Last week I attended my very first bloggers event. Now with a blog of only just over a month old I know this makes me seem a little keen. However I’ve been planning my blog in my mind for over a year now, so now it is off the ground and running I am ready to learn how to make it better.
Luckily Bristol blog camp was near my home, and free. Having secured a babysitter for my youngest two (my ever helpful mil) I was ready for my first grown up day out in months. I was particularly pleased to have an opportunity to dress up without ending up with baby sick on my shoulder and toddler snot on my knee.
I managed seven different shades of purple in my outfit. I also got to wear my new cordrouy purple Boden skirt. I do love purple.
The first speaker of the day was Chris Mosier of Thinly Spread. I have been following her blog for a while now, and have been thoroughly impressed by her work with Save the children. She talked about ethical blogging. Apparently she has gone as far as returning review products for being over packaged, impressive in the face of free stuff.
The main thing I took from her talk is that on my blog it is up to me to decided what my ethical code will be. Something I will definatly be pondering for a while.
Next up was Elizabeth Winkler of Real Food Lover. Her talk resonated most strongly with me. She talked about finding your topic and your voice and being true to yourself. She also mentioned using short paragraphs with a space between each paragraph for easier reading. As you can see I implemented this straight away.
The thing I am certainly glad I heard from her this early on in my blogging career was this. It’s important to behave on your blog as you would in a public place. This is especially good advice for me as I do tend to be a little outspoken at times. Foot in mouth anyone ?
Next we had a chance for refreshments and a chat. So excited was I to be talking to folk who don’t glaze over at the word blog that I missed out on cake !!
The next speaker Phil szomszor from PR agency citigate. He gave a talk about online safety for children which I have to admit, wasn’t the most relevant of the day for me.
After that he gave an amusing talk about PR agencies and their relationship with bloggers. The statement “are PR people stupid” flashed up on the whiteboard, followed by “yes, sometimes”.
I admit that I didn’t fully follow the talk as a new blogger without much experience in the world of PR yet. It was interesting to see how heated twitter became when the live feed about blog camp was discussing this topic.
Then lunch, and another chance to chat. After a conversation with Brit mums Jenny Howze I am now even considering exploring the world of the vlog. My motivation, a how to juggling vlog for her and any other potential juggling moms to use.
Finally a talk about SEO from Lee Smallwood. I won’t bore you with the details as I’m still processing and there are already some great blog posts out there that will help you with SEO. Let’s just say that I spent that night adding tags and meta descriptions to all my posts.
So to sum up Blog Camp Bristol was informative, inspiring and had cake, which I missed. It was also a great chance to put some faces to names, and really talk blogging. Thanks to the Tots 100 and the team behind Blog Camp.