The Barack Obama campaign’s National Blog Editor, Laurin Manning, has agreed to participate in Blog Indiana’s panel, “How Social Media Impacts Elections”.

The panel, which includes bloggers and online editors from across Indiana, will discuss how blogging and advances in social media have altered the political landscape in fundamental ways, from how candidates raise funds to how campaigns spread their message.

Laurin Manning specializes in political communications and holds an undergraduate degree in English from Wofford College.  She formerly served as an aide to now-retired Senator Ernest F. Hollings and clerked for Commissioner Michael Copps at the Federal Communications Commission.  Prior to her current position, Laurin has worked for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in South Carolina, Alabama, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.

Increasing the readership of your blog is something every blogger strives for. Yet, it can often be one of the most difficult and daunting tasks to accomplish day in and day out. Attracting readers through your content, search engine traffic, and other ways you may not have thought about are all part of what it takes to build your base of loyal readers. If you want to greatly improve your blog in these areas, be sure to check out some of these sessions that touch on this topic.

Build Your Blog Readership, led by Joseph Kerschbaum

Blog Etiquette and Ethics, led by Renee Wilmeth

Also, Writing for Blogs led by Eric Deckers and Between the Blog Posts led by Brad J. Ward will also touch on these topics and can be found on the Sessions page.

One area we really wanted to cover at this year’s conference was the legal issues many bloggers can run into during the course of running their blog. We are happy to have Andrew Paradies from Photrade.com speaking on just that subject.

Here is an excerpt from the session description:

This session will cover the do’s and don’ts of using other people’s photos, videos and quotes and how to handle attribution. Furthermore, an overview of copyright laws, your rights as a journalist and the legal implications of misuse will all be covered. There will also be a discussion about Creative Commons…

Read the rest of the session description

Based on early feedback, we’re sure this will be a popular session and well worth your time. Don’t miss out, the conference is in 3 weeks!