#BlogOnXmas – Thoughts on My First Conference

Well, I survived my first ever blogging conference. Not just survived it, but actually enjoyed it.

It was an amazing experience where I learnt a few tips and tricks I didn’t know and met some amazing people, some of whom I feel like I’ve been friends with for years but haven’t actually met in real life.

My plan for this post was to share the information I learned in the sessions I went to as well as some general things. I know a lot of bloggers do a really in depth post about the sessions they visited, and I really liked the idea, but on reflection, it feels wrong. It feels like I’m just stealing other people’s content.

Instead, I will touch on the parts I learned and point you in the direction of the people who gave the talks so you can go and check out the sessions there as I’m sure they’ll be sharing them at some point.

Let’s start with that:

The Sessions I Attended and The Highlights I Took Away from Them

Choosing the sessions to attend was hard – they all looked like really good sessions. I mostly stuck to my pre-conference plan of which sessions I would be attending.

Key Note

This was part of the welcome meeting so I think pretty much everyone attended it. It was ran by James from A Life Just Ordinary (you can read my interview with James here). It was absolutely hilarious and a great ice breaker. James talked about how not to do social media in a way that was relatable to all bloggers and there was no one in the room not laughing along.

Session One – Live Media Pack Building

For session one, I chose Live Media Pack Building with the fab Zoe from Mama Geek.

Zoe built a media pack from scratch through the session and talked about what we should include and how to make our media packs stand out. I don’t care how techy you are, and how much of an expert you are, doing something like this live in a session is incredibly brave and Zoe did a fantastic job.

The main things I learned in this session:

• My media pack is nowhere near as bad as I thought it was
• I need to make my URL more visible
• I need to cut a bit of text and add some white space
• Stats should be an average of the last three months not just one
• I need to add a “brands I’ve worked with” section
• I should be sending my media pack out as a PDF because not every PR/brand will be able to view it as a Word document

Session Two – Instagram

For session two, I was torn between two of the sessions, but my gut said Instagram and I went to that one, ran by the queen of Instagram, Harriet from Toby and Roo.

I really thought I was doing enough on Instagram. This session told me I’m not even close to doing enough. The main things I learned in this session are:

• I post around 3 times a week. I should be posting 2-3 times per day to see any sort of real growth.
• How to work out fees for sponsored content (1-10% of followers) but not to go in under £50-£100 if follower level is over one thousand
• To look through #’s such as #ad to find brands to potentially pitch to who are already using Instagram as an advertising source
• To add my email address to my profile
• Concentrate on three main categories of photos to keep an organised feed without it being too repetitive
• Use Instagram’s on site editing feature to increase reach
• How to work out engagement: Likes plus comments divided by followers
• To use keywords where possible but put them in naturally
• Use as many #’s as possible (30 on each pic) but make them relevant and look for smaller communities to have a chance at ranking in the top nine
• How to correctly advertise brands – placement in a pic that is like your normal pics rather than just a pic of the product

There was so much more, but these where the points that really resonated with me. I’m sure I saw Harriet say that she will be doing a video of her session, so keep an eye out for that.

Session Three

Session three I skipped so I could talk to the brands and some of the bloggers who I hadn’t had a chance to catch up with (I still didn’t get round even half of the people I wanted to chat to).

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the look of these sessions as such, I just felt this time slot was the least relevant one to me.

The choices where Lightroom, Blog Life Balance and Great Festive Photos. Photography isn’t a big thing for me so that ruled out the photography ones, and although Blog Life Balance sounded good, let’s face it, it’s not going to happen lol.

Session Four – Help Your Audience Find You

Session four I chose to go to Help Your Audience Find You with Nicola from Nicola Says.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this session, but I figured anything that can help drive the right traffic would be beneficial.

Nicola’s session was focused on SEO and as a social media manager with marketing experience she was a great person to deliver this session.

Her session was a fantastic introduction to SEO for bloggers who are just starting to get into SEO and I thought she did a fantastic job of wording her points in a way that was easy to understand.

Session Five – Comps 101

This is the session I was most looking forward to as I run a lot of giveaways on my blog, and any help in that area is a huge bonus. The session was ran by Di from Super Lucky and I learned so much here.

I didn’t make a whole lot of notes in this session as Di collected all of our business cards and is going to send everyone who attended her session a copy of her eBook about comping which contains all of the information. I can’t wait to receive it and get stuck in.

I learned:

• That my terms and conditions need a lot more detail
• Some extra places to promote my giveaways, including Di’s own linky
• How to get brands interested in running giveaways with you and how to decide whether or not to work with certain brands
• How to deal with any problems that might arise

These are just some of the things I learned here. As I said, I didn’t take a whole lot of notes because it will all be sent to me, but I learned a lot about making my giveaways better.

The Networking

There was a whole host of brands at Blog On. A lot of them where focussed on parenting blogs and at first, I shied away from those as I’m not a parent. The more I thought about it though, the more I considered the fact that around 90% of my readers are parents and those brands would be relevant to them.

I eventually plucked up the courage to talk to some of the parent focused brands and I found them all to be lovely. I think my favourite brands who I spoke to on the day would be Heart and Home (who doesn’t love scented candles especially when they  all natural) and Opies (who are doing some fantastic cocktail related things and I love a cocktail or two). I also really enjoyed talking to Tena and Paladone.

Aside from the brands, I also got to meet a lot of lovely bloggers – some of whom I’ve followed for years and some of whom were new to me. I loved being able to put faces to names and blogs and I really think meeting other bloggers was my favourite part.

I’m just upset I didn’t get to speak to everyone, but with over 200 hundred people there that would have been difficult to say the least – and there’s always next year!

The Goody Bags

As I’ve never been to a blogging conference before, I had no idea what to expect from the goody bags, but as everyone was saying to bring a suitcase to carry them, I figured they were going to be pretty epic. I didn’t end up taking a suitcase as I was getting a cab from the hotel back to my own and I figured I’d be ok without one.

The goody bags contained a huge amount of products and bits and bobs and they were really good. My favourite things where the scented candles (obviously) and some amazing Regenerate toothpaste.

General Thoughts

I was going to do a section on the good and bad things, but there where no bad things (except maybe the Grinch, he was terrifying lol).

I managed to get myself to Manchester and to the Holiday Inn where I was staying without getting lost or ending up on the wrong train – this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I was so scared of getting hopelessly lost and the fact I didn’t made me happy.

The closest I came to getting lost was not being able to work out how to get to the basement (where the brands den was). In fairness, I asked a girl behind the bar in Café Football and she didn’t know either. If even the staff have trouble finding their way down there, I can’t be that bad at finding things because I did eventually find the right lift to get down there.

Can you believe I was here and didn’t think to take a single photo? I’m pretty sure this makes me a bad blogger, but there you go.

Jen from My Mummy’s Pennies, who is obviously a lot more organised than I am, took some amazing photos and she very kindly shared them and said we could use them in our posts, so the credit for photos (except the toothpaste and candles and awful selfie of me) go to her. Thank you Jen, you rock.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I would definitely go to a Blog On conference again. Laura and the team all worked really hard to make this a success and they did a fantastic job.

Did you go to Blog On? What did you think? Let me know in the comments 🙂

You can find me here: Twitter Facebook Bloglovin Pinterest and Instagram Please do stop by and say hi!