After these two powerhouses spoke, the hits just kept on coming. Laurie Turk from TipJunkie.com spoke about her tips for blogging success. She spoke about goal setting, setting up an editorial calendar, having a purpose, finding your voice, and her own experience in the blogging world.
Colleen Padilla (ClassyMommy.com) and Audrey McClelland (momgenerations.com), authors of the Digital Mom Handbook, were the next two speakers. Colleen spoke about vlogging and how she tackles making video reviews. Audrey spoke about taking risks and finding what works for you in the blogging world. She discussed expanding your platform beyond blogging and into the arenas of book publishing, events, television appearances and consulting. Both offered great advice and it was nice to see them in person as I have been reading their book.
Lunch was provided by one of the sponsors, King’s Hawaiian Bread, and they offered a bevy of roll-based goodies for us to eat. Throughout the morning, we were assigned tables to provide us with rotating networking experiences. It was great to finally meet some of my fellow PSMM ladies in real life and meet bloggers who had traveled from Virginia and Florida.
After lunch, we attended break out sessions in either writing or the business of blogging. I chose the business of blogging to learn some more about working with brands, pitching, and contract law. This extended talk was followed by a presentation by Dali Burgado (secretstowebsuccess.com) about SEO and how best to word your posts in order to be more search friendly. In the final presentation, we heard from Sharon Rowley (Momof6.com) who gave the most incredible and organized talk about how to grow your blog and increase your presence and influence. She spoke about goal setting, much like Laurie Turk, and helped a lot of us to to set tangible goals that we could start to tackle as soon as we got home.
We also scored some great swag from the incredible sponsors. Happy Family Organic Foods, Mirassou Winery, Waterpik (hello free detachable shower head!!), King’s Hawaiian, and Care.com were all amazing with their gifts, discussions, and time that we were able to share with them. Thanks a bunch!
At the end of the day, I was flush with ideas, brimming with energy and ready to take on the world. I will be working diligently in the coming months as I set about some changes to the blog. I can’t wait to share those ideas with you and hope you enjoy coming along on the journey.
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I can see you’re already making changes to your blog design! Nice work!
Getting there, Barb! Next up to filling out the pages and then looking at switching to Wordpress. I’ll be sure to ask you questions when I get to that point.
Great recap Becky! And I want to thank you for the “shout out”! I am sincerely glad to hear (and flattered) that I offered you some tips that you can put into use to grow your blog!
My pleasure, Sharon! You really made a huge impact with a lot of us and our PSMM group has launched a challenge of the week for all of us to better our blogs. Thanks for stopping by!
It was great fun, wasn’t it!? Packed with great info. Glad I got to finally meet you!
Glad to meet you too! It was an amazing day and I left feeling ready to tackle the world.
Sounds great, Becky! I wish I could attend. Maybe another time.
Beth
It is definitely one that is worth catching, Beth. I highly recommend it.
My head is still spinning from the day. It was great to meet you in person.
It was great to meet you too! I loved your garden guest post over on Barb’s page this week. I love the fencing!