Lessons and Tips I learned During BloggyCon 2016

This conference hosted a number of amazing influencers in the blogging community. Keynote speaker was Rachel Brenke who is not only a blogger but also a practicing lawyer, author to multiple books and a business consultant. She stressed the importance of not just becoming a brand but rather an influencer in you niche. Her tips included: Know your audience, right down to their age, how they dress, what they do and activities they enjoy. Be consistent! Be you, don’t be what you think your audience wants. If you do that may mean you have the wrong audience. Be authentic! Your readers will be able to sense when you are not being true to your beliefs and in turn you may actually lose readers.

Homepage – New

I also attended a number of breakout sessions including, Monetizing Using Social Media with Claudia Krusch, Working with Brands presented by Tiffany Carroll form IZEA, Going Pro with your WordPress Site presented by Morgan Foster of Agathon Group, Digital Insights Your Blog Readers Leave Behind That You Can Use to Grow Your Audience with Kristi Allen and SEO for Bloggers with Claudia Pennington. All I can say is that the amount of information I was privileged to in those two days, absolutely priceless!

Monetizing Using Social Media

with Claudia Krusch of Trendy Latina

Claudia broke down the social media platforms and gave specific focuses for each.

Facebook

• Create a strategy by answering the following questions:
  1. Who are you?
  2. Why are you sharing content?
  3. Who are you targeting?
• Network as your page. Spend 10 to 15 minuets each day commenting and/or liking as your page.
• Set a schedule (example: Monday – recipes, Wednesday – DIY, Saturday – Budget Tip, etc.)
• Share funny stories. Non scripted posts tend to get more attention.
• Share other’s posts on your page.
• Monetize your page:
  • socialfabric.us
  • tapinfluence.com
  • Go to brands you are interesting in working with.
  • Tag them in posts prior to even working with them.

Twitter

• Follow 10 to 15 new pages a day. Choose those that are associated with blogs, brands and interests that are appropriate for your niche.
• Re-tweet content from other bloggers.
• Use Twitter Analytics to be sure you know which tweets are producing. Measure each post once a week.
• Post Tweets on blogger support groups, usually found on Facebook.
• Monetize your page:
  • Hold Twitter Parties:
    • Used by brands to bring message to followers.
    • Last one hour and is discusses brand or topic assigned by brand.
    • Many have giveaways for participants.
    • Usually requires 5000+ followers to qualify.
    •  Pays $200 – $600
    • Looking for more info? Check one out! Search: “twitter party”, join and participate.
  • Hash tag tracking

Instagram

• Share REAL photos, not perfect and edited.
• Share links in support groups (again, found on Facebook).
• Use 5 to 13 Hashtags in each post.
• Check Instagram and Facebook to see the highest, most popular hashtags.
• Monetize your page:
  • Share posts for sponsors – rates are based on number of followers and engagement percentage.
  • Create packages to offer sponsors. Be sure to create different levels or customizable packages.

Working with Brands

with Tiffany Carroll form IZEA

IZEA is essentially the middle man that works to connect brands with bloggers for sponsored opportunities. It was very exciting to hear that with the variety of brands working with IZEA, odds are they will have something that will fit for nearly any blog or niche. Tiffany also discussed a number of secrets to help your blog standout. These included:

• Use yourself as your blog’s image. This allows for a more personal feel.
• Keep your blog content relevant to your overall blog theme/niche.
• Post at minimum once per week. More is  better though.
• Act on feedback from comments.
• Be sure that your site’s comments are not just from other bloggers. This looks bad to brands.
• Always follow FTC guidelines.
• Use hashtags.
• Avoid stock photos.

Her biggest tip was, don’t be afraid to reach out for help. She really stressed just how willing most in the blogging world are willing to help out a fellow blogger. Whats the worst that can happen? They Say NO or don’t respond! Just go for it!

If your interesting in working with IZEA, be sure to signup for their free account and complete your profile.

Going Pro with your WordPress Site: Simple DOs and DON’Ts to WordPress Mastery

with Morgan Foster of Agathon Group

The Agathon Group is a hosting company that not only hosts but also builds websites. This team of brains is absolutely amazing! They are a not only all smarty pants but, have super fun personalities! Morgan reviewed the importance of security for your WordPress site and had a number of tips to help make your site more secure and efficient:

• Something so simple it is often missed. Don’t set your login username as “Admin”
• Limit the number of login attempts a user can have before their account is lock
• Remove unused plugins, having them disabled is not enough.
• Be consistent on URL’s
• Track your SEO with a plugin such as Yoast
• Use a Cache Plugin such as WP Super Cache (page speed affects SEO)
• Optimize images so that they don’t slowdown page load time. The plugin recommended by Morgan is WP Smash
• Don’t be afraid to pay for plugins. Free versions are OK but have very limited features.

Digital Insights Your Blog Readers Leave Behind That You Can Use to Grow Your Audience

with Kristi Allen of Kristi Allen

I’d have to say that this breakout session was a wealth of information. Kristi know the in’s and out’s of all things Google, specifically Google Analytics! She shared a number of ways to track your visitors and insure your site performance is optimal. Her tips include:

• Audit your website performance
  • Do they look around?
  • Are your social media icons easily found?
  • What information is important to your readers?
  • Is your site appropriately indexed with Google?
  • Is your page speed appropriate?
  • Does your menu flow allow users to find what they are looking for?
• Build a culture that connects
  • Mission
  • Vision
  • Purpose

SEO for Bloggers: 6 Tips for Search Engine Optimization to Grow Your Blog’s Revenue

with Claudia Pennington of SEO Audit Guide

Claudia is the fonder of SEO Audit Guide which offers online courses to teach you the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization. She was kind enough to go over some of her best  tips.

1. Have a page title that is 60 characters of slightly less. To check your title to make sure it displays correctly use google index.
2. Have a Meta description that is 150 charters or slightly less. Be sure it has a call to action or take away.
3. Be mobile friendly, responsive. Extremely important due to the  number of visitors that will be using a device other than computer.
4. Page loading speed is more important than you might think. Be sure that yours is less than 7 seconds. For best results Google wants 3 seconds or less. Make sure that your are also checking your pages on a mobile devices as well.
5. Avoid content keyword stuffing. Google frowns upon this and will lower your site’s rating because of it.