Last weekend I attended the biggest parent blogger conference in the UK and it was amazing. I wanted to use my #BlogClub post today to share some of the top blogging tips from the sessions I went to for those of you who didn’t attend or who went to different sessions to me.
Pitches to profit – Emily Leary (A Mummy Too)
- Stand out to brands and PRs by learning more about your readers. Know your demographic.
- Pick your three best posts. These are your ‘hero‘ content.
- Show this hero content off. You could have a page on your blog, a pinterest board or an online portfolio showcasing the pieces you’re most proud of.
- Do the same with your stats. Pull out the hero stats and show them off first, include other stats, but make sure the hero stats sing.
- There is no magic number regarding the fees you should charge. It is dependent on your reach and quality of work. Top tier bloggers can command £200-£500 per post.
- Pitch as much as possible because you learn from each one. The more you do, the more offers will eventually start coming back to you.
- Be professional, have your business terms somewhere on your blog (a hidden page that you can direct certain people to).
- Be super positive and enthusiastic when talking to PRs.
Social Media Optimization – Maggie Woodley (Red Ted Art) / Ali Clifford (Kids Chaos)
- Sign up to all the platforms, even if you don’t use them. This starts followers building and secures the name for the future.
- Focus on one platform each year, do the rest, but extra efforts into the chosen one.
- Pin all your pinnable blog posts to one board, then pin out to other boards (your own and collaborative boards) from there.
Why you should do it all
- You can be actively involved in some networks, passively in others and just starting in some.
- Connect some of your accounts either manually or via tools (such as If This Then That) or through the connect account section of the network itself.
Building your You Tube channel – Marco Danesi (You Tube)
- Remember you are creating content for mobiles.
- Link your You Tube channel to your Google Adsense account.
- First three lines in the description are the most important.
- Use tags but don’t spam – put the most important ones first.
- Use Infocards to link to blog posts straight from video.
- Add featured content via the Creator Studio.
- Watermark your videos – so a subscribe button pops up.
- Reply to comments.
- You can block certain words from being used in comments. The people will think their comment has been left, but if they use the blocked works, their comment won’t be public.
Travel Blogging
- When you are writing about travel, be specific about the location. Just because you know where a place is, doesn’t means your readers will.
- Answer who/what/why/where/when’s, so that when the reader finishes they have no questions.
- Brands and Tourist boards want a story with the post as they get more attention, people remember them more and so they will share the post more.
- Write a content plan before you go. What do you plan to do – post, video etc and how you get to you finished content.
- Pitch could include the content plan, what you did for your last similar trip, a unique angle for this specific trip.
- You are your brand, don’t let yourself down.
- Brands and tourist boards share knowledge of bloggers with each other.
- People look for repeat collaborations with the same brand, proves the blogger is good.
Pinterest – Jen Stanbrook (Love Chic Living) / Jennifer Jain (Jennifer’s Little World) / Helen Neale (Kiddy Charts)
- Have a blog board and put it on the first line with seasonal boards and others that represent you best.
- Pin your pinnable blog posts to the blog board then from there to other blog boards and out to collaborative boards
- Pinterest is all about the search, the followers numbers are less important.
- Can also use place board (Berkshire for example).
- Where possible pin from the source.
- Seasonable events start two months in advance, e.g. Christmas pins start in October.
- Make sure you have a business account and that you are verified.
- Apply for Rich Pins. This gives you longer descriptions, bold text. It will also change all old pins to rich pins.
- Mix up general boards and some more niche ones.
- Make sure your keywords are in your profile and edit the categories on each board.
- Don’t pin anything landscape. Make sure each post has a pinnable image.
- Only watermark if you took the image yourself.
- If a post doesn’t do well and you think it should, then change the pinnable image or create a completely new image for the post.
- Remember the Alt Text of your picture is very important. This is what shows up under the image in Pinterest.
- If you have the Yoast WP plugin then the meta description section is also important. Fill this in and it adds additional information to your pin.
- Don’t use hashtags.
- Go for long descriptions.
Did you got o Britmums Live? Any great tips that I missed?
