Blog Camp London May 2011 - loved it

New Mum Online went out without baby...

I went to #blogcamp yesterday, and I kept my mind free of expectations as I did not want to be disappointed.  Was easy to do so as I had so much else on my mind (is that bad grammar?).  I had gone home with something from work, that I needed to drop in in the morning, so had a visit to work before blogcamp, which added to the stress of the morning.   Aaron woke at the exact moment I did not expect, AND did a poo when we were due to leave the house.  I stayed to change him, which meant I missed my train.  Anyhow I managed to drop him off, go to work, and get to blogcamp and it was easy to find (near Oxford Circus).
On arrival the venue was very impressive.... Talk Talk’s Customer Experience Centre

Dash to the loo to put on makeup (as no time at home) and it was limited to blusher, eye liner, mascara and lipstick as I didn’t have the liquid foundation with me - doh!

Then I start mingling and bump into my mate Jenny who writes about her baby boy here: Baby Edward

Then I bump into 2 of my MomenTum possy (Working London Mummy and PR Mummy) which disarmingly was as a result of them recognising me (the pitfalls of posting your pic online)... I LOVED meeting them and chatting to them, but it is unnerving when people know you, before you know them - better get used to it as the same thing will no doubt happen at Cybermummy.

Well the content of the day was SUPERB, and the guest speakers were CHARACTERS.......

I want to write a comprehensive list of the content covered but Joanne has already done so....... but I’ll do my own anyway without reading hers again, so that I have memories in my words..... and maybe I will remember something that she didn’t which adds further to the world wide web library of resources from the day :-)


If you want to see the agenda with an overview of the day you can click through to it here.


The speakers were:
Muireean from Bangs and a Bun   @BangsandaBun
Sian from Domestic Sluttery
Matt from Talk Talk
Dafydd Prichard from Cite @lliwedd.  See his presentation here.
Lee Smallwood delivered Blogging and Online Visibility  @LeeSmallwood.  Presentation.


So what did I learn?
Lots and lots and lots......... what a great day!

So.... speaker one, was.... eye catching to say the very least.... long hair, long legs, long toned arms, pink dress, designer tights, HIGH heels, and an attitude that went with the look.  She was one hell of a speaker and her blog doesn't disappoint either! You'll have to read to the end to get a link to a photo of how she looked on the day :-)


Muireean... What did she say:

• Write how you talk (the posts where I do this are the ones that are always most successful - she is so right on that one).
• Inject YOU.
• She got 16,000 hits on this post - by 6 a.m. she had 12 comments.  By 9 a.m. she was hiding under her desk.  PRs were saying "we're not all like this". It started a wider discussion...
• A Madonna post landed her in trouble with ardent Madonna fans who sent her hate mail - do not mess with them anyone - let a lesson be learned.
• She advocates the use of Twitter for your blog and Wordpress.  
• She recommends posting at 5 a.m. UK time.

Sian ... What did she say:

• They are 2 years old at Domestic Sluttery and there are 15 of them there.
• They reply to every comment they receive.
• Approx 150,000 page views a month.  11,000 followers on Twitter.
• She said regular conversation is fantastic but shutting up is great as well (how true).
• The community is the most interesting part of having a blog.

Matt ... What did he say:

• This was all about keeping the internet safe for your children.
• He talked about Home Safe which is Talk Talk's revolutionary new product. 
• It cleans the internet BEFORE it enters the house.  Would you believe they are the first company to do so, and they have spent £20 million developing it.
• 2 of us complained that as Talk Talk customers we were disappointed not to have heard about it but he said it was only launched on Monday in the press and they have emailed 100,000 customers and now we are 100,002 :-)
• Doesn't exist anywhere in the World (hey UK are back to being pioneering on something)!
• You can block file sharing (and do lots of things in the settings) which is good if you think someone is sharing your wireless router.
• As it blocks bad stuff from entering the internet in your HOME you still need security on your laptop if you are out and about.
• It is great for protecting children from harmful sites, and even has settings where you can limit where they go during "homework" time - when trialled even the teenagers liked this as they felt it helped them concentrate without being distracted by social media.

Dafydd ... What did he say:

• Work to the restrictions of the platform you are using
• Self hosted Wordpress is the easiest to manipulate.
• Design should work on a 1024 px screen.
• We read online in an F pattern (across the top and then down the left side).
• When using photos give them a credit and don't use commercially but with AP and Getty don't even do this unless you wanna have your ass sued! Someone in the audience's Dad is being sued for £2,000 just for a leaf that his web designer put on his site and they won't take responsibility.
• Don't show whole posts.  Only show the first few opening lines and let it say "read more" where the reader clicks through.
• The benefits of this are that if they scroll through they get a better overview of the blog.
• But more importantly, if one of the posts has, for example, 12 photos, they won't be on the page, meaning the page can open faster.   Someone viewing it on a mobile will experience a delay for every extra megabyte that has to download on the opening page...... true say!
• I put my hand up and asked if I now need to move my sidebar to the left due to the F nature of how people read.  I said surely people would go where the stuff is, just like you wouldn't go to an empty shelf in the fridge.... :-) He agreed..... I think :-0

Lee ... What did he say:

• Blogs are UGC which is user generated content, and the brands don't like us as we can get things OUT THERE quicker than them due to their bureaucracy.... but we are small and they are large, so we don't have the leverage that they do.
• Google loves Typepad apparently, swallows it up!
• Backlinks are still important but not nearly as much so.
• As a result of this, some blog houses are closing down.
• When blogging use the right words.  Parenting on its own won't generate great search results and you are then competing with millions to be heard.
• Your H1 tag (i.e. the title) should contain significant words and your post should contain them too.
• Use common sense and don't spam the content.
• Nowadays being on the 1st page of search results on Google is not enough.  You need to be mentioned in the top 3.  And if you are ranked #1 there is a 43-67% chance you will get a click through.
• Below position 3 on Google forget it.
• Nowadays a 6 keyword phrase being searched in Google is common, so bear in mind what you want to be found by.  People are no longer searching for "baby" or "parenting" as we have evolved as humans in line with the evolution of the world wide web.
• Twitter is powerful.  If you write an article that is starting to trend on Twitter you could end up with a rank 1 for a search result.
• If you have a lot of readers your blog titles can be cryptic, but if not, the keyword phrase should be in the title.
• People are now searching for photos and videos, so make sure you have named them in the filename before you upload them - do the opposite if they are baby photos that you do not want to be found. Hyphens are fine in filenames.
• When tweeting a link to a post, CAPITALISE each letter. I'll practice with the Tweet of this post.  He also said we should not finish the sentence.  So for this I could tweet: I Really Enjoyed Blogcamp Because...
•  We should all get the Tweetmeme plug in on our blogs.  Allows visitors to retweet your content.  All links from there are "do follow".
• He has used a Tweetmeme which lead to a ranking on Google within 37 minutes.
• After a site visit, this is the next level of engagement.
• Install it, it is very powerful and very new.
• If you get 10 people to do a guest post on your site it means you can qualify to apply to Google News.  Submit your site to say you want to be a news site.

Okay I am all blogged out.  I might come back and edit this post if I think of anything else.

A huge thank you to Sally Whittle, who I now know started Tots 100 and Blogger'ed and the MAD awards and organised Blog Camp. That's one hell of a lady..... triggers rapturous round of applause.

She organised the day and sourced the amazing sponsors - Talk Talk.

And we enjoyed the talk talk :-)

I'll leave you with a picture of me and Jenny (my Mum Tum is firmly on display).

Baby Edward's Mum on the left and me New Mum Online.

and another, of I heart Motherhood and Cambridge Mummy:
Cambridge Mummy was there to represent the Baby Show, and she did so very well :-)
And Cambridge Mummy is the lady who took this pic of Bangs and a Bun (click here)

Mrs Bump Watch and Mrs Baby Show

This is Cambridge Mummy again, this time with Domestic Goddesque:

I also "papped" I heart Motherhood (and her bump) with Super Amazing Mum:

Super Amazing Mum and I Heart Motherhood

Liska over and out
xxx

(Hope I haven't forgotten anything)
I'll come back and mention other people I met...... later

Stop lurking, start commenting..... 24 people read so far and not a single comment......