Come across the catwalk and "check in" at the CFLBlogCon registration table, where you'll not only get your Swag Bag but also have your chance to pose for the paparazzi and get some Social Media Photos by our official photographer MacBeth Photography!
Relax, network with other bloggers and recharge your technology in the Ford Recharge Lounge. Power strips will be available to recharge your smart phones, tablets, laptops and anything else. Bring your own charging cables. Here you can also relax with goodies provided by Parkesdale Farm Market, drinks provided by Nawgan, and heavenly chair massages provided by Motherlove Massage.
Welcome to CFLBlogCon 2012! We're so excited about speaker Lou Mongello sharing his knowledge with us... all in the incredible setting of the Cinedome!
Learn the basics to online advertising and how you can begin to make money through advertising on your blog. Matt Sokoloff will walk through the options you have when it comes to making money from ads including how to go about selling ads yourself and using a local media network to sell the ads.
Want to learn how to better promote yourself and your blog? The first step is to create a Media Kit to help brands, companies and other bloggers understand the value of your blog. Not sure where to start? During this session we'll talk about what is important to include in your Media Kit, how to include it, and how to use your Media Kit to promote your blog. You don't want to miss this session!
Join Jill as she uses her own small business social strategies to teach you some important best practices for creating a social media strategy. She'll help you develop a plan that engages your fans, promotes your brand, and enables success across the board. By finding the right balance of use on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter. Pinterest, and others, you can create a powerful social media presence that will continue to benefit your brand. Discuss how to create a strategy tailored to your own personal needs, how to implement the strategy and how to boost your fan engagement to the next level. Rumor is, there will be free cupcakes too!
Discovery the best way to create effective, interesting video for your blog. Scott Kinmartin knows a thing or two about going viral!
Three women, five children, two full-time jobs outside of the house and one stay-at-home superfoodiemom.
How does it work? How do they balance their families, their jobs and their households with an all consuming “part-time” hobby like a blog? And why would they even be crazy enough to want to?
Christine Pittman, Michelle Wright and Jackie Carlin share their secrets for fitting blogging into their busy, active lives, while still keeping their sanity (and their children clothed and fed).
Facebook can be a gold mine for referrals to your blog. Everybody wants more fans, but how do you create an engaging Facebook contest or promotion that will go viral but also doesn't break Zuck's rules? Find out what you can and can't do on Facebook, and tools that can help.
You've seen the headlines, from privacy policies to terms of use to intellectual property to defamation, the advent of social media has created a lot of legal quandaries for bloggers, social network operators and users. In this session, you will learn best practices for navigating the fast moving world of the internet and social media while avoiding potential legal challenges.
We'll discuss the three core SEO principals Google and other search engines are basing search engine rankings on and how you can help grow your organic SEO presence.
Turn your successful blog entries into published magazine articles--from query letter through the editing process and on to the glossy page. A lot of blog writers think they can link a query email to their blog and... voila... be asked to contribute to a magazine issue. Alas, it's not so simple. The blog and magazine article are two different entities with different rules and methods for publication success. Learn what it takes to be an entrepreneur in a media-focused field. We'll let you know what steps to take to avoid pitfalls, and provide resources and tools to get you motivated (and help you stay that way!).
Blogging and involvement in social media is an experience that involves all of you. Your mind, body and spirit requires attention to allow your authentic gifts to shine. Using yoga's guide for interacting with others, the yamas (the first limb of yoga), this workshop will introduce postures that support healthy wrists, backs and shoulders; and breathing practices to clear your mind and energize your spirit. We will have a short yoga practice and reflective activity to fuel your creative process. Your timeline and readers will thank you!
Participants should arrive prepared to do light stretching and movement. Previous blogging or yoga experience is NOT necessary: simply bring a notebook, an open mind and a willing body.
What's more important: the number of fans you have or the engagement you have with them? Sharing over six years of experience measuring social media, Mark Krupinski explains how to choose the right metrics along with how make sense of them when you have them.
Laura Tellado, 25, launched her first blog, Holdin’ Out for a Hero, in August 2009, as a platform for raising public awareness of Spina Bifida, the congenital condition of the spine she was born with. Laura’s blog was born after writing many letters to celebrities and public figures, asking them to “adopt” spina bifida as their cause.
In this session, you will hear the story of a girl who began blogging as a college student, and who found her unique voice amidst all her fellow female bloggers, and who learned to let go of the fear of not being identified with. Many of her “peers” are mommy bloggers, and she is not a mommy.
Yet, she found a fantastic support system among many “special needs moms” and families, and has positioned herself as a bilingual resource for these families that have become “part of her village.”
Plagiarism is on the rise. Learn how to prevent, find, and report the scallywags who blog with your words.
Discover the techniques Rachelle has used to develop a following of 40,000+ followers on Twitter and how to plan and measure the results for successful chats and hashtag campaigns.
This session will focus on how blogging can build credibility and increase the visibility of your business or brand. If you're in business, then you need a blog!
A variety of free or cheap web 2.0 and multimedia tools are available for bloggers to enhance their blog with videos, audio, and graphics without spending thousands of dollars. Want to make your content stand out from the crowd? What to develop content that will help you get more hits? Don't miss this session with tips and tricks to engage, excite, and educate your audience.
Whether you're a newer blogger or a seasoned one, working with brands or even finding the right contacts can be overwhelming. This session will share techniques on how to find the right contacts, how to network with brands on social media sites and how to work with brands. My techniques and strategies will apply to all different types of bloggers!
Photography is a critical component to your blog in helping to tell any story. In this presentation, you’ll discover why using photos are important, how to optimize your site to showcase your photos, discovering your unique style, familiarizing with your photography elements such as lighting, composition, editing, learning how to build engagement with your readers through photography and creative photography apps that will make your posts sparkle!
A panel of experts share different avenues to explore when monetizing your blog, from sponsored posts and tweets to packaging your blog for sale.
Learn from Mark's journey in creating a website that both serves and is powered by the community -- from building a strong audience that comes back day after day to making tough decisions about what to post and when. Hear his tips for connecting with volunteers, events and organizations, staying in the loop with what's really happening in the Central Florida community and how he defines and stays true to a niche that gets more busy every day!
Come hear how J created a website with over a million unique visitors and six-figure revenue in just over two years, and why Facebook was crucial to her success! In this session we will discuss 6 ways to use Facebook to improve your blog, including increasing traffic and monetizing.
Brands across the nation, both directly or through their PR agencies, are creating opportunities to collaborate with bloggers for advertisement, marketing, social media promotions, and building brand awareness. Collaborations and partnerships between brands and bloggers is a relatively new concept and clear expectations are needed to ‘play in the sandbox’ together. This session is intended to share proven methods and tips on how brands and bloggers can effectively collaborate and partner together for a mutually beneficial relationship.
Explore ways to make your blog not simply a great read but conversational, actionable and skyrocket your street cred. (Don't miss learning from local legend Justice Mitchell!)
A favorite session from last year, network and brainstorm with other "like" bloggers. We will break out into blogging niche: food bloggers, fitbloggers, mommy (and dad) bloggers, business bloggers, ed bloggers, etc. Once in your group, a facilitator will lead a group discussion of common obstacles and current environment for your particular niche. (Some niches will even have a short featured speaker! Stay tuned!)
Come celebrate the day at the Yelp! After Party where you can mix and mingle while enjoying food and drink from local vendors.
