Go Blog Social 2013 Recap

I already mentioned that this past weekend I would be attending the Go Blog Social (#GBS2013) blogging event in Kansas City with @TheChicGirl. Now that I’ve returned from the event I thought I’d share my thoughts, opinions and what I learned. The #GBS2013 started Thursday evening with a meet and greet networking session. The founders of the #GBS2013, Kathryn Mansur and Sarah Ruhlman, where both on hand and personally met with each of the attendees, which I thought showed their dedication to making #GBS2013 a success and really encouraged the goal of networking. Plus both Kathryn and Sarah are really friendly and nice people! At the networking meeting I also met other interesting bloggers such as @LifeWithLacey and @LilPrairieLife who are lifestyle bloggers, @BetterJNel a fitness blogger and @emmyray a talented artist and wedding blogger also one of the speakers. There were many more interesting bloggers I could name but lets move on with the event recap part. The first main day of #GBS2013 started bright and early on Friday morning with the opening of the exhibitors/sponsors hall. #GBS2013 had many excellent sponsors, such as House of Cochon and Hello Cheeseburger both of whom had amazing jewelry on display. Another prominent sponsor was Kansas City Fashion Week who were there to promote their fall 2013 Show, held October 2nd through October 6th, which will feature both upcoming local and national designers. After checking out the sponsors booths it was time for the speaking session to begin. The first speaker of the day was Tracie Forbes Penny Pinchin’ Mom who had some really good tips on getting started with your blog. Here are a few things which she highlighted and my thoughts:

Host your own site and be original
- Use Wordpres.org.
  - There wasn’t much in-depth about the reason why why one should use WordPress.org in this presentation ,so in my opinion heres’ why you should use WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com or other free blogging platforms. First off you have complete control over the look and design, widgets and plugins and you don’t have to worry about the platform chaining or suddenly shutting down service. 78% of the Internet is powered by WordPress and is not only user friendly but continues to update with new and improved features. Of course it does take some basic web development skills to set-up a self hosted WordPress site, so it may not be for everyone, or at the very least you might need to talk to a web designer to help you get started.
- Have a professional domain name, and keep it simple.
- Be original with your domain name, don’t copy
Brand
- Your brand is who you are don’t steal someone else
- Trademark your brand with an attorney, this can be costly but beneficial
Blog Design
- The design is your first impression to readers
- Always include an image in your posts
- Basically follow good graphic design and user experience rules
  - Ms. Forbes gave some good tips, but I’ll summarize with the rules I tell my students to follow
    - Use the basic principles of design
    - Limit colors and fonts to 3-4 different types
    - Limit navigation to 5-7 buttons/links
    - Use animation only if it enhances the experience
    - Be consistent
    - KISS – Keep it simply silly
About me and Contact
- Always include an about me page that explains who you are
  - As I tell my students, “who are you and why do we care?” Provide your credentials as to why you are a pseudo expert on the topics you are writing about.
- Always include a contact page, with an email address
  - Originally I would say that that is an easy way for spam bots to find your email and send you junk. So I’ve always had a contact form on my site, but to tell the truth I much rather get an email address myself than send a message in a form, so I guess this is one tip I will be using from now on, since it is more personable to use email.
Include a Newsletter
- Provide a call to action to readers by having them sign up at the bottom of each post
- Creates weekly/monthly interaction with readers depending on how often you send out a newsletter
  - This sounds like a good idea, but personally I get so much stuff in my email, I hardly ever sign up for newsletters, so I’m wondering how effective this really is, let me know your thoughts on this
Social Media quick links
- Allow your readers to share your posts with social media
- Include links to your social networks
  - I would recommend however only posting links to the ones you are most active on, since again we don’t want to clutter the site
- Have a Facebook page
- Be active in your social media, retweet and get in the conversations
- Use Google Plus and Google authorship
  - I must admit this is one I really didn’t know about. Web designers have been saying for a while that Google Plus was the “party no one showed up to”, but it does make sense for Google to index these posts in their search engine, so by posting there you can help boost your search ranking. Also Google authorship connects your posts to your Google profile allowing searchers to see your Google profile pic next your posts in the search list. By using authorship you are tying a person to a post and making it more personable.
Content is key
- Make posts original
- Ensure your content is you and presented in your brand or your own personality
- Blog about what you know
Monetizing
- Ads in sidebar
  - Personally I hate ads in the sidebar and have learned to pretty much ignore them. I also don’t think I could ever put ads on my site, because that’s not who I am. However, I don’t mind reading about a sponsored product within a post
- Join an Ad Network
- Be an affiliate partner
- Use the “no-follow” property when linking to sponsored paid ads
  - In case your wondering, how to do this, in your element in the html or when you add a link, include the following property rel=”nofollow”. This prevents sponsors to get indexed from your site.
Network
- Find meet ups and groups
  - Networking is key to the success of anything! Just because the Internet is the medium for bloggers, doesn’t mean you can solely connect online, you need to get out and meet people in person.
- Use networks to ask questions from other bloggers
- Share links and cross provide content
Keep an open mind
- Always, keep learning
  - This is my favorite tip, because as I tell my students, you can never learn it all. The world of the Technology and the Internet is always changing and if you don’t keep learning then your going to fall behind. Learning is an important part of the success for any online venture and I would even wager to say for life in general.

Tracie was a great speaker to start the event off with, because so many of her tips she highlighted were then talked about more in-depth by the rest of the speakers that day and the next. On a side note Tracie mentioned that you should Bold keywords in your posts to help your search rankings. This is not true, as day two speaker Andrea Moran also confirmed, bolding is a design only feature, it has nothing to do with the content and how it is indexed in a search engine. The second speakers on day one was Megan Davey (Chasing Davies) and Jessica Merchant (How Sweet It Is) who spoke on the topic of bloggers and branding. First off, I am a big food blog lover so I’m really surprised I haven’t been following Jessica Merchant’s How Sweet It Is blog, you can bet though it is now on my Bloglovin’ feed. As for the presentation, both presenters had some good tips to follow when it comes to working with brands here are a few and my thoughts on the them:

Consumers rank bloggers the 3rd influence for their purchase
- I knew that bloggers made a lot of difference, but never really looked at the stats before. Though I must admit, when it comes to some of my recent purchases for the kitchen I did refer back to some of my favorite food blogs for advice. One most recent example is that I use Starbucks VIA Italian Roast coffee in my recent winning county fair cake, because of some bloggers who preferred it to other brands.
Keep it authentic
- Promote only what you actually use
- Create Content instead of just reviews of brands
  - I like this tip because it’s more than just saying, I used this product it was good or bad, it gives the reader an idea of how to use the product and maybe even in ways they didn’t think of before.
- Make sure that it works with your brand
  - One thing Megan and Jessica stressed along with other speakers is not to promote a brand that doesn’t fit with your blog and your image/brand. Don’t be afraid to say no to brands.
What brands are looking for
- Past experience with the product
  - For me I love Kitchen Aid products and use my red Kitchen Aid mixer in all my baking, and have a lot of pictures of it in my posts, but I’ve never actually put in a post that I’m using a particular Kitchen Aid mixer, so I guess I’ve been missing the ball on really showing I have experience, say with this brand. Also, it might be helpful for others to know what tools I use, even if they can kind of tell in the photos, I know I always like hearing what tools other bakers for example are using. I guess I’ll work on doing this in future posts.
- Reader engagement
  - This is where my blog falls short, I really don’t have much reader engagement. But it doesn’t help that I am only this year really focusing on the content for Akram’s Ideas. The past few years with the move and all I haven’t had a chance, but I plan to really buckle down and engage my readers here and on my social networks
- Relevant blog content for specific campaign and for brand
Working with brands
- Know your value
  - If a brand approached me about reviewing a product or something, I think I would have said yes, to free stuff, but I think Jessica and Megan make a good point. In brand asking for your sponsorship. You are a valuable part of their campaign don’t just do it for free. Be practical about you the amount of time and effort your willing to put into such a venture and let the brand know upfront.
- Again weigh the options, is this brand a right fit
- Have partnership options and your own creative spin when they ask
Diversify sponsorship and brand integration
- Go beyond the typical sponsored posts with events and opportunities
  - This is something I probably would never have thought about, but instead of just writing about a brand, is there a blog or brand sponsored event that the sponsor is willing to send you to for promotion? Are there any behind the scenes opportunities that the brand has in the works, that you can work on? Again these are great ideas and it makes working with the brand even more fun and interesting
Working with networks and PR agencies
- Join several ad networks until you find a good fit
- Diversify brand opportunities
  - This is one of those “think out of the box” tips, for example if you’re a food blogger don’t be afraid to partner with say a furniture store, after all people are going to need a table to eat at. Still you need to make sure that the brand is the right fit for you.
- Supplement paid opportunities

Megan and Jessica were full of good advice, the only thing I wish is that they had a little more information on how to contact brands, but I guess it would really depend on your market and what brands you are wanting to work with. In other words I have to do some research to find some brands to work with. Morgan Georgie & Carrie Kiefer of Ampersand Studio were the next set of speakers for the day and probably one of my favorite, because they spoke my language. Their presentation was more or less on the graphic design and branding of a blog. With my background in graphic and web design, I really connected with what they had to say. I was like yes, I tell my students these things everyday in class! Since a lot of what they said I already had past experience with I only noted some new tips I thought were worth writing down they also had a lot of good quotes of the day.

If you are your authentic yourself you have no competition – Scott Stratten

People are bloggers not blogs. What makes you unique and be personable
- This ties back into the quote above, if you be yourself and let your personality shine through on your blog, it will really make your blog as unique as you truly are. Also people like to read about real people so try to incorporate personal stories to your blog. You don’t have to disclose everything, but making personal post helps connect to your readers. For me I just sort of tell it like it is and wonder why would anyone want to know that about me, but often times it those posts that get the most engagement.
Have a blog mission statement
- I understand the reason behind why a business, organization or even a blog in this case should have purpose or goal that you can summarize into a single sentence. However, so many mission statements seem to be convoluted. I think instead of drawn out mission statement, go for a simple tag line. I really liked Ampersand Studio’s tagline of “Where inspiration meets happy. Where color and pattern come to play”. It’s not only simple but it gets to the point as to what they are all about.
Create a Brand Board
- Going back to my graphic design background I really must agree about creating a brand board. It helps identify the look and feel of your band. My students have to write a 15 page brand design guide for their web design projects, which list everything from the logo design to detail information about their font and color choices. This is a really good exercise, but to bloggers might instead only need a simple list or chart that they can reference for identifying their brand identity.

As I said Morgan and Carrie said a lot of things I already knew, but I still really enjoyed their presentation, and also, from a design perspective thought they had one of the most design worth PowerPoints. Following Ampersand Studio was Melanie Knople (Melanie Knople Style Scout) and Emily Walters (Emmy-Ray Handmaker of things) who presented on the topic of taking your brand online. Both had some useful information to share, the problem was that by this point most of it had already been said by other speakers. Things such as be original, be personable, find your niche and so on. There were a few new tips though that they added:

Ups and downs of blogging
- Be patient, it takes time to grow your blog’s readership and to develop brand partnerships
- One opportunity can lead to others
- It’s not all free stuff and ads, think outside the box
Avoid copyright issues
- Take your own photography
  - I think this one is very important, just because an image is on the net, doesn’t mean you can use it. Besides if it’s on the Internet to begin with chances are your readers have already seen it, so give them something new to see. Also it’s one thing to write about how wonderful a DIY project or your homemade cookies came out, it’s another thing to actually show them to your readers
- Write your own content
  - Again copy and pasting isn’t doing anything for you, at the very least use a Thesaurus. I find this is a big problem with my students, especially when they have to blog about a review of a product or service, they just repost the product description, that’s not it, your supposed to put this in your own words.
Media Kit
- Request media kits from other bloggers to compare their ad rates
- Create your own media kit and provide your blog stats
  - I knew it was important to have a brand identity and even business cards, but full media kits, I never really thought about it. It makes sense though since in this case your trying to establish your blog as a business. I looked up online and found that there are many good resources out their for developing a media kit. Campfire Chic has a really good post on 10 media kit resources. I think it’s time I make my own media kit, so stay tuned for an upcoming article on the topic.
Copywriter
- Compare fees with others, then post yours
  - I always dreamed about being a writer when I grew up, maybe that’s why I started my very first web site/blog way back when. But whatever your feelings are about writing, lets face it if you’re a blogger then you are a writer, so might as well announce it to the world that you are and maybe you’ll have some writing gigs along the way.
- Get a contract

Emily and Melanie presentation was followed by Jeanette Scott of J’s Everyday Fashion who after briefly describing kind of how she got started with her fashion blog, went into 10 steps for successful blogging which I have listed below:

Theres’ only one thing that stand between me and success, myself!
The resistance will attempt to keep you from success
- In other words you need to focus on content and the rest will get there. If you have no content, why would you even have readers
You have to define yourself
- Throughout this event we’ve heard this one, but it is so true. You need to be you and brand that personality on your blog, it’s that uniqueness that keeps the readers engaged.
Success requires action
- Don’t stop yourself from being successful, make an effort to get started pursing your goals.
Success means bring others with you
- This is makes me think of the old adage about not stepping on the little guy, because you don’t know who you’ll meet further up the ladder. In this context we can think of it as cross promotion, if you really enjoy someone else’s blog or post, go ahead and write-up about it on your blog, they might even do the same about yours.
Success is just as scary as failure
- If you’ve every had any kind of success in life you know that feeling. A recent example for me would be the county fair, where last year I won grand champion in the cake decorating/taste contest. This year I was so nervous about entering that I thought, what if I don’t win, does that mean it was a fluke last year? I was so torn up about it that I almost didn’t enter and was convinced I wasn’t going to win. However, I won grand champion again, so now I’m like gee what am I going to do next year, will it be as good, what if I fail, and so on and so on..
Success requires being vulnerable
- This goes back to what some other presenters said about telling personal stories in your posts. Allowing yourself to be somewhat vulnerable, to a certain extent, in your blog makes you more real and relatable to your readers
Success has no end point
- This is also a good tip, because so many people are just like “If only I won the lottery, things would be fine”, but no, if you win the lottery you’d want more after that. Thus, the most successful people are always working towards their next successful venture, it doesn’t stop.
Success is a roller coaster
- Speaking of successful ventures from above, not all of your ventures will be successes. You just got to roll with the punches. Another thing to keep in mind is not to let failure keep you from trying again. I know I might totally botch a recipe but that doesn’t stop me from giving it another try, or else I never would’ve been able to master the art of cake pops
There’s no such thing as an overnight success
- This is got to another one of my favorite quotes of the day. My dad is always harping about things like this, like why hasn’t your blog made a lot of money yet, like these other folks. You just don’t understand, what seems like overnight took a long time to the person who made a success of it.

By the end of the day I’m glad that Jeanette was the last speaker, her wacky personality was full of energy that really engaged the audience. Many of the tips Jeanette went over she said actually originated from the book The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield. Once I can notch out some time in my busy schedule I’d really like to read this book, after everything Jeanette had to say about it. The day’s speakers left me pumped for the next day of speakers and left the following quote stuck in my head…

There’s no such thing as an overnight success

Day 2 also started bright and early on Saturday morning. After stopping locating the nearest Starbucks so that @TheChicGirl could have her daily coffee fix, we headed over to #GBS2013 event, starting with another quick tour of the exhibitors/sponsors hall. Throughout both days the sponsors were giving out many cool prizes and I already had won a Cosentinos’s Market gift card, which me and @TheChicGirl used for lunch. I also won a couple of twist bands from Twistband, so we thought we’d check out the contests for the day, before heading up to the speaking session. Meg Biram a digital marketing consultant and lifestyle blogger was the first speaker on the agenda. She spoke about goals for your brand and although she had a great presentation, a lot of what she had to say had already been touched on the day before. A few highlights from Meg’s talk included:

Know the goal of your blog
Find what’ unique about your and your brand
Write about what interests you
- This is a good tip because if you writing about what your fans want and not what you want, then you aren’t enjoying it, and if you don’t enjoy what your writing about it shows. Be yourself, after all that’s why your readers follow your blog. I for example love Japanese anime, and most 30 something females probably don’t even know what that is, or care, but I write about it anyways.
Post before an event to inspire and drive traffic
- This makes perfect sense but I never thought about it. Meg said that you should post about that Halloween table arrangement you made on Halloween, because your readers can’t use that information now, they’re already searching for things for Thanksgiving. In other words you need to take a hint from say Hobby Lobby and be preparing your Halloween stuff now, so that readers can PIN your posts for October. The only issue I have with this is that even if I start now on such a project, it will take me until October before I’m done with it. Another alternative is to write a post after your done with such a project then schedule it for next year before the event, and start by saying something for example last Halloween I made…. might be slightly out of date, but could work for us procrastinators.
Create original content

After Meg’s presentation was Andrea Moran (House of Femme) who presented on SEO a topic I was most eager to hear about. For those of you who aren’t familiar SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and basically helps drive relevant traffic to your site/blog organically. Here are things to keep in mind with SEO according to Andrea:

SEO is a long term investment
- Yes it takes time to set keywords to your posts and provide alt (alternative text) tags and captions for your images, but this is what helps your SEO
Google checks for new content every 30 days
Consider your URL
- Have user friendly URLS, in other words use post titles not dates in your post URL links. Also consider the overall structure of your site and the user experience of how they navigate the site.
On page SEO factors
- Makes sure your content is relevent
- Use meta tags
  - If you don’t know Meta, is information about the data, so in the case of a blog post, meta tags could be anything from the author and date of the post, to the location of the upload or the camera the post image was shot with. Meta information also includes keywords and descriptions about the posts
- Keyword density
  - This is a good tip, because anyone can write a post about say new “dress pattern”, but when you specify your keyword to include “Simplicity 1803 dress pattern” instead your narrowing your audience and moving up in their specific search ranking. Andrea also mentioned using Google Trends to help identify popular/trending keywords in searches.
Off page SEO factors
- Inbound links – where are your visitors linking from to get to your site?
- Online press release
- RSS
  - Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a web feed format that allows your posts to be read by other networks in a standardize format. Networks like Bloglovin’ or Feedly Reader. Having validated rss feeds can help readers share your posts with others.
Social Factors
- What your post likes and overall ratings?
- Posting to Google plus will help in your rankings
Link building tactics
- Include images and video on your blog
- Tie into product launches with your sponsors
- Make sure your company has a blog
- Have a guest blogger
  - This one is always kind of fun, when I come across guest bloggers on other people’s sites. I’m open to the idea of having a guest blogger but don’t know how relevant it would be since my blog always seems so random. If you have ideas and want to be an Akram’s Ideas guest blogger, let me know.
- What to add to your blog
  - Post to publish to Google Plus
  - Facebook social search
  - Links to your social media
  - Include your email address
  - Offer a news letter
    - I’m still on the fence on this one
  - Make a list of top performing keywords (think of them as hash tags)

Andrea had a lot of really good information that I jotted down to share with my students. If your interested in more on SEO there is a really good YouTube overview video by Common Craft on “What is SEO“. Andrea also mentioned following good SEO practices, which you can read Google SEO Starter Guide for more on that.

Following Andrea was David Bentkowski an Ohio attorney and professor of law who talked about the legal issues around blogging. David gave some good tips but in the end they were really just some general items and didn’t go in-depth with any of them. Though he did have some humorous stories to highlight the types of legal issues that could arise. His tips included the following:

Detrimental reliance
- This means you could get sued for giving legal advice, so don’t
Intellectual property
- Understand trademarks and copyrights
Register as an LLC
Include Disclaimers
- I’ve seen these on many bloggers websites but I never thought about writing them on my site. I guess it would be a good idea just to stay legal and to let your readers know your not responsible if they say for example try to follow your DIY and instead the pie blows up in their face
Defamation of character
- This includes both invasion of privacy (saying something about someone without permission, even if it’s true)
- false light of privacy (in other words lying about someone)
FTC (Federal Trade Commission)Requirements

Next on the agenda was Marcy Tweete founder of Career Girl Network who highlighted some key points from her new book You Know Everybody!: A Career Girl’s Guide to Building a Network That Works. These point were mainly about the type of networkers out their and how you should get out and do some real networking.

Types of Networkers
- Nobody gets in
  - These people are trustworthy but somewhat closed off. They only link up with people they know personally, limiting their connections.
- Pajama Blogger
  - These are the people who never leave the house and all their connections are online only. You know the type the ones that write about say, throwing a party, but never actually leaves the house to have or go to a party.
- Everybody’s welcome
  - These are the social butterflies and sometimes can be seem a little un-sincere by friending everyone they meet and expecting you to friend them too.
Lazy Blogger
- I hate to say this but I used to be this person, which is the type that never posts or updates their blog nor engages in other people’s blogs. So, thanks Marcy for putting this one on the list, maybe it will encourage me to stay on top of my blog.
You know everyone blogger
- Obviously the last one is the right combination of these types. They open and willing to meet new people, while still being sincere. They actually get out there and network with real people and they blog frequently to keep up with their networks.

Marcy did a great job of describing the type of blogger we should strive to be, she also provided some memorable quotes for the day.

Ask for money you get advice, ask for advice you get money!

Following Marcy was Julie Blanner (Coordinately Yours) and Mikita Burton (Never home stay at home mom) both of whom provided tips about getting your brand noticed. Mikita was a ball of energy and didn’t have what I would say a formal presentation, but instead simply talked about how she got started and how she got involved with the local TV station to do a craft/organization segment twice a week on the local news. She said that most local stations are looking for free content to air live on television, so while it’s not glamourous or pays it’s a great way to market your blog locally. Julie’s presentation focused on a few key tips when working with sponsors, these tips included:

Follow brands you want to work with on social networks
- Stay up-to-date with what your favorite brands are doing
- Find out who is following you
- Sign up for Google alerts
Have a Media/Press Kit
- Have one ready
- Make it memorable
- Customize it for the sponsor
Be accessible
- Use social media for relationship building
- Respond promptly
Be gracious
- Show up on time
- Be respectful
- Thank them for the opportunity
Know your strength
- Are your readers engaged
- Do you have experience with the brand
- Do you have any success stories
- Do you provide Pin-worthy content
Pitch and Promote
- Offer content/ideas that you feel would be mutually beneficial
- Personalize content
- Leverage

At last we had come to the grand finally of the event, with keynote speaker Corri McFadden known for eDrop-Off Luxury Consignment. Corri’s presentation was more or less just a the story of how she got started. Like Jeanette the other day she also confirmed that there is no over night success. Corri also pushed the idea of believing in yourself. She provided a personal example that when she started thinking about opening her consignment shop, her college advisor discouraged her saying that it was an awful idea and she’d never make money in it. Instead of taking those words to heart, Corri decided to work even harder to prove everyone wrong, and to make her business a success. Corri’s story was very inspiring and I think really brought all the tips of the last two-day into a real world scenario. By saying this is how I used them, this is how it worked. In the end the first Go Blog Social event was a success in my opinion. There were some amazing speakers and interesting attendees all of whom I would say inspired the others. There were even people saying that after hearing all these speakers all they wanted to do was go home and blog, I felt the same way. Although the event was a success for the first year, having been to a lot of different types of conferences/events here are some of my suggestions. First though the speakers had good tips after a while it was like they were beating a dead horse with “brand yourself” and “be unique”, okay we’ve heard that already, I get it. I think this feeling could have been avoided by having different speaking tracks. Many of the events I go to have speaking sessions divided into categories, for the example of Go Blog Social you could have had three different tracks such as Branding/Design, PR/Marketing and Technology/Blog how-to tracks. By breaking up speaking sessions into these tracks, lets the attendees pick and choose what they want to hear about, and more than likely they will attend at least one talk from each track, so they aren’t always getting a lot of the same information. I understand that having the different speaking tracks requires more speakers, but with many local events, such as the WordPress conference I went to last summer in KC, the majority of the speakers were volunteers in the community that had a background in the topics. There was only 1 or 2 keynote speakers who were brought in for the event. By utilizing local presenters not only will lower speaking expenses but also highlight the local talent. These are just some of my thoughts. As I said before I really enjoyed the event, and look forward to next year’s event. I would also love to help be apart of the Go Blog Social from behind the scenes anyways I can. Again I want to thank Kathryn Mansur and Sarah Ruhlman for putting this event together. I thought about how I could sum up the whole event and while thinking about it I came up with this little poem: