I love a good blog conference and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – they are for everyone. Newbies, experienced bloggers, craft bloggers (yes, you craft bloggers) and people thinking about starting a blog. Nuffnang Blogopolis 2012 was bigger and better than last year and I loved it!
Dave Krupp aka Kruppy giving the opening address
Retro daddy was a little surprised that I wanted to go to a conference at 38 weeks pregnant but can I just say that sitting in a room with a delicious high tea served in the morning, hot lunch, some great speakers and lots of friendly faces – well it was a whole lot easier than a day at home with my 4 little ones
morning tea anyone? Thanks Twinings
This year at Blogopolis there were breakout sessions which was great as often there is something you’ve heard before or doesn’t really interest you and it’s nice to have a bit of choice. Lucky for me the sessions I wanted were all on the same side of the room where I initially parked myself in the morning. So I didn’t have to move. Gotta love that.
First session up for the day was how to source ideas for your blog posts. I must admit I always have something to talk about and do a few of these but here is what was suggested…….look to questions from your readers, comments on your blog, FAQ, keywords, magazine headlines and the media (not something I do but relevant for other bloggers), the calender and special events, social media and polls.
After a delicious morning tea (and one of many bathroom breaks for me) it was time for Jeff Tan (@Jeff_digital) to talk SEO. Did you know that google has 90% market share when it comes to search engines in Australia. And did you know that when you search for something on google there is a 66 character limit for the title and 155 for the description? So if you want people to find you on the net then keep that in mind. Now Jeff is a fountain of knowledge and he had a lot to share with us.
A few key tips if you’re interested in learning a bit more about SEO are: own your own domain and host your own blog (something I’ll be doing later this year); create clear compelling headlines for your blog post titles; put keywords in your blog title and opening paragraph; use categories and tags but don’t go overboard with lots and lots of categories; link to other blogs as google sees these links as a note of trust; use social media; link within blog posts; highlight your best content not necessarily your latest blog post (oops) and understand where your traffic comes from (this is something I have no idea about)
Like I said, Jeff was a fountain of knowledge and big companies pay him to help them with their own SEO stuff so it’s great to learn from him! And don’t just think that doesn’t mean anything to you. I bet you’ve spent a long time on a project or a tutorial and wondered why you didn’t get lots of comments or maybe you want more people to find your blog. Knowing a bit about SEO can help anyone with a blog.
After all of that it was time for the lovely Nicole aka Planning Queen to tell us a little bit about branding your blog. Something that sounds funny to most of us bloggers and a little bit commercial but it doesn’t have to be. This was such a timely session as I’ve just found a lovely blog designer to totally makeover my blog later this year and this gave me some food for thought about making sure that my new blog design (which I am super duper excited about) will reflect what I want retro mummy to be all about. And here is something new I learnt – google alerts. Set up an alert (www.google.com/alerts) with your blog name and monitor. Go and have a look now, you might be surprised to see what comes up for your blog name.
Next up someone I was very excited to hear from was the lovely Rachel Devine. Rachel took those lovely pics of the twins earlier this year (here) and is one of my favourite photographers. So lovely in real life and talented. And I loved her book so much I bought one and got it signed to giveaway tomorrow to one of my lucky readers on the blog. A few things I learnt from Rachel’s session are to use the best light of the day outside which is the last hour of sunshine or take your photos near a window, don’t be afraid to use your flash and did you know you can pop a tissue over the flash of your camera to diffuse the light. I didn’t know that.
I learnt to look at a few new apps for my iphone like vsco.cam, camtastic and instagram (yes, really I’m not on instagram. I need to solve that). Great photo editing tools for you and me are picmonkey (I’ve been loving it since picnik left flickr) and snapseed. And now here is something a little controversial for bloggers is remove your watermarks from your photos as it detracts from your photos. Rachel had a lovely little glossy booklet made up for us and you can find more about Rachel at her blog http://www.rachedevine.com/.
Phew after all of that listening and information taken in it was lunch time. A delicious hot lunch with a creme brulee for dessert – only my favourite dessert in the whole world. Afternoon sessions involved a few panels and it’s always great to hear other people’s opinions. I had to leave after the first panel as I was getting a little uncomfortable in the seat but yay for twitter I could follow the conference hashtag the whole way home. If you want to catch up on what happened (and have a spare few hours) just check out #nnb2012.
Best bit of the day was of course getting to say hi to all the gorgeous bloggers in the room. This was my 4th blog conference and each conference you know more people and get to meet lovely new bloggers. And talk blog! I was so nervous at my first ever blog conference last year but now I love how many familiar faces there are to chat too and lots of new ones – nothing like putting a face to a blog or twitter name! And my tip is having a conference buddy – today mine was the gorgeous Jennie of Posie Patchwork – as it’s great to have someone to keep you company. A huge thank you to Nuffnang for having me along, I know you all worked so hard – the goody bag was lovely (and we didn’t realise there was a double pass to Brave in it until I saw it on twitter). And a big thank you to Twinings (@twiningsau) who were a sponsor – the high tea was amazing and so was the tea bar and I have a lovely selection of tea bags to work my way through. Very impressive.
Hi Retro Mummy,
Thanks for sharing information on the conference, much appreciated. As a newbie blogger I would have loved to have come. Maybe I will save my pennies for next year
Enjoy your weekend x
Allison
http://utterlyorganised.blogspot.com.au/
Such a terrific wrap up and so much to learn! I haven’t ever been to a blog conference, but I’m starting to think I’ll be left behind if I don’t get mysel to one of them! x
That sounds seriously fun and delicious, and very informative. Good luck with the weeks ahead.
Thanks for sharing. I followed the twitter feed like mad yesterday and I am super keen to read everyone’s posts. I hope can manage my first conference next year……..unless, is there anything left in Australia to attend this year?
I’m living overseas at the moment, so I couldn’t make the conference. Thanks so much for telling us all about it. I just checked out PicMonkey. It’s brilliant!
Great information, thanks!
Looks like a great day out with all that yummy food.
The photo section would have been very interesting. I haven’t bothered watermarking my photos, I guess now that’s good. Laziness wins the day.
Hey gorgeous, it was my first conference & boy did we all learn a tonne of information. Pleasure to spend the day with you, see familiar faces & meet so many fabulous people. I have no idea whey anyone is nervos though, we’re all bloggers & have this fantastic on line community, we just haven’t all met in person yet, then it’s hugs & kisses with a whole lot of laughter.
The panels were fascinating, a few included bloggers i don’t follow so they were a nice balance from the familiar ones. I will definitely go again, i really enjoyed this & read Rachel’s book on the way home. I can’t wait to start taking better photos & bothering to use the SLR instead of my point & shoot, my readers deserve better photos, it’s so important!!
Honey, good luck, you were really starting to look uncomfortable in that seat, i wanted to rub your back, but that would have only looked weird, then again, they kept referring to we bloggers as ‘a bunch of weirdoes’ who can all relate. Love you, love Posie
Hi retromummy thank u for yr info, it made a lot of sense.
I’m looking for a good blog designer – wld u mind sharing who u discovered?
I wish I’d been there!
Thanks for sharing all that Corrie, I must admit I was a bit envious, I would have loved to go but unfortunately I just didn’t have the $$ to travel up from Melbourne. Next year! (Or fingers crossed it might be back in Melb next year!) Blog photography really interests me at the moment – for us sewing and craft bloggers an amazing (and pinworthy!) image can really affect the popularity of a post. I still struggle with it but I am so much better than when I started. I find the SEO stuff interesting too. Hope the twins feel better, have a lovely Sunday x
I was a conference newbie and I loved it. So much inspiring people in one room. I learnt so much.
Looking forward to our catch up. X
That was such an excellent wrap up, thank you. This was my second conference and I was a lot less nervous. Have come away with so many ideas. So, you’re the one not on instagram? Ha ha : )
It was so lovely to meet you yesterday. You’ve obviously got this pregnancy thing down pat now as you were gorgeously glowing!
Great wrap up! X
Great info thank you.
I wish I knew this was on. Are there any others on this year. I am new to blog land and would love to attend these conferences.
http://www.frescocreative.com.au
Thank you for the review. As a new blogger I always wonder if these conferences would teach even newbies like me.
Not sure I can swing a conference in Austraila but maybe one day!
I didn’t get to meet you
but hopefully next time! This was my first conference and yes, a bit tough without a buddy but I made it through! Just wrote my blog post about how it all went down – it’s scheduled to go live later this morning. Anyway, I’m babbling…thanks for the recap of the SEO session as I didn’t attend that one but was interested in knowing more.
What a great post! Thank you for recapping it for your readers.
That sounds like a great conference. Maybe one day I’ll attend one but at the moment my blog is a little journey for me and my handful of readers. Thanks for sharing those tips.
Thanks for including my session in your wrap up Corrie. All the best for the impending birth – so look forward seeing and reading all about it!
Wow, this is great commentary. I’m about to buy a Canon 5DMkii and the bit on blog photography was really interesting.
Do you know if they have anything like this in Melbourne?
Kx
I for one really appreciate bloggers like you who share these new tips. I did the google alert straight away. Sometimes you can format your own blog by what you don’t like from reading other blogs too. Keeping those titles short also helps others to remember them as sometimes I like to go back to them. I’ve also added 3 new blogs to my reading list – I had no idea about them as I do have my favourites. Glad you got to enjoy some time to yourself.