Birmingham Blog Summit
Guest Post by Pinkoddy @pinkoddy
Notes from the Day
How to Earn Money without Breaking the Law -
Dave Sottimano from Distilled.net @dsottimano, explained about how you wanted to be self-hosted (avoid free wordpress, blogger – it’s like you are doing the work and they are getting paid. He recommended some hosts, and platforms, he told of us of the basic plugins needed. The most important message was just write EXCEPTIONAL CONTENT. Make sure that you have a good title, and the difference between your general title and your SEO title. He then talked us through follow and no follow links – rel = “no follow” is all you need to add. Obviously there was much more to this great talk, but he seems a really nice guy so go talk to him on twitter and am sure he will answer any questions.
The message I came away with is that the SEOs who wear “black hats” will use you and leave your blog burnt, where the “white hats” are there for the long haul, write good content and they will pay you more that the black anyway.
How to create a killer SEO strategy -
Judith Lewis @JudithLewis was clear from the start – this was not a basic class.
Ooooh she wasn’t wrong there. I’ve taken notes, in the hope that I may understand them later on. Things I understood were- if you put your search in Google into speech marks ” then it will do an exact match for what you have looked for. That you want to look for things that don’t already have lots of great posts about them. The whole talk was a lot more complex than this – but again Judith is on twitter and very approachable.
How to use Pinterest like a Pro -
Cathy from NutureStore told us how successful she has been on Pinterest. A lot of it made sense but a few things I picked up were:
- 50 board is a good number to have.
- Have a blog board and pin there first – so the pin always comes back to your blog.
- Make your description clear – and have your logo on there.
- You can set an image for each of your boards.
- Ask people to follow you on Pinterest.
- Join group pinning boards.
- You can pin the same post with different images.
- If you have a post that is doing well, then make sure in the post there are internal links to other posts of yours that are related.
- You can repin and old pin – delete the original.
The Brand Panel -
Brand panel – Here we got to meet the sponsors Argos Online @Argos_Online , as well as meet Volvo, FrankPr @RochelleColliso and a talk from Parentdish @parentdish_uk.
Basically the Brand panel told us that they look at your following and engagement. They talked about what they were currently doing, with Parentdish explaining about a new platform for Bloggers to share their posts on Parentdish – which currently has at least a million unique visitors. The message I took home was to be true to my blog; say no to Brands and not to be scared to approach brands if you have an idea.
How to be Brilliant-
Andy Cope @beingbrilliant – Told us How to be Brilliant. That too many people were “mood hoovers” wishing their lives away, suffering from “destination addiction.” That all we had to do is choose to be positive. That how he achieved this is for one year he woke up every day and told himself that at least he didn’t have toothache. There is a book available to download, and I think everyone was inspired by his talk.
If you have a post or want to know more about Blog Summit in Birmingham then go visit the linky.
Next for me it is Britmums! Let me know if you fancy meeting up.
Do so HERE immediately!
