Pet Swag And Tail Wags From The BlogPaws conference

The BlogPaws Pet Blogging and Social Media conference in Kansas City was my 5th BlogPaws conference in as many years.  When I think back I can't believe how much I've learned, how many amazing people I've connected with, and how far my blog has come.  I've learned nearly everything I know about blogging and social media from BlogPaws, and the conference sessions are a big part of that.  My blog would never have made it this far if it weren't for BlogPaws.  Honestly, I probably would have quit blogging early on if I hadn't found this amazing community of pet bloggers!

I'd like to share some of our conference highlights with you, in case you weren't able to attend this year.

Phoebe posing at the 2018 BlogPaws Conference!

Seeing my Pet Blogging and Social Media friends in person, as well as many of their pets, is the greatest.  So many hugs, pets and belly rubs, & kisses go around!   

I also really enjoy meeting folks from brands I love and have worked with, as well as brands I'd like to work with in the future.  It's a great opportunity to learn more about their pet products, create relationships, and find out about new products they might be launching.

The educational working sessions and Keynote presentations are always so helpful to me in growing my blog and social media presence.  Things change so fast in the online world, it's important to stay on top of the latest trends and best practices!

CONNECTING WITH MY FELLOW BLOGGERS & THEIR PETS

The best part of the conference for me is seeing my blogging and social media friends to catch up in person!  It's extra special when they bring their pets along.  It's such fun when you get to meet in person, some of the pets you've come to know and love online.  They're just waiting for pets, belly rubs, and kisses from everyone!  Icy and Phoebe certainly got their share of blogger love!  They made lots of new doggy friends and a few cat friends too.  I've brought Icy and Phoebe to 3 out of the 5 conferences I have attended.  I love having them right there with me, and everyone loves seeing them, including the brands!

I created two Photo Collages highlighting just a few of the fun times we had with some of our blogging friends and our pets. I hope you enjoy them!

Kristin Avery of The Daily Pip, Susan Nation of Talent Hounds, Denise Yoder-Gruzensky of Denise's Dog Dish, Dawn White of Lola The Rescued Cat, Louie The Frenchie, Yoshi from A Girl and Her Husky, Riley from Spencer the Goldendoodle :

So many awesome blogger friends and pets to connect with at the conference!  

Kristin Avery of The Daily Pip, Susan Nation of Talent Hounds, Maggie Marton and Aimee Beltran from BlogPaws, Alison Reder of Sarcastic Dog, Rochelle BaRoss of The Broke Dog, Bryn Nowell of A Dog Walks Into A Bar, Coco The Couture Cat, Jada from Chestnut Mutts, and my girls Icy & Phoebe taking a dip in the "pool" Frontline set up for everyone!

More friends & pets from the BlogPaws confeence!

JUST A FEW OF MY FAVORITE PET BRANDS

Each year I really enjoy seeing brands whose products I love and with whom I have worked.  I always look for their booth's first!  I try to interact with my favorite brands all year long online but there's nothing like seeing them in person and building relationships. 

It was great seeing the folks from Zymox, including little Seattle, she's so adorable!  Zymox makes Oratene Brushless Pet Dental Care products, which I use for Icy and Phoebe.  Pet oral health impacts pets overall health, but brushing  your cat or dog's teeth can be so difficult - it is for me, anyway!  Oratene's brushless products make it a lot easier.

Nancy, Helen & Seattle from Zymox

I've written several reviews on my blog for Zymox during Pet Dental Health month (February) for the last few years, and I have also written about some of their other products like their Itch Relief Pet Shampoo and Rinse and their Wound Care products for pets. I love the entire Zymox product line!

It's always a good time seeing our friends from Bayer Animal Health, makers of Seresto, K9 Advantix and other pet health products.

It's always great seeing Bayer at the conference!  Thanks to our friends from Bayer Animal Health I had the opportunity to visit the K9's for Warriors facility in Jacksonville, Florida last year.  K9's for Warriors rescues shelter dogs and trains them as service dogs for military Veterans suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disability).  With support from Bayer, they are doing amazing work!

I always look for the wonderful folks from VitaBone at the conference!  My dogs love VitaBone's Artisan Inspired dog biscuits like Artisan Turkey, Stuffing & Cranberry flavor and the BBQ Chicken & Sweet Potato flavor biscuits - YUM!  I was too busy chatting with them (they don't call me Chatty Cathy for nothing, you know, LOL!) so I didn't get a photo, but here's a cute photo of Phoebe at their booth last year, sniffing out a box of their goodies!

Phoebe always looks forward to samples of VitaBone goodies at the conference!

It was also great meeting the folks from Chewy.com , since BlogPaws and Chewy are now one big pet loving organization!  Icy and Phoebe posed in front of this backdrop, which Chewy put up in the Exhibit Hall to hint at where next year's conference is going to be.  After seeing this backdrop I had a feeling it would be in Florida, especially since Chewy's headquarters is in Dania Beach, Florida.  It was revealed on the last day that the 2019 conference will in fact be held somewhere in Florida.  We're excited because we love Florida, and we hope to be there for the conference!

We took Icy and Phoebe to Florida to visit family and have some fun in the sun.  Check out our Florida adventure posts Dog Friendly Juno & Jupiter Beaches and Dog Friendly West Palm Beach!  Friends, it's no surprise that we ended up moving there!

I really enjoyed chatting up Only Natural Pet, all natural pet products.  I'm very interested in supplements for Icy and Phoebe so I asked them lots of questions about that.   I appreciated all the information and the wonderful product samples they gave us!

Icy and Phoebe were so curious about all the samples Only Natural Pet had out!

Icy and Phoebe were very curious about all the products Only Natural Pet had out, especially the Bone Broth, Rabbit Treats for cats, and Salmon Oil!

DISCOVERING NEW PET BRANDS

It's always nice to meet new brands and learn about their products.  We met  DOOG Dog Owners Outdoor Gear, ECOS earth friendly products for pets and people, and WAHL, makers of quality grooming products for pets and people.  My husband loves Wahl and uses several of their grooming products - the ones for humans of course!

We were impressed by ECOS eco-friendly products, derived from replenishable resources.

Icy checking out some of the cool outdoor gear from DOOG.

There were so many other great sponsors at the conference, far too many to mention here!  I always leave the conference wishing I had more time to spend with friends and talk with brands reps! 

HELPFUL TIPS FROM WORKSHOPS & KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

The educational sessions at the BlogPaws Conference are so valuable!  As a Blogger and Influencer I never want to stop learning and improving, and the BlogPaws conference sessions help me do that.  Here are just a couple of useful tips from this year's conference sessions:

Jenny Guy from MediaVine spoke to us about building the relationships you want with brands.  One of her many tips that resonated with me was to Add links to a few of our Most Popular Posts to our blog's Home page or About page.  Why didn't I already have that?!  It was the first thing I did when I got home, I added links to 4 of my most popular posts to my About Me page.  Depending on what platform you use it might easy to add them to your Home page as well.

Jenny also mentioned how important it is to send the brand all your links, including social media shares, following publication of sponsored posts you've done for them.  She stressed the importance of maintaining overall communication with the brand throughout the campaign process as well.

BlogPaws Executive Team member Felissa Elfenbein talked about creating engaging content that gets seen, and the importance of working to build up your community.  She advised us to create authentic content people can relate to and share that content at the right times when our followers are online.  She also pointed out that we should share all our content as diligently as we share our sponsored posts.

SEO expert Jill Caren, who owns both 2 Dogs Media and Charity Paws, had great suggestions.  One of the first things she talked about was hosting your blog on a quality site.  Just because a site hosting company seems popular it doesn't mean their quality is better, so do some research and choose a host for your site carefully.

Jill advised that we'll never know what Google is looking for when we rank in search so don't try to figure it out!  We are better off thinking like the end user (reader), what they'll be looking for and the purpose of our content.  She cautioned us against over optimizing keywords, saying you don't need to put the same keywords into one post 15 times.  That was interesting, I always thought I should try to add keywords many times throughout my entire post - the more the better.  Obviously not!  I'm glad to hear that, I never want my posts to sound robotic or inauthentic.  The flow of our content should be natural.

Authenticity and Engagement was a common theme among pretty much all the keynote speakers and working session presenters.  It's hard not to focus on "the numbers" in your blog stats, but an authentic voice and natural engagement seem to be the thing brands value most when they look for bloggers to work with. I know, it's hard to believe the numbers don't rule brands' decisions in choosing bloggers to work with, but that was a key message we heard from speakers.  The numbers can't be ignored for sure, but we shouldn't get so hung up on growing our blog and social media stats that we lose site of our passion and why we started blogging in the first place.

ALL THAT SWAG!

It's amazing to come home with what looks like a truckload of Swag from all the generous conference sponsors!  It's a great way to discover and try new products from brands we love and from new brands whose products we're not yet familiar with.  

What do you mean I have to share some of my conference treasures?!

We got so many great products to try in our swag bags and at sponsors' booths, this isn't even all of it!  Icy and Phoebe want to keep everything for themselves!  I hate to be a buzz kill for them, but I always share some of our swag with their dog friends, and our local animal shelter.

The conference always goes by so fast!  We look forward to it all year and in what feels like the blink of an eye it's over.  We hope to be able to attend next year's conference in Florida!


Have you attended a pet industry?  If you did, leave a comment & tell us what your favorite thing is about being at pet industry conferences!

CAN OMEGA 3 SUPPLEMENTS IMPROVE DOG HEALTH?

It pains me to say it but my dogs are getting on in years. Icy and Phoebe are 12 and 13 years old.  I can't believe they're senior pets, where did the time go?!  As they've aged, I have seen some changes in my dogs vitality and skin coat so I've been researching the benefits of supplements for pets.

There have been so many advances in pet health over the years, enabling pets to live longer healthier lives.  If you read my earlier post about Giving Pets The Gift Of Good Health, you know that pet supplements are something I've become very interested in for Icy and Phoebe.  

Icy has always been able to hike for miles at a time!  I want  her to be able to keep doing that for years to come.

I want my dogs to be as healthy and active as possible so we can continue sharing adventures together for many years to come!  I feed them high quality dog food, give them medications to protect them from Ticks, Fleas, and Heartworm disease, and I make sure they get lots of exercise.  At this stage of their lives I feel they could benefit from additional supplements, including Omega 3 fatty acids. 

This post is sponsored by Salveo Petcare® . I am being compensated to help share information about Salveo's Pet Supplement products, but as always we only share information we feel is relevant to our readers.

DOG HEALTH BENEFITS OF OMEGA 3 SUPPLEMENTS

Omega 3 fatty acids are essential to dog health and are an important part of a dog's diet. 

Dogs are physiologically unable to make their own Omega 3 fatty acids. This is why dogs have a dietary need for the Omega 3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic (EPA), alpha linoleic acid (ALA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).  

Omega 3 essential fatty acids can be found in high quality pet foods, but usually in small amounts.  It can be beneficial to your pet's health to add Omega 3 fatty acids to their diet.   

Omega 3 fatty acids are beneficial for pets: 

🐶 Promotes Healthy Skin and Coat. Poor skin condition can cause itching, irritation, and skin allergies, which could lead to bacterial infections

😺 Can improve Immune Function

🐶 Can improve Heart and Brain function

😺 Can improve Joint function

🐶 Can reduce inflammation in the body. Many common pet diseases cause inflammation. Omega 3 fatty acids can help lessen the development of inflammation in a pet's body

😺 Can improve Allergies. Omega 3 fatty acids have the ability to reduce inflammation  

🐶 According to PETMD, Omega 3 fatty acids can help with kidney function, lymphoma, heart disease, cognitive function, arthritis, and other conditions

Fish oils, such as salmon and other fish oils are great sources of Omega 3's 

Salveo Petcare's fish oil supplements are a great way to add Omega 3 fatty acids to your dog or cat's diet.  I recently discovered Salveo Petcare's OMEGA 3 WILD FISH OIL and WILD SALMON OIL WITH OMEGA 3.  I've started adding Salveo's fish oil supplements to Icy and Phoebe's diet. 

I love that Salveo Petcare fish oil supplements for pets are:

🐟 Human grade
🐟 Free of GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms)
🐟 Have no artificial preservatives
🐟 Made in the USA and FDA approved
🐟 The salmon and other fish oils in their supplements are wild caught for purity

Pin This!!

Omega 3 Supplements Can Improve Dog Health

Facts and Ingredients label on Salveo Petcare's Omega 3 with Wild Fish Oil Supplements

Facts and Ingredients label on Salveo Petcare's Wild Salmon Oil with Omega 3's

In an article written by Dr. Karen Becker, DVM,  she explains that Omega 3s, play a huge role in your pet’s health and can also provide the following benefits:

💗 Can slow the development and spread of certain pet cancers

💗 Slow the growth of common yeast infections in dogs and cats

💗 Aid in the proper development of the retina and visual cortex

💗 Help prevent certain heart problems in your pet

💗 Help maintain healthy blood pressure and decrease triglyceride and blood cholesterol levels and help regulate blood-clotting.

I can give Icy and Phoebe their Salveo Petcare fish oil supplements directly or pierce the gel capsules and add it to their food, which is so easy.   They love the taste of these supplements, I guess because they are fish oil and my dogs LOVE all things fish!

Icy and Phoebe love the taste of their Salveo Petcare Fish Oil Supplements!

You can find Salveo Petcare supplements at online retailers such as Amazon

VISIT SALVEO PETCARE ON FACEBOOK!!

NOTE: I am not a Veterinarian or Vet Tech, nor do I play one online! As always, be sure to check with your Veterinarian before adding any supplements to your pet's diet.  

Do you give your pet supplements or fish oils?  Tell us about it in the comments!

High Tech Veterinary Care

I recently had the pleasure of visiting a state of the art Veterinary Clinic in Florida.  

Do you know what this weird looking piece of equipment is?

I was really impressed that this Veterinary clinic is using 3D printing to help repair leg injuries in pets!

I was pretty impressed when I learned that it's a 3D printer used to help Veterinarians caring for pets with leg injuries.  I find that pretty fascinating!

Phoebe is reading up on how 3D printing is used in Vet care!

Check back with us in a few days when I share more about the high tech Veterinary care pets are getting at this new state of the art clinic!

JOIN THE BLOGPAWS WORDLESS WEDNESDAY BLOG HOP!!

Dogs Playing in Fall Leaves

FALL, WHERE ARE YOU??  

It's been in the 80's in New York for the last two weeks, c'mon Mother Nature hit us with some FALL already!

Phoebe loves play in the leaves!

If you love Fall as much as we do .....

Fall, or Autumn as some prefer, is a great time to take a special trip with your dog.  The Summer crowds have thinned out and the weather is cool and crisp.  

🐶 How about a Fall trip to dog friendly Montauk  or The Hamptons in New York?  
🐶 History buffs that love witches, ghosts, and goblins, can bring the dog along on a "Witch Hunt" in Salem, Massachusetts.  
🐶 A weekend getaway to historical Colonial Williamsburg is a fun and educational vacation for the whole family.  

🐶 If you're on the West coast, Fall is the perfect time to visit Sedona, Arizona.  The scenic beauty will literally take your breath away!  The miles and miles of dog friendly hiking will keep your dog's tail wagging with sheer joy. 

We took Icy and Phoebe to all these places, each one warmly welcomed our dogs!

What is your dog's favorite activity to do in the Fall? Please leave us a comment and share!

How Bloggers Can Work With Brands They Love

At the annual BlogPaws Blogging and Social Media Conference, you will always come away with great learnings and a list longer than your arm of take-aways to improve your Blogging and Social Media skills.  I always look forward to learning how I can grow my blog traffic and my social media channels even more.  This year's conference did not disappoint!

My blog is a business, driven by a Passion for my own pets and for helping animals in need.

IS YOUR BLOG A BUSINESS OR A HOBBY?

Like many bloggers, I consider my blog more of a business than just a fun hobby.  It's a business driven by passion.  Passion for animals, passion for helping homeless animals, and passion for my own pets!

The more money I make through blogging, the more time I can justify spending on my blog and the more I can give to the causes I am most passionate about.  For this reason, one of my key blogging goals is always trying to increase revenue from my blog.  The learning sessions at the BlogPaws conference are always so helpful in working towards that goal.

As I prepare for the conference, I start by searching for the working sessions that will help me accomplish my Blogging Business Goals.  At this year's conference, one of those sessions was WHAT ARE YOU WORTH IN 2017 AND HOW TO GET BRANDS TO BELIEVE IT! presented by two great bloggers I love; Bryn Nowell creator of the blog A Dog Walks Into A Bar and Alison Reder creator of the blog Sarcastic Dog.  I was so impressed at the research Bryn and Alison compiled in the months prior to the BlogPaws Conference in preparation for their presentation! They did a great job and provided so much insight and so many helpful blogging tips!  Tips on how to work with brands you love and how to improve your blog to attract the brands you want to work with. 

The educational sessions at BlogPaws conferences are so helpful in achieving your blogging goals!

Bryn and Alison surveyed both Bloggers and Brands to find out what makes them want to work together.  They gained valuable insight into what brands are looking for when they select bloggers they want to work with and what makes brands NOT want to work with a blogger.   You may think the numbers are all brands care about, but you'd be wrong.  Brands don't only want to work with bloggers that have the highest number of monthly blog views, there are other things they look for. Some of those things may surprise you!

HOW BRANDS FIND BLOGGERS THEY WANT TO WORK WITH

Bryn and Alison started off by talking about how brands find bloggers they'd like to work with. The top 5 ways brands find bloggers they want to work with are:

🐶 GOOGLE SEARCH - they search for the kind of bloggers they're looking for via Google search.  That makes sense, if you're looking for dog bloggers you search for dog bloggers.  Make sure your blog is searchable for the things you want to be known for.

🐶 INSTAGRAM - this was interesting to me, I thought brands would be more focused on Facebook.  I hadn't paid that much attention to growing my Instagram account, but since Bryn & Alison's presentation I have focused on it a lot more! 

🐶 OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA - I'm a big Twitter user and have focused more on promoting and growing on Twitter much more than my other channels.  Now I'm going to focus more on my other channels for growth as well.

🐶 PR FIRMS - Yes, I know, they seem to always say whatever brand they're representing is "unable to pay" for any work you do to promote their products. Apparently, brands also rely on PR Reps to help them find blogs that are a good fit for the brand so don't ignore PR Reps, keep those relationships going! 

🐶 BLOGPAWS - this was music to my ears!  I was so happy to see that our BlogPaws community was high on the list of places brands look to find bloggers they want to work with.  If you're not already a member of the BlogPaws community, please join us - It's Free!

They talked about several other avenues brands use to find bloggers they want to work with but these were the top 5.

REASONS A BRAND WILL SELECT BLOGGERS FOR CAMPAIGNS

Next, Bryn and Alison talked about the reasons a brand may select particular Bloggers to work on their campaigns.  Here are the Top 5 Reasons a brand will choose a blogger for a campaign...

- DRUM ROLL PLEASE - 

The number one thing a brand will base their blogger selection on is, and this one is no surprise, BLOG POST CONTENT.  Obviously, if you have a dog blog they expect you to write about dogs, they don't expect blog posts about collecting model cars!

😻 QUALITY OF IMAGES -  is a very big reason brands will choose to work with a blogger - or not.  Of course images are important, but it surprised me that it was the number two reason a brand will chose to work with a blogger or not.  Bryn and Alison mentioned this many times during their presentation.  I spent much of last year working on my photography skills, and this year I'll be focusing on developing my video skills.  Time well spent, I'd say!

😻 COMMUNICATION -  from the Blogger.  Following up in a timely manner, delivering what you said you promised you would, and the quality of your communications with the brand.  This was a bit of an eye opener for me.  Of course, all these things are important but I didn't realize how important they were to a brand's decision to work with me or not.  Good to know, right?!

😻 POST ENGAGEMENT -   A brand will not be impressed by a blog post that has zero engagement.  No surprise there!  With active promotion and a good network of blogger friends that shouldn't be an issue.

😻 VALUES -  Matching the values of the Blogger to the Brand is important to a brand.  This makes sense.  A brand that makes high quality safe dog products doesn't want to see you promoting a product that seems unsafe such as a shock collar (Heaven forbid!)

WHAT ABOUT SMALLER BLOGGERS?

Another interesting thing Bryn and Alison talked about was why a Brand might want to work with a smaller blogger.  We tend to think that a brand wouldn't want to work with bloggers that don't have "the numbers", but apparently that's not always the case.    Your content, quality of your images, meeting deadlines, and social engagement are all factors that could sway a brand to work with you even if your numbers aren't high.  Good News, right!?

WHY WOULD A BRAND CHOOSE NOT TO WORK WITH A BLOGGER?

They also talked about why a brand would choose NOT to work with a blogger even if they had stellar numbers.  Here are a few things that turn them off:

The Alignment of a Brand's messaging with the Blogger's content was number one.  You and the brand need to be a good fit.  Content and Image quality are also important  Both of these things make perfect sense.  

The fourth reason may surprise you - having a Poor Reputation will turn a brand off!  What constitutes a poor reputation?  One thing I know will get you a bad rep is trashing any other brand online.  If you're trashing that brand, what might you one day say about them??  

I would venture to say that today's U.S. political climate has also brought out the worst in many of us. Friendships have broken up, online bickering and UNfollowing seem like they're at an all time high! Making harsh negative comments about sensitive subjects online is probably something a brand would cringe at.  You also don't know to whom a business, any business, is loyal. Many businesses are die-hard political party supporters.  If a brand sees you making harsh comments about the political party they have allegiance to and strong relationships with, it could work against you.

Slide from BlogPaws Presentation by Bryn Nowell & Alison Reder: Reasons why Brands may choose NOT to work with a blogger, even if the blogger's numbers are great.

Bryn and Alison put together this slide, which shows several other reasons a brand may choose NOT to work with a Blogger, even if their numbers are great. Keep these in mind as you navigate through your online world.

Brands will search you online.  If you think they won't ever see negative things you post, think again. It's amazing what they might be able to uncover.  Your reputation is indirectly a reflection on them, so brands are careful about who they work with.  It's hard to resist the temptation to lash out against the injustices we see online, I get that.  Whether or not to do so is a decision only each of us can make. We should all proceed with caution!

There were many more tips and learnings in this incredible presentation, far too many to list here!  In closing, Bryn and Alison advised us to create our Branding Strategy and maintain focus on Integrity and Professionalism.

I want to thank Bryn Nowell and Alison Reder for all the research and hard work they put into this incredible presentation!  The insights and advice I gleaned from them will be so helpful to me in achieving my blogging goals.  I hope this excerpt from their presentation will help you as you work toward your blogging goals as well!    

Please visit Bryn at  A Dog Walks Into A Bar and Alison at  Sarcastic Dog  If you don't already follow these great bloggers, you should!!

Note: This is a PetSmart Affiliate link. If you make a purchase through this link I may make a few pennies in commission, which would be much appreciated!


Did you find the information in this post helpful?  Please leave us a comment and let us know - we always want to know if the information we share is helpful, interesting, or entertaining!

Essential Social Media & Blogging Advice From The Pros

Another amazing BlogPaws Conference has come and gone and I'm putting into action the valuable Blogging and Social Media advice and tips I came away with.  I'm amazed at how much helpful information was packed into just a few days!

There is so much Learning packed into a BlogPaws conference! If you didn't get there this year, start planning now for next year.

Since many of you were unable to attend the BlogPaws  conference, I'd like to share some of the blogging and social media tips & learnings from Keynote Speakers, and Working Sessions.  As always, there was a TON of knowledge to absorb, so I'm breaking it into 2 or 3 posts to make it easier to digest.  I know you'd do the same for me if you were there and I couldn't make it, so here goes!

THE MOST RETWEETED PERSON IN THE WORLD

Although he spoke on the last day of the conference, I'm starting off with Keynote speaker Jay Baer who talked about what he calls Youtility, or How To Build A World-Class Personal Brand By Being Hyper-Useful.

Jay Baer who has been known as "The Most Retweeted Person In The World among digital marketers".  He's the President of Convince & Convert, a consulting firm who has helped some of the world's most iconic brands use technology to retain customers and win new ones.  Brands like The United Nations, Nike, 3M, and Oracle.  He is also a NY Times best selling author of five books.

I could immediately get why Jay is one of the most Retweeted people in the digital marketing space.  I started following him on Twitter as soon as he was announced as a BlogPaws speaker. Right away I found content that was valuable and relevant to me as a blogger.  I've shared much of his content, like this really interesting article about the FTC "crashing" the Influencer party.  Can you say FTC DISCLOSURE ?!?  Might that be relevant to us Pet Bloggers & Social Media Influencers?  Heck, Yeah!

BE MORE RELEVANT TO YOUR AUDIENCE

My Twitter example is a perfect lead in to Jay's key message, which is that We Need To Be More Relevant to our audience, because.....

Relevancy magically creates time and attention - Jay Baer, Digital Marketing Expert

Jay's magic formula?

USEFUL = RELEVANCY = ATTENTION = $$

 THE BIG LIE

Jay pointed out a somewhat painful truth.  We tell ourselves that "our audience is just too busy to read our content" and that's how we justify not having enough action on our content.  But that isn't the case.  It's not that people are too busy, it's that our content isn't relevant enough! They'll find the time to read our content if it is relevant enough.  We should strive to be "massively useful" to our audience.  I realize that if I want to promote my blog on social media I need to be more useful and relevant in the content I'm producing.

4 DIMENSIONS OF YOUTILITY

Jay went on to explain the Four Dimensions of his Youtility model:

1. Solve Problems your audience has.
He said that Specificity creates Relevancy and cautioned us about the dangers of being too broad with our content topics.  "You won't be as relevant if you're not specific", he warns.  I know I need to take steps to stop trying to be all things to all people in the pet space and focus on the one or two areas I can be most relevant.  It's not an easy thing to do! Jay suggests we begin each day by asking ourselves "How Can I Help?" and build relevant content from there.

2. Be Consistent, STOP random acts of content.  
More is not always more and every audience has a "breaking point".   Another concept he introduced that resonated with me was to "Think like a TV station and create SHOWS, using a consistent theme and timeframe".  He suggested creating consistent Shows, and episodes of those shows.  One of the examples he shared was the Dog Rescue Stories produced by Positively Woof.  

3. Atomize Your Awesome
Release content on various channels, in similar ways. You need to be in the places where your audience is.  He shared these surprising facts:
  
😕 The Daily time spent READING in the US is 25 minutes per day.
😕 The Daily time spent WATCHING online video in the US is 72 minutes per day.
😕 People visit 39% fewer web sites than they have since 2010.

The message was clear, Repackage your content and share it across multiple channels!

4. GET PAID
This was another one of my favorite points.  Like many of you I'm often asked to work without getting paid, which frustrates me.  Jay assured us that "It's OK to get paid!".  He shared a quote that a respected individual once shared with him:

"There's no need to be nervous when your heart is in service"

I love that!  Getting paid for the work we do doesn't diminish our passion or our message when we ask to be paid for our work.  Jay pointed out that "If you get paid you can do more for your audience by creating more content, more videos... more everything!"  I wholeheartedly agree!  I would also add that when we get paid it allows us to Give Back even more to the causes each of us is most passionate about.  As bloggers and social media influencers, Jay reminds us that our role is to "Connect companies with their future customers".
  
A big Thank You to Jay for sharing his valuable insights with us!  I highly recommend following Jay's advice. 

Onward to SEO Help

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) For The Beginner and SEO For The Advanced Blogger sessions, presented by Jill Caren, of 2 Dogs Media.


Jill Caren is the founder of 2 Dogs Media, a New Jersey based web development and digital marketing agency named for her two beloved dogs Ginger and Riley.  Jill has been featured in publications such as BusinessWeek, Search Engine Watch, and CIO (Chief Information Officer) magazine.  She also gives back through her social goods website, CharityPaws which helps animal rescues and charities raise funds with positive inspired apparel for animal lovers!

SEO DOESN'T HAVE TO BE SCARY

I'm the first to admit, I need a lot of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) help, and quite frankly sometimes SEO scares the heck out of me! For the first time, I attended an SEO presentation that didn't utterly confuse and frustrate me.  The last SEO class I went to left me confused and frustrated.  

2DogsMedia is named for Jill Caren's two dogs, Ginger and Riley.

At the conference, I pushed myself to attend Jill Caren's Beginner SEO session, and although it wasn't completely easy-peasy I was able to follow along quite well. I was surprised that I actually understood a lot of it!  I was so pleased with the Beginner session that I ended up staying for Jill's Advanced SEO session as well, and it was great! I was sure I'd be completely lost in the advanced session but I actually got a lot out of it. 

HOW SEO IS DONE

Here are some of the tips on how to grow your blog traffic and how SEO works that resonated with me the most.  I see myself definitely being able to implement many of these suggestions:

Jill started off by saying that Step 1 should be finding out what your audience wants.  She then discussed growing your blog traffic & audience organically for FREE. I'm all about free, so I was listening pretty intently!   Here are some of Jill's recommendations:

⇝ Have your own domain and host it elsewhere.  Having a secure site is also important, not just for the obvious security reason but also because many brands don't like to work with blogs or web sites that are unsecured. 

⇝ Jill is a huge proponent of Google's WebMaster tool to monitor and analyze your blog's performance.

⇝ It's critical that you have good Title Tags and Meta Descriptions, as these impact Click Through Rates, and therefore they impact your Google ranking.  Include keywords in your Title Tags.

⇝ Compile 10 - 15 keywords or keyword phrases to utilize in each of your blog posts.  Keywords are so important!  Jill made a few suggestions on where to find keywords, one of which is using a tool called answerthepublic.com.  It helps you find what questions people are asking about your topic, which you can then translate into keywords and phrases.  Try to place keywords in the beginning of your post if possible. I tried it and I loved this tool!  It's pretty easy to use and kind of fun too.

⇝ She also suggested simply using Google search to find keywords. Enter your topic into Google search engine and see what populates beneath the words you've typed in.  Also scroll down to the bottom of the page to see what other related search phrases pop up.  Another easy way to find keywords! I use this simple method all the time now, it works very well. I've done my due diligence and added keywords throughout this post using these 3 methods, let's see what happens!

⇝ She advised having breaks within your content and using H1 and H2 header designations.  This is another easy one to implement!  As you can see I've done that here.

⇝ Another important thing Jill talked about was site speed.  If your site is slow to load, you will not rank well!  It should only take 1 - 3 seconds to load, if it's more than this there may be a number of things slowing your site down.  She suggested using GTMetrix.com to assess the speed of your site and look for ways to improve it if needed.  I tried it with my blog and my speed is 8.4 seconds to load my 3.62MB blog page size - Yikes!!  Apparently I've got some landing page redirects, and broken links.  I've got some work to do to improve my site speed! Google is probably dinging me for this, big time.

Jill posted the full SEO Session Overview from her BlogPaws SEO sessions on her web site; 2DogsMedia  It's a great recap of what she covered in both the Beginner and Advanced sessions.  You can utilize her overview as a recap for those who attended either of the sessions, or as a starting point for those who were unable to attend the conference or her sessions.

I have since put many of Jay and Jill's advice into action for my blog and it's definitely made a difference.