Bloggy Bootcamp St. Louis

Danielle Elliott Smith

As writers and authors we know how terribly important it is that we build our platform prior to publishing our book. Myhousehistory.net became a reality in 2008 as I was writing my book about researching house history. I like to keep up to speed with all the changes to blogging and social media by attending workshops on the topics. So on Saturday I headed out to St. Charles to attend Bloggy Bootcamp. Organized by the SITS Girls, Bloggy Bootcamp is a one day blogging and social media conference for women. I attended this event the first time it was held in St. Louis two years ago, and picked up many new tips and met some amazing bloggers. That was also the first time I was introduced to Mirassou wines as they were a conference sponsor and hosted a wine tasting at the end of the meeting. As a self-proclaimed wussie wine drinker, I was ecstatic to find the Moscato wine by Mirassou. It is my go-to wine for everything, and I have introduced many of my family and friends to it. My husband is a fan of the other Mirassou wines as well.

Mirassou Moscato

When I went to the conference in  2012, I was definitely the oldest woman in the room. A lot of blogging space and attention is given to the mommy bloggers, and while I am a mom I was definitely not anywhere near the same stage of motherhood as the other women in the room. I am an empty nester, but not yet a grandmommy blogger either. But that didn't stop me from getting to know some truly interesting gals with whom I still interact today. You can read a recap of my first Bloggy Bootcamp here.

As I was driving to St. Charles I had the 70's station on in the car, and it occurred to me that I was listening to music older than most of the ladies I would soon be meeting. That is pretty humbling. But what I noticed immediately upon arrival is that there were a dozen or so older bloggers attending this year. (And I was not the oldest!) In fact, this was a pretty diverse group, including two males. I think it made for a richer conference, with folks commenting from many different perspectives.

Here are my top ten takeaways from Bloggy Bootcamp 2014

1. By the year 2018, 80% of the content we consume will be video. Guess I better get busy on the tutorials I keep saying I am going to make.

2. Google fonts are viewable across all platforms, so use those fonts in your blog posts and websites.

3. eBay.com has free tutorials on taking better pictures. Who knew?

4. If Plan A fails, remember that there are 25 more letters.

5. If you want to some day represent brands, start writing about the brands you love and that matter to you.

6. Look at blogs that are successful and see what they are doing right.

7. Facebook is about being relevant in the moment. Share content other than your own as Facebook loves this.

8. Check out picmonkey.com as a free photo editing site.

9. Call yourself a social influencer, not a blogger.

10. And my favorite? If it is not a "Hell yeah!" then it is a no. We need to be okay with telling people no. Amen.

If you are a blogger or involved in social media at all, I would highly encourage you to check out local or regional conferences. They are a great way to learn new skills and network with other like minded individuals.

Danielle Elliott Smith & me

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

Pinterest for Authors

Pinterest page of Kim Wolterman

Recent statistics show that Pinterest is the third-largest social media site, with 104 million visits per month. Facebook clearly leads the way with 7 billion monthly visits, while Twitter comes in second with 182 million visits. Pinterest visitors stay on the site longer than any other social media sites, and users are predominantly females between the ages of 25-44. It is easy to open a Pinterest account, and then you can begin creating your boards and start pinning.

One of the biggest benefits of Pinterest for users is that the system automatically links back to the source of the pinned photo or article. So if you have a board of photos from your blog, for example, when someone clicks on the photo they will be taken to your blog. And if they pin the photo to their Pinterest board, then all of their followers are now potentially exposed to your blog. There are some copyright issues floating around right now, so I mostly pin my own photos or those where I feel proper credit has been attributed to the photos.

Here are some examples of how authors can use Pinterest boards to either assist in the writing process or promote (subtly) their books:

- Show some visual elements from your books, either actual photos from the books or images that inspired you when writing them. For example, since I write about house research, I might want to create a board of photos of historic homes. If you write historical fiction you might have boards of photos from the time period in which you are setting your book.

- Pin the covers of books in your same genre, including your own.

- Pin photos from your book signings or speaking engagements, as well as those you have attended from other authors.

- Get creative. Where do you want to travel? In what location would you rather be writing? How about one for cool libraries?

Pinterest is one more bullet in the social media arsenal for authors. As with other forms of social media, the emphasis should be on "social". Interact with your followers, and find others to follow as well.

Why Authors Should be on Pinterest

While at a blogging conference a year ago one of the attendees introduced me to Pinterest and sent me an invitation to join. I signed up without really understanding what the site was all about because this blogger told me how much fun she was having with it. While I have created numerous boards and enjoy looking at the pins of others, I have not focused on using Pinterest to make me more successful as an author. The October issue of the Independent, a monthly publication of the Independent Book Publishers Association, arrived in the mail today. An article entitled "Promoting with Pinterest How to Get the Most from This Hot Social Media Network" caught my eye, stating that Pinterest is now the third-largest social media site behind Facebook and Twitter.

I decided to look into the statistics a little bit and found an article about Ben Silbermann, one of the co-founders of Pinterest. The article stated that Pinterest grew from 5,000 users in August 2010 to 17 million in April of this year. That's a lot of eyeballs! I will be researching how authors can use Pinterest to connect with their readers, and will follow-up with some tips in an upcoming post.

Social Media for Publishers

At this month's St. Louis Publishers Association meeting, local social media expert Erica Smith shared some tips on how authors can make the most of their social media platform. While at first glance it may seem overwhelming with all the social media options available right now, Erica suggests picking the one or two that you enjoy most and maximizing those. Don't try to have an active presence on all the sites or there will be no time left to do anything else. Here are some of the other tips I learned at the meeting:

- you have to engage, be transparent, be relevant, and have a strategy
- the best time to tweet is between 1:00-3:00 p.m. Monday thru Thursday
- the average Twitter user is 33 years old, 59% are women, 35% tweet at least once per day and stay on Twitter an average of 12 minutes
- females make up 56% of Facebook users
- have a good profile picture on Facebook because it will show up so small in the news feed
- the secret to Facebook is images - post them!
- use Events on Facebook to promote book signings or other events
- the best time to post on Facebook is 1-4 p.m. Tuesday thru Thursday
- Pinterest is a photo based social media site that is growing rapidly
- the average age of a Pinterest user is 35, and 82% are females who will spend more time here than on any other social media site
- Tumblr is used by the 18-22 year old crowd, more females than males, and the average time spent here is 2 1/2 hours per week
- Tumblr is most active on Friday nights, with lots of fashion, music and profanity
- men are more likely to be found on Google+ and LinkedIn

So pick your favorite form of social media, be active (during the best times and days of the week) and be relevant for your readers. Happy promoting!

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.