Blog Conferences

The Blog Design Posse (a.k.a. Jessica from The Pixelista/A Blog to Brag About and Laura from Eight Days Designs) carpooled from Idaho all the way down to St. George, UT just to meet our fave bloggers and the hotties behind The SITS at Bloggy Bootcamp. It was pure shenanigans (and lots of note-taking) I tell ya. Here’s a recap!

The first part of the trip was the DRIVE. Laura and I met up with Jessica in Pocatello, and headed down south! We also picked up miss Joanie on our way! It was fun because we’re girls and we talked the WHOLE WAY.

When we arrived in St. George, we met up with everyone at dinner at The Pasta Factory and exchanged gifts. The idea was to give them something that represented you as a “blogger.” Well, I couldn’t gift HTML, so I gave an umbrella, “Rain” gum, a loofah and body wash…and other rain themed items. Clever, I know.

After dinner we rocked the house down with some Karaoke. Little did I know that Jess and I didn’t REALLY know the words to “Hit me With Your Best Shot” and Tiffany Romero (SITS) knew EVERY single word to “Copa Cabana.”

We headed to Mesquite, NV to stay in Jessica’s vacant apartment which was SERIOUSLY cute. (Empty, but cute.) Just as we were headed out the door to grab some late night grub, we realized “OH CRAP!” – we had locked ourselves OUT of the house. Dressed to the nines in PJ’s, we called the following people: the property management place, her roommate, her rommmate’s mom, and finally – a locksmith. Five seconds and $100 later, we were able to get into the apartment. Total crapfest! But we made the best of it by downing JiB before bed and sleeping a total of 4-ish hours before the big day.

The next day was Bloggy Bootcamp!! Here are some pics of the event:

That’s me with the backfat and flower in my hair. Don’t you just love candids?

You can tell it’s a techy conference when…

Me and laura…she’s the one Tweeting from her phone. I’m the one paying attention with my eyes closed? No fair I blinked!

Tiffany Romero of SITS

The cute matching notebooks and folders I got for our little group!

Totally won this adorable piece – my middle name is “JOY” so it’s perfect!

Me with Tiffany! Look how cute we are.

A few of the GREAT things I learned:

Twitter: In general, the power of Twitter is awesome. I learned a lot about what to do and not to do (see Twitter Netequitte above), and have been TWEETING my heart out ever since. So far, I’ve gotten 3-4 new clients and 3 advertising inquiries just by being on Twitter for the past few days. CRAZINESS! Follow me @aprildurham. It’s a great tool!

Search Engine Optimization: I learned SO many great tricks for Search Engine Optimization. How to make your blog posts SEO friendly, and how WordPress is actually better for SEO. I also learned that CUTESY post titles generally aren’t a good idea, as awesome as they are. Not to mention that the IMAGES you put on your blog are also indexed by search engines! So if you save your image as “Blah” it will be indexed.

Quality Writing: With my blog posts, I’ve been more concerned about getting them POSTED rather than paying attention to content. It’s okay to review, rewrite, and go back to your post later. You don’t have t post every day. You don’t have to post every week or even every month. The KEY is to post consistently. If your readers expect you to post once a month, they will be back. But if they just don’t hear from you for a long while, they’ll become disinterested!

Growing in your Niche: I learned that it’s important to find a niche, or a specific thing you blog about, and get REALLY good at it. Obviously, mine is blog design and bettering your blog. My personal blog is different…it’s about my life. That’s a niche right? It counts. I learned some great tips from Miri Leigh, who started posting videos about cooking on her blog. She started small, and just got a deal from Food Network for her own show! With determination and continuous self-improvement, upgraded equipment, knowledge and research about video recording, and much more – she was able to go from a simple vlogger, to a (soon to be) Food Network Sensation!

A Few Other Gems:

Buy the .com of your children’s names. That way you have them reserved and hand them over when they’re grown up!
When vlogging, you don’t need special lights. Just use a white sheet draped over a window on a sunny day. That’s what I did for my Flab to Fab video!

This conference was so helpful – I took a slew of notes and have a lot of work to do in order to optimize my blog. Now if only I could find my notebook among the Vegas paraphernalia, business cards, free swag, and unpacked suitcases…

NOW FOR THE VEGAS TRIP!

To sum it up – it was a freaking blast! We got upgraded to a suite immediately and were able to stay two full nights for only $120 bucks total. Then we roamed around the strip, took pics from the balcony, ate some delish food, and shopped around. I loved the games we played as geeky blog designers. “Name That Font!” and “Spot the iStock.” We were able to name dozens of popular fonts on signs, brochures, menus – Las Vegas graphic designers are pretty predicatable! Here are some pics of our short trip!