February 2011

Conference takeaways

by Angel Amy on February 22, 2011

With Blissdom behind us, the Blogging Angels are discussing conference take-aways: what do you hope to get out of a conference, and just how does a blogger decide which conferences to go to? Amy got some very solid takeaways from Blissdom and has already started making changes to her blog. But do all conferences provide that kind of concrete, take-action info, and should they? Or is the social aspect just as important?

This week three of the Angels had Golden Halos to give out, and one had Devil Horns:

Amy gave her Golden Halo to Busy Dad Blog’s excellent post about growing up different.

Nancy gave horns (boo!) to auto DMs on twitter.

Rebecca gave her Golden Halo to her favorite dad blog, Blirred Reality.

And Heidi gave her Halo to C. Mom’s post about what it means to have a gifted child.

Here’s what else we talked about this week:

Amy made several changes to her blog because of the SEO workshop at Blissdom (put on by Shelly Kramer, Ang England and Melanie Nelson), but changed one of them back already.

Heidi thought twice about tagging the photo in this post “red dress” since she didn’t want “that” kind of traffic.

Rebecca’s site gets a lot of traffic for a picture tagged “Mona Lisa cat.” Weird.

Nancy gets crazy traffic from pictures of David Hasselhoff and Elmo.

Rebecca has a love/hate relationship with the WordPress Popular Posts plugin.

Rebecca talked about how someone figured out how to get a random story to the top of the New York Times’ most emailed articles list.

Once again, we talk about the usefulness – or not – of the BlogHer conference.

Many people we know are skipping the next BlogHer conference in favor of Mom 2.0 instead.

We discuss how a great list of speakers can convince us to attend a conference, but a speaker we don’t like can be a complete turn-off for the conference as a whole, like with She-Con.

And we were all shocked by the huge range of fees we heard about during previous guest Kim Moldofsky‘s panel about how much bloggers make, based on a survey she did.

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The post where we talk about more than one title can say

by Angel Amy on February 10, 2011

This week The Blogging Angels talk about…well, a lot.

We start off talking Blissdom takeaways: what did we learn in Nashville, anyway? And end up talking about this week’s big AOL/Huffington Post takeover and the mounds of cash that must now be piled on top of Arianna Huffington’s desk. In between, we talk hits versus views, versus uniques (hint: nobody who’s anybody uses hits anymore); building a community profile (you’ll have to listen to understand what Heidi means by that), when guest posting for nothing is really worth something, Rebecca’s just about viral post on education and how it got that way (hint: it starts with a T and ends with an R), and we even manage to get a reference or two to Justin Bieber in there.

I told you we talked about a lot.

Here are links to some of the stuff we covered:

Angel Rebecca’s article – reprinted in the Washington Post (Yay Rebecca!).

UnMarketing guru Scott Stratten – and the fact that he left a comment on Nancy’s post.

Cecily K’s blog, and how her… unsavory… language hasn’t stopped her from being a super-powerful blogger.

Compete, Alexa and Google Analytics, and why they do and don’t matter to advertisers and sponsors.

Diane Ravitch, education guru with a BIG twitter reach.

And there’s no link for this one — just had to put it in – my favorite quote from Angel Amy on shameless networking: “If you don’t leverage your real life friends, what do you have them for?”

We also gave out Golden Halos:

Angel Amy gave hers to Should I Work for Free, a website that offers a funny – but surprisingly useful – flowchart to help you determine… well, you can guess that part.

Angel Rebecca gives her Golden Halo to AVC.com, venture capitalist Fred Wilson‘s intelligent, well written blog about… well, just about anything tech that crosses his mind.

Angel Heidi - who may be the only one of us who really does have wings – gave a Golden Halo to CatchaFire.org, a non-profit that asks you to devote time and skill rather than money to help a variety of causes.

Angel Nancy (that’s me!) gave a Golden Halo to 3moms3photos.com, a website that’s exactly what the title says: three moms takin’ photos. Simple, beautiful.

Lastly: we want to hear from you! Come on over to our Facebook page, and join the conversation. Or start one. Or whatever. You comment, we’ll respond. You ask, we’ll answer (as long as it’s not math. I hate math). Come on! We can’t be the only ones with something to say!

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From Blissdom, with love – and special guest Kim Moldofsky

by Angel Amy on February 2, 2011

The Blogging Angels – or at least three-quarters of us – were in Nashville, TN last week for the Blissdom Conference, an annual gathering of (mostly) women who blog. With incredibly informative sessions, dynamic speakers, and great sponsors, Blissdom is three days of learning, fun, and inspiration.

The road to Blissdom was not easy, however. After an incredibly bump-free trip to Las Vegas for CES, the weather did not cooperate last week, getting Rebecca and Nancy into Nashville two days late. Heidi wasn’t able to make it due to prior commitments, and we missed her so much! We also missed the Yeti Pro omnidirectional microphone we recorded with at CES. At Blissdom, we were huddled around a microphone from my XBox RockBand game.

We were thrilled, however, to have Kim Moldofsky as our very special guest. Kim blogs at Hormone Colored Days (including the hilarious house-hunting video series Property Sluts) and Mom Impact, which specializes in connecting bloggers with brands. She tweets as @KimMoldofsky.

Some of the things we talked about in this episode:

Kim’s prior speaking credits include Blogalicious, Blissdom, and Type A Mom. She also spoke at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago, and got to hang with Nancy Pelosi at a press conference.

Rebecca wrote a great post about the importance of conferences for women. That post of Rebecca’s definitely influenced Amy’s comment on a post written by DadaRocks.

Mom Impact hosted a Blog World Expo webinar about how to develop a great speaker proposal, and luckily for us it was transcribed!

Kim was sponsored at Blissdom by ConAgra Foods, and Amy was sponsored by Kleenex.

The survey that Kim put on Mom Impact about getting paid is still there – chime in!

Amy was happy to wear an eBay Classifieds t-shirt at BlogHer last summer, and all of the Angels were very enthusiastic about promoting new Windows phones as part of our sponsorship to CES last month.

And if we all agree on one thing, it’s that you should never, ever, tape a sign to your shirt with info about your conference sponsor.

Golden Halos

Amy gave her Golden Halo to the concept of “owning it.” Granted, there’s no website to point to for that concept, so she’s just going to link to Blissdom for really hammering home the point.

Rebecca’s Golden Halo went to Hallmark’s personalized paper plates, with pictures in the middle of the plate uploaded by you.

Nancy’s Golden Halo gets split between Alli Worthington, Barbara Jones, Paula Bruno, and Megan Jordan for creating such an amazing event as Blissdom.

And that’s it for this week! See you next week, when we’re be back in familiar territory – Nancy’s dining room – with our good microphones.

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