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| 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!
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!
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.....
Jay's magic formula?
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.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 |
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.
