[Guest Post by the awesome Rachel from Redcliffe Style]
Just over a week ago I attended Problogger Event 2013 on the Gold Coast. This is Australia’s biggest blogging conference, with over 450 bloggers and 31 seminars spread over 2 days. There were amazing Australian and international speakers. The rooms were buzzing and in between the wealth of knowledge shared, there was plenty of laughter, a few tears and the occasional song.
I have plenty of scribble notes but the top five things I took away from the Problogger Event this year are:
Use Facebook
Amy Porterfield gave a Facebook Master class. Amy is a Social Media Strategist and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. I thought I knew what I was doing on Facebook but what I realized is that I only know about 10% of it.
Target your ads towards people that ‘like’ your competitors ie: If you are a bedding company, target your ads towards ‘people that like Captain Snooze’ or ‘people that like Sleepy’s’.
Take advantage of the news feed by using images in your status updates. People love great images and are more likely to stop, look at them and like or share it. Keep your characters less than 80 characters and post 2-3 times at day.
DIY PR
It’s so easy to talk up other people and shout their attributes but when it comes to talking about ourselves, we usually get shy and mumble something unintelligible. So you need to work out what you want to be known for. Write a bio in the first person stating clearly who you are and what you do. People want to deal with experts, so figure out what you want to be know for,establish yourself as an expert and own it!
Create an eBook
This is a great marketing tool. Creating an eBook can be as simple as using your top ten blog posts or a presentation you wrote, pasting it into Word, marking it with your brand and turning it into a PDF. Ta-dah…now you have an eBook! You can then use the book to giveaway on your Facebook page to increase likers, on your blog in exchange for reader’s email addresses or to sell at speaking events.
Don’t be stingy with your knowledge
Share your intellectual property with everyone. People love how-tos and tutorials, so start writing articles, eBooks, create Podcasts and Youtube videos sharing your knowledge. This establishes you as an expert, you look generous plus you increase your readership. Don’t be worried you are teaching people how to do your job, usually they’ll read or watch and decided they don’t have the time or skill and would rather you do it anyway.
Don’t play the comparison game
Do what you love and don’t compare yourself to others. Every blog is unique and every blog journey is unique.
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This conference is a must for bloggers, it doesn’t matter if you are a hobby blogger, a business blogger or a hope-to-be-a-blogger-one-day blogger. It’s not too late to buy a virtual pass to hear all the seminars.
About Rachel
In October 2011, Rachel Wernicke started RedcliffeStyle.com as a place to write about and photograph the things she enjoyed. RedcliffeStyle.com is a light-hearted blog about finding style in the suburbs. Rachel also writes about beauty, life, reviews and with a few blogging tips thrown in.
Rachel is an avid social media user and can be found just about everywhere but hit her up on Facebook and go from there.