write from their passion and to remember that we are a community.

“Help people first before you ask them to help you,” Rheingold said, just before he invited great writers with passionate voices to join the Dogster pool of writers.

At lunchtime on Friday “social petworkers” heard advice on pitching companies and agencies to develop sponsorship relationships. A representative from IZEA (an agency that links companies and bloggers), two people who represent the companies looking to sponsor tweeters and bloggers and two bloggers who have experience finding and working with sponsors talked to the audience of several hundred humans and a handful of dogs. Some attendees got an invitation to a “speed pitching” session the next day to try their new skills while connecting with public relations and marketing agencies and companies that want to build relationships with tweeters and bloggers.

Saturday’s keynote by Jelena Woehr of Yahoo! Contributor Network encouraged participants to create a niche in social media and own it. Like all the other presenters, Woehr is as enthusiastic about pet people as she is about pets. In addition to taking good care of us, she said, pet people are usually healthier than people who don’t have pets, and they get more sleep, too. They also have a better work ethic because of us. ”You are used to putting something greater before your own needs,” Woehr said.

Dogs hung out for two days on the terrace, drinking from an ice cube hydrant on Friday. People and dogs had a lot to look at in the exhibitor booths, from pet photographers and artists to leashes, toys and even the Bissell sweeper. Smaller sessions focused on how-to blog, tweet, manage your social media accounts, write and publish a book, develop your presence on YouTube and avoid trouble with the law.

Simply, BarkWorld provided a great opportunity to PETWORK.

Tagged as: BarkWorld Expo, Social Media