Last week saw the first Tots100 BlogCamp event in London, hosted jointly with TalkTalk at their Customer Experience Centre.
We wanted BlogCamp to be a free and informal event where bloggers could chat, eat cake and learn a few things about blogging – and that’s exactly what happened!
We brought together 70 bloggers with some amazing speakers and special guests for a day of chatting, learning and, yes, there was plenty of cake!
So what did you miss?
Firstly, Muirrean from Bangs and a Bun shared what she has learned from her own blogging journey. For bloggers hoping to emulate the success of Bangs and a Bun, Muirrean’s top tip is to make a blog that’s really yours – because readers will find it far easier to connect with a blog that has a real personality and identity.
So, use photos of yourself on your blog, write as you would talk, consider using your own favourite words and catchphrases, and crucially – don’t be afraid to voice your opinions. People might agree, they might disagree, but at least they’ll be reading!
Next up, Sian from Domestic Sluttery talked about how you can create a community around a blog. Sian’s advice to new bloggers is always to respond to comments, even if someone just says ‘great blog’. Don’t moderate comments because negative comments can be just as important as positive ones – in helping you to improve your content, but also spurring your fans to leap to your defence!
Matt from TalkTalk then took to the stage to share some tips on keeping kids safe online, discussing TalkTalk’s new Homesafe service which helps protect young people using the Internet in your home.
After lunch, Daffyd from design-agency Cite shared some tips on blog design, providing feedback on delegates’ own blogs (kudos to our brave volunteers!). Daffyd provided some good rules for blog design including advice on fonts, colours, images and colour schemes. Daffyd’s top tip – put your most important information in the left-hand sidebar as that’s where people look most often!
Rounding off the day was a brilliant presentation on SEO from Lee Smallwood. In less than 60 minutes, Lee managed to demystify headers, tags, short-tail and long-tail keywords – no easy feat! Lee has kindly shared the slides he used at the event with us, so if you want SEO tips for bloggers, it’s a great place to start.
Other highlights of the day were the awesome cupcakes provided by the lovely people at Sweet Things, as well as a selection of new ice cream flavours from Ben and Jerry’s, which went down a storm on a sunny afternoon!
We are now taking registrations for BlogCamp Manchester, on June 17th, which is also being hosted in association with TalkTalk. We have a few places left, so do please leave a comment if you’d like to join us, and we’ll send you a registration code.
We’d like to thank all of the bloggers who joined us at BlogCamp London, all of our wonderful speakers who gave their time and advice so generously, and to everyone at TalkTalk for helping us create such a wonderful event. We have included some links below to bloggers’ posts about BlogCamp, if you have written a post and it isn’t listed here, please feel free to share it by entering the URL in the box below.
Thanks so much for the day and for linking to my post. Going off to read everybody else’s now!
Thanks so much for linking to the post. Hope you’re planning #Blogcamp Mark 2 – can’t wait if there is a follow up! xx
An honour to be part of such a great event and wonderful write-up. Enjoyed meeting so many passionate bloggers.
Oh and don’t forget, there are pics up on the BlogCamp registration site – can you spot yourself BlogCampers?