This weekend saw our latest BlogCamp event in Manchester, attended by around 100 bloggers including our youngest ever delegate – Flea, from Flea Reads (and my daughter).
The day kicked off with a two-part session from Cathy James of NurtureStore, who provided some tips and advice on making the most of Facebook and Pinterest to boost your blog audience.
While Twitter is a great way to talk to other bloggers, if you want lots of non-bloggers reading your site, Cathy says Facebook is the way to go. Her top tip? Manually share posts on Facebook and don’t rely on the picture selected by the ‘image preview’ on Facebook – instead upload your own, larger photo.
Cathy was followed by the brilliant Ruth from Geek Mummy, with some practical tips on video blogging. Ruth advises nervous bloggers to start with audio blogs using sites such as Audioboo, but if you are using a camera, a little preparation goes a long way – making sure the laundry isn’t on display and that your hair looks good will go a long way to making you more confident.
Ruth also shared her recommendations for editing video footage on whatever device you have to hand – it’s possible to shoot, edit and share video directly from an iPad and even a smartphoneif you know how!
Next up, Tom and Becky from AR-Blog shared some fantastic ideas to improve photography. Their presentation covered everything from exposure to white balance and composition.
One of our favourite top tips from this session is to use the ‘A’ or ‘AV’ setting on your camera in low light. Turn the dial until the number on the back is as low as possible. Result? Better pictures.
You can also get great photos in low light by half-pressing down the button while pointing at something very dark and fixing the exposure, then moving the camera and pressing the button all the way down. Doing the reverse of this (fixing the exposure while looking at something very light) will create a great silhouette effect.
One of the things we often hear at BlogCamp is that implementing all the tips we share takes a LOT of time and hard work. So our final session of the day involved Charlotte, Tina, Ruth, Claire and Cathy sharing their top tips on how they fit everything in, and find time to have a life and a blog.
Our panel had some fantastic tips including using a whole host of apps and plug-ins to automate common tasks, and bring order to an unruly inbox. Most of all though, our bloggers say prioritise what you love and what works for you – not every blogger needs to use every website and social network. Remember to love your blog, and only do what you love – the rest can safely be ignored.
Thanks to all of our speakers for another wonderful event, and to all the bloggers who came along and made the day such fun. And a very special thanks to the girls from Frank PR who came along to talk about Growing up Milk and the world of PR generally. It’s only thanks to our sponsors that we’re able to run these events and keep them free of charge, so a BIG thanks to Cow & Gate.
If you’ve written a post about BlogCamp we’d love for you to share a link below. And don’t forget to head over to our Facebook page to check out the photos and tag bloggers you recognise.
We’ve loved running BlogCamp events for the past two years, but we think it’s time to make some changes to the way we run events – keep your eyes peeled for announcements about our 2013 events and how you can get involved!
About Sally
Sally is founder of the Tots100, and hopes one day to become an Evil Overlord and take over the world. In the meantime her blog, Who's the Mummy, is all about life as a single Mum to seven-year-old Flea.
It was a fantastic day. I have learned so much! Thank you for running it!