Three Goals For a Blogging Conference

By Victoria Hudgins. Photography by Roman and Williams.

The first time I attended a blogging conference it was so scary! Preparing for the conference really helped my experience. I scheduled a coffee date the first day with a favorite blogger, and connected with my roommate before we ever got there. Here are three goals to have in mind when preparring for Alt.

TO LEARN

Going with a posture to learn is the single best way to attend a conference. You will learn about sponsorships, how to make posts more efficiently, how to organize your online life, how to engage readers and keep them coming back, the best upcoming blogs, and so much more. Be an oversized sponge walking in, and you will walk out with loads of tips to improve your site/brand. 

TO NETWORK 

Plan to meet and make friends, instead of just hoping it happens.

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Friday Links

By Victoria Hudgins. Photography by Randy P. Martin via Erin Loechner.

Whether you are putting your feet up or working hard this weekend, I hope it is a great one. Here are a few of my favorite blogging resources from this week:

20 common grammar mistakes 

A collection of free stock photos specifically for bloggers 

A sincere talk about slowing down online

Eight useful wordpress plugins

How to create an abstract watercolor effect in Photoshop

How to Grow Your Blog

By Victoria Hudgins. Photography by Aram Bedrossian.

While devouring recent conference recaps, I came across these tips for growing blog readership. I especially loved Jenny's points about having a good preliminary idea (so you know where you are going!) and being able to capture new readers. Both are vitally important.

Preliminary idea

Set goals and maintain the right prospective. What is the end goal for writing your blog? The most traffic possible? A book deal? New friendships? New clients? Build your blog and develop your posts with your end goal in mind. Reevaluate often; "Am I getting closer to or further away from my goal?".

Capture new readers

Most of you found this blog through a blog roll. That is great! Let's all share the blog love and keep up blog rolls of our own. If you are intimidated by the sheer number of people who want to be on your blog roll, consider having two - a favorites and a rotating list of new to you blogs.

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Building An Online Community

By guest contributor Disney.

The most important part of building a great online community is letting people know that you’re there. After all, the neighborhood can’t be close-knit if the houses are all empty! At first, getting followers can seem really intimidating and even a little hopeless. Luckily, there are many steps you can take to boost your traffic and get people to notice you. Here are three tips to get started with:

1) Provide great content

While it may not seem directly related to gaining followers, the first step is making sure you have great content. Find out what you excel at (it will likely be what you enjoy doing and sharing most) and perfect it. Do your best to take interesting photos with lots of light, and aim for a simple, uncluttered blog design. When people see that you have something of value to offer, they’ll tell their friends!

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Design Tips for Facebook Timeline Pages

By guest contributor Ciera Holzenthal.

I manage a few different fan pages on Facebook so when I saw that the timeline for pages was launching, I decided to go ahead and get the switch over with! I definitely learned a few things during this process and would love to share some tips!

Customize App Icons

Unlike the old page design, the new page lets you upload your own custom app image, which is really great! Since these tabs are now smack at the top of you page, they can really look a mess if you don’t customize them… so customize your app icons!

Before Custom App Images:

After Custom App Images:

Example: After I arranged my apps in my preferred order, I designed three custom images that matched the look of my profile photo. I wanted these icons to be bold and simple.

Directions: For each app that you would like to customize, design one image (111 x 74 pixels), click the pencil icon and “edit settings.” Here you can update the “Custom Tab Image” and the “Custom Tab Name.” Make those changes and don’t forget to hit “okay” to save!

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