Show Me the Blog 3.0

Show Me the Blog

For the third straight year Danyelle Little aka The Cubicle Chick put together a fantastic two day social media and blogging conference in St. Louis. This year's event was held October 19th and 20th at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission (RAC) on Delmar in the Loop. It was an interesting venue, and one that I had not been to before. On Thursday night, the folks from Time to Play hosted a social event at the RAC for us to get to know each other as well as their company. I had some fun with the Fibber game before Kitty of kittybradshaw.com and I got our butts kicked by Kristi of liveandloveoutloud.com and Rai of swa-rai.com while playing Scrabble Catch Phrase.

This is what happens when you are a Fibber!

Time to Play

So I took myself over to learn some anger management skills. And then I had a piece of cake :)

Friday was all about social media. My big takeaways from the day were as follows:
- I need to be making Youtube videos!
- bloggers need to see themselves as media companies
- there are tools withing Google+ that I have not been taking advantage of
- I need to research how my blogs appear on mobile devices
- photographs add to your blog both from a visual and a searchable perspective
- guest blogging can add to your credibility and your following

Saturday was chock full of blogging topics. Since I forgot my iPad and my phone, I was tweetless in St. Louis for part of the day until Danyelle generously lent me her Macbook. I also had to take notes with a pen and paper. Can you imagine? Ha. Here is a summary of what I learned on Saturday:
- follow up on any queries you have sent out as story ideas
- engage with brands through social media and stay on top of what they are doing
- affiliate marketing can be a good way to supplement your income
- learn to create compelling headlines for your blog posts
- make use of group Pinterest boards and webmaster tools
- become collaborators with similar bloggers, not competitors

Kim Wolterman

Also on Saturday I presented Beyond the Blog: Tips for Turning Your Blog into a Book. I was a little nervous that no one would attend my breakout session as powerhouse Nick Gilham was talking about Personal Branding in the main conference room. But I had 16 attendees, which was great as people could then interact. I had a lot of fun coming up with the slides for the presentation, and I think it went well.

The day wrapped up with Stef Pollack, a smart choice of speaker for the end of a long, two day conference. Stef is an effective and entertaining presenter with a lot of helpful information to share. Danyelle once again outdid herself with Show Me the Blog 2012. I can't wait to see what she comes up with for next year!

Cupcake Project

Stef Pollack

St. Louis WordCamp

WordCamp St. Louis

Saturday was spent at the second annual WordCamp St. Louis, which was held on the really pretty campus of Maryville University. Designed for anyone who runs a blog/website on the WordPress platform, the day was broken down into four categories: Content, Design, Development and Campfire. (The theme of this WordCamp was "Get S'More Skills", thus the reference to campfires.) So essentially each hour there was a choice of four topics, which was hard because there were always two that I wanted to attend. I stayed in the Content section all day since I felt like it was geared more towards beginners.

Even though myhousehistory.net has been around since April of 2008, I really don't have a good grasp on what makes WordPress tick. Certainly I can do all the basic stuff like post, add photos and work with plugins, but whenever it comes to anything more complicated than that, I have to ask someone else for help. While it is true that I certainly am not interested in learning how to change the HTML coding, I would like to be a little more in control of my website.

The opening session by Ed Morrissey covered the evolution of WordPress. What struck home with me is that there are currently 56 million WordPress sites! That is amazing! Certainly there must be a whole lot of folks who can help me when I get stuck, right? There is even a St. Louis user group that meets monthly, so this is definitely something I need to look into.

At each of the sessions throughout the day I learned something new. It was fun to see a handful of St. Louis Publishers Association members at the meeting, and I saw some old faces from Show Me the Blog St. Louis and met some new bloggers as well. But the best part of the day was my stop at the Happiness Desk, where one of the friendly volunteers (Jonathan Goldford of wiredimpact.com) assured me that the way myhousehistory.net was constructed was indeed favorable for the search engines to find new content. He also recommended a SEO plugin to help the spiders crawl over to my site. That information alone was well worth the price of admission. I will keep my eyes open for WordCamp 2013, and highly recommend the event to anyone using WordPress for their blogs/websites.

Show Me the Blogged Book

A while back I was asked by Danyelle Little, aka The Cubicle Chick, to be a speaker at the Show Me the Blog conference in October. I can't believe I have not blogged about this before now. I think it is because speakers were offered a badge to put on their websites to show that they are speaking at this event, and I have yet to be able to figure out how to get Blogger to accept the badge. Techy, I am not! Obviously I was able to figure out how to copy and paste the image here, but it's not quite the same thing.

At any rate, as someone who has attended the past two Show Me the Blog meetings (you can find my review of last year's sessions here) and been blown away by all the great information imparted, I was thrilled to be asked to present. Danyelle would like for me to talk about how to turn a blog into a book. While I haven't precisely taken what I have blogged about and published it into a book, I did begin to blog about my book's topic (how to research the history of a house) before my first book was written. And I certainly know a lot about book publishing by this point. I think I have a lot to share, and am excited for this wonderful opportunity.

You can find my Featured Speaker interview with Danyelle here.

Bloggy Boot Camp St. Louis

I've been absent from this blog for the past couple of weeks as I helped my daughter move out to Los Angeles. If you are curious about what it is like to move your baby 1,900 miles away, you can check out my personal blog here. Being a true empty nester now should provide me with plenty of time to blog, right?

Bloggy Boot Camp St. Louis

Over the weekend I attended Bloggy Boot Camp St. Louis. Other than the fantastic Show Me the Blog conferences put on by the thecubiclechick.com, we do not usually see blogging conferences in St. Louis. So I was excited when I noticed on Twitter that the SITS Girls were headed our way. Even though I began my first blog on researching house history back in 2008 while I was writing my book, there is still so much that I don't know about search engine optimization, marketing blogs and using all the great plugins available.

The conference began on Friday night with a social mixer, and I have found that attending the pre-events always makes me feel more comfortable going to the conference the next day. Held at the Millennium Hotel downtown, Charmin was the sponsor for the evening. I always think about Mr. Whipple when I hear the word Charmin, and I suppose that shows my age. Patrick Rich of MSL New York was on the go at the event, making sure that all of us were aware of the phone app Sit or Squat. With the app on your phone you can view and review bathrooms that you visit. It pulls up a map of the area where you are located, and identifies bathrooms in the vicinity. A green roll of toilet paper tells you that the bathroom is safe to sit in, a red one lets you know that you might want to find a new stop. I wish I would have had the app on my phone for the 1,900 mile drive to LA. At certain points even a red roll of toilet paper would have been welcomed!

On Saturday morning the meeting room was packed with approximately 140 bloggers. I appreciated the fact the conference organizers assigned us to tables in the morning and for lunch. It really forced everyone to mix it up and meet new people. The opening remarks by Tiffany Romero and Francesca Banducci were loaded with gems. I particularly liked the comments about embracing other bloggers successes instead of being critical out of jealousy. It follows my life motto about surrounding yourself with positive people. Glass half full folks will only bring you down with them. They will never rise to your level.

Laurie Turk was up first. She suggested that we have one main purpose for our blogs. While hers is a craft blog, her purpose is to promote successful crafting women. I love this quote from Laurie, "A blog is just a resume to make your dreams come true." Up next was Cynthia Wheeler who shared some great insight on how to make your blog inviting enough that readers not only come to your site but also stay to look around. She was followed by Dali Burgado who spoke about SEO and ways to help readers find your blog. Dali did a great job and for once I did not feel as though I was listening to someone speak in tongues about the topic. I'll be checking out socialmention.com for sure.

After lunch there was a choice of two breakout sessions. I chose the writers workshop, discussing turning your blog into a book. I didn't approach my book this way, instead writing the book first and using my blog as a way to build my platform as an author, but I do know a few authors who have turned the content of their blogs into a book. Meagan Francis shared her experiences of the blog to book road. In this age of e-books I suspect that many bloggers have a real opportunity here.

Annie Schultz then offered up some insights into utilizing StumbleUpon and Pinterest to build up traffic to our blogs. While I have posted a little bit on Pinterest (and love that you can direct the photos back to your blog posts), I have never even looked at StumbleUpon. Okay, that is about to change. The day wrapped up with Danielle Smith advising us on how to use video to tell our stories. I know that I need to create some videos. House history research lends itself easily to how-to videos. I even knew that Youtube is the second largest search engine. I have a tripod and a video camera, so what is the problem? I am going to take Danielle's 7 day challenge, where she suggested that we shoot a 1 1/2 to 2 minute video of ourselves every day for a week. We are not to look at the videos until the end of the challenge. She says we will be surprised at how much we improve by the end of the week. The challenge is on!

And just when I thought the day could not get any better, Mirassou Wineries hosted a wine tasting event for us. I was excited to hear that local grocery stores here carry these great California wines, but ecstatic to find a new favorite wine in their Moscato. Often referred to as a wussie wine drinker by my friends and family, I think I have finally located a wine that will satisfy my tastes and not be deemed "too sweet" by others. Thanks Mirassou!

Mirassou Moscato Wine

To say that the day was a great learning experience is an understatement. It is hard not to be energized when you are surrounded by so many bright, enthusiastic and diverse women (and a couple of men) with so much to share. I encourage any blogger to try to attend blogging conferences. The information you walk away with is worth the price of admission. But the new friends you will meet there? Priceless!

Show Me the Blog 2011

Last year I attended the first ever Show Me the Blog conference in St. Louis. You can see my recap here. Since then Danyelle Little has put together other blogging opportunities including Blogging Bootcamp and Wordpress Bootcamp. They have all been exceptional opportunities to learn the intricacies of becoming a better blogger.

This year the second annual Show Me the Blog conference was expanded to two days, on October 21-22. The first day was dedicated to social media, and the second covered different aspects of blogging. On Thursday night we had a pre-event gathering at Luna Lounge. It was fun to see some of the past Show Me bloggers as well as meet some first time attendees. I also won a fun MP3 player courtesy of Reliv International by correctly identifying @milligfunk as the person who rocked the boots at Show Me 2010.

Lumiere Place was the host of this year's Show Me event. Parking was plentiful and the meeting rooms were comfortable and spacious. Hostess with the mostess this year was the effervescent Roshini Cope. She is funny and organized - always a winning combination.

The first session of the day was "So You Want a Job in Social Media", a panel discussion which helped us all to understand the role a social media expert plays in a corporation. While I am not looking for a job in social media, as the mother of a senior in college who is majoring in Marketing Communications and has experience through internships in social media, it was gratifying to hear that her job prospects are pretty good!

Following that was lunch provided by sponsor Hardees.

Seriously, it may take two hands to handle a Whopper, but you will need a third to do justice to the Big Angus Burger! Amazing!

After lunch there was a choice between learning about social bookmarking or how to build real clients and supporters. I chose social bookmarking with Niles Flores. Social bookmarking sites allow your readers to share your posts with others. Examples include stumbleupon and digg. Niles advised placing these sharing buttons above your article's content. For my next session I listened to Lakesha Brown of XDWebSolutions speak about "Finding Networking Value & Putting it to Use for Your Gain". My main takeaway was to comment on other people's blogs and be sure to always leave a link back to your own website.

"SEO: Know It, Use It" by Will Hanke was my next session, where we learned about using keywords in our posts. The last session of the afternoon was "Being Social: How to Effectively Engage Your Audience" with Liz Jostes and Kristin Zaslavsky. The recurring theme of the day seemed to be participate on other people's blogs and respond to the comments made on your blog. Also, you can see how your Facebook page ranks by going to edgerankchecker.com. Photos and videos bump up your page rankings.

Day Two started out with a bang as Stef Pollack discussed "You Too Can Be a Rock Star Blogger". Not only is Stef an excellent speaker but she also had a fun Powerpoint presentation comparing Lady Gaga's transformation from a struggling lounge singer to a rock superstar to her own blogging evolution from few followers to thousands of readers who devour her unique cupcake recipes. Stef is a perfect example of how if you write good content and engage your followers, they will spread the word for you.

Hardees provided another great lunch for us on day two, this time offering up a taco and nachos bar! I hadn't tried either of these items at a Hardees restaurant, so it was great to have the opportunity to do so at the conference.

Following a great lunch, you might think that we would all need a nap. Not so for the attendees who chose Hannah Mayer's session "Instant Blogging: Add Water". This woman missed her calling - she should be a stand up comedien! She provided us with a humorous look at how people end up finding her site (it has skid marks in the title so I will let you draw your own conclusions). I have not laughed so much at a conference for a long time. Okay, maybe never.

There were a couple other sessions in the afternoon, and then Danyelle made the right (or should I say Wright?) call by having Robyn Wright wrap up the conference with her prentation on "Building and Maintaining Relationships with Brands". She offered us her insights into the proper way to interact with brands, letting them know what you can do for them before asking what they can do for you. She stressed that you don't need to necessarily have a huge number of followers on your blog. The brand will be looking at your whole sphere of influences - blog traffic, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn network, and organizations to which you belong.

In summary, the main thing that I took away from the conference is the power of connections. I am excited to now have a relationship with a number of the attendees from this year's conference, as well as the fact that I met a number of other authors. I think Roshini said it best - "The answer is in the room". Congratulations to Danyelle and all her staff for another excellent and informative conference. The tentative date for Show Me the Blog 2012 is October 19th and 20th. Look for more details on the Show Me the Blog website.

Blogging Bootcamp

As writers and/or publishers, at some point we all need to hop with both feet into social media. Blogging is a great way to start to build a following for your book, and a lot of people begin with blogger.com. This blog as well as my personal blog are both on the blogger.com platform. It is very user friendly, proving in my case that you can teach an old dog new tricks. However when it came time to develop a blog for my passion of researching house history, I elected to go with WordPress.org. I chose WP for a couple of reasons: 1) it looks more like a website, containing static pages as well as the pages you update more frequently, such as your blog pages; and 2) you can make sales on WP, which was important to me as I was just completing my book "Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? Researching a St. Louis County, Missouri Home".

WordPress is not as friendly for newbies as blogger.com, however. So when I learned that Show Me the Blog St. Louis (SMBSTL) was hosting a WordPress Blogging Bootcamp last weekend, I jumped at the chance to participate. Having attended two other workshops put on by Danyelle Little of SMBSTL, I knew my time would be well spent. More than 20 eager bloggers crammed the conference room at Nebula Coworking on South Jefferson. My head is STILL spinning from all that I learned, but I will try and summarize the points that struck home with me the most.

The first part of the workshop was conducted by Kesha Brown, founder of XD Web Solutions. Check out Kesha's website at http://xdwebsolutions.com. First of all, you can set up your blog on either WordPress.com or Wordpress.org. With the .com site you have limited storage space, you cannot accept ads (a source of revenue for many bloggers), and you will have a long domain name. The .org site allows you to have ads, make sales, and own your web content. Both sites are free. Check out the WordPress.org site for lots of helpful articles. It is recommended that you grab the domain names that are pertinent to your business, such as yourname.com and yourname.net. You will also want the .com and .net domain names of your business or the name of your book, for example.

Kesha then set us up on a WordPress blog so that we could all follow along as she went through the features offered by WordPress. This workshop was really hands-on, as we had been instructed to bring our laptops or tablets with us. It was so helpful to be able to actually do the steps as she was explaining them to us. Kesha finished up by going over her favorite plugins for WordPress.

Danyelle conducted the second part of the workshop, talking more specifically about blogging. Her suggestions for how you can get content for your blogs are as follows:
- pose questions on social media
- ask for guest bloggers
- blog on other people's sites
She also talked about using other forms of social media to increase your web presence. Twitter Tools is a plugin that will automatically upload your WordPress post to your Twitter account. Using Facebook and LinkedIn will also help build your social media rankings.

Following the workshop, I came home and made some changes to myhousehistory.net, incorporating my new-found knowledge. I still have things that need to be addressed on my WordPress site, but attending the blogging bootcamp gave me the confidence I need to not be intimidated by my own website!

This fall Show Me the Blog St. Louis will be offering a two day blogging workshop in St. Louis. You can find the details here. I highly recommend attending this extremely reasonable event. You won't be disappointed!