This weekend I attended BritMums Live, even though I could only make the Saturday (having spent Friday at soft play – go me!) I had a great time and it was lovely to meet up with some people who previously had only existed on my computer. I always love reading other people’s round ups and blogging tips from different conferences and when I don’t attend myself I’m always on the look out for that little hint that could help improve my blog. With that in mind I thought I’d put together a little list of great blogging tips from BritMums Live in the hope that it would help someone else!
Big thanks of course go to my super amazing and brilliant sponsors docrafts for sending me to the blogging ball!
Have a strong ‘Hire Me’ page and update it with everything you do. This tip from Penny from A Residence really resonated with me, I’ve admired her Hire Me page before but have never done it myself, with many bloggers looking to increase their income it makes sense to put your skills on display.
If there’s someone you want to work with just ask! I’ve found that collaborating with other bloggers has really increased how well this blog is doing. No, if I tweet A Beautiful Mess, Martha Stewart and Kirstie Allsopp they might not care about swapping Pinterest tips with me, but I’ve already started to speak with more people about working together. The worst they can say is no!
If you’re worried about people stealing your content, you can check for this at copyscape.com, great tip from Ruth Arnold who blogs at Geek Mummy for the worried and curious amongst us!
Also from Ruth was some great hints on watermarking your posts. If you want to do this through your phone try marksta lite on an ios or add watermark free on android phones.
Do Google Plus. Even if it doesn’t get you loads of traffic it should help your SEO.
If you want to make your blog images better try using Canva. I’ve been singing Canva’s praises for a bit now and have written about using it to make your blog images more pinnable if you want to check it out!
Paul Armstrong from Digital Orange Consulting talked about Twitter being like a waterfall and how many of your tweets will go unseen by your followers. His recommendation was that if get more than 4 RTs then tweet the same post again later.
Helen from KiddyCharts spoke about how she discovered that selling products from her site wasn’t the biggest source of income for her, a big surprise for me as I presumed it would be! When you’re looking to earn money through blogging think about it in a holistic way, Helen also earns money from sponsored posts, adverts and work that she’d gained from another company through her blogging at KiddyCharts.
Add Hello Bar to your site to make an easy call to action. I’m trialling this at the moment, what do you think? You can always try it out and like Craft on Sea to see how it works!!
Google Analytics are your best friend. If you want realistic information on how much traffic your blog gets then you need to use Google Analytics rather than WordPresss or Blogger stats which can be hugely out as they include spam and bots. Google Analytics also lets you look at your most popular posts which is a great way to help you plan what to write about.
What’s the most useful tip you’ve heard at a blog conference? Please share it below!
Louisa
Great tips. I love your hello bar. I’ve just installed one for my site but it doesn’t seem to work with my theme 🙁 Hopefully I can get it sorted, it looks like a great way to drive traffic.
Paul Armstrong
Thanks for the plug! Glad you enjoyed it!
Prezi is available @ bit.ly/BMLSM14
Kate Williams
Fabulous! And thank you for commenting as I didn’t know your site so I’ll go and link it in now!
Penny A Residence
I am still giggling at our photo Kate, it was lovely to bump into you, and thanks for the mention. Will tweet you as I may do a post on the dos and don’ts of posing for brand shots at a blogging conference 😉 We were the dos, but oh my I did some awful ones too!
Kate Williams
You are most welcome, I thought you were brilliant!
Nell@PigeonPairandMe.com
Great set of tips here! I’m going to look into putting on a hello bar – seems like a useful tool. And I need to update my Google Analytics so it’s looking at my own domain, rather than the blogger address I had over a year ago!
Kate Williams
You need analytics, it’s made such a difference to what I blog!
Carin
Great tips! I seem to have completely missed you 🙁
My best tip came from the Pinterest session. There’s been a lot of hype lately about using hashtags on Pinterest and a lot of marketing “gurus” say to use them, but the woman from Pinterest says they do not work- use descriptive, colourful language instead. I think she said the ideal was around 200 character but I could be getting mixed up with other session.
Helen Neale (@KiddyCharts)
Thanks so much for mentioning me, and I am glad you took some great tips away from the conference. It seemed to be helpful to many, just wish I could have met so many more people!
Jennifer Skogen
Thank you so much for this post, I love it! I just started blogging and am trying to get the hang of things! I’d love to collaborate with you and learn more about what you’v built, your blog is so cute!
Jennifer
theeastsidemom.com
@theeastsidemom on twitter
Kate Williams
That’s very kind of you to say! My cute blog is all down to the talents of the lovely Annie Spratt, she is a blog design goddess!
Melissa Hopper
I will be looking into the hello bar!
Kate Williams
I love it 😀
emma cavill
Thanks for sharing these Kate – i’m off to investigate your ‘hello bar’ right now! 🙂