My first blogging event!

On Friday I completed another of the ambitions on my 30 before 30 list… to go to a blog event! I went to the Tots100 Blog Summit in Bristol. I was very excited about the prospect of meeting some of the bloggers I read and tweet on a regular basis and picking up some tips on how to improve my blog.

On the way there I met the lovely Sarah who blogs at Mum of Three World who travelled down with me, and helped me panic when we couldn’t find Mummy Glitzer, who we were supposed to pick up on the way! After chatting up a police man, sending a few “HELP” tweets and driving aimlessly round Bristol with a dodgy GPS map, we eventually found her! Needless to say, we missed coffee and arrived at MShed embarrassingly late!

We listened to Christine from Thinly Spread talking about bloggers working with charities and I picked up some great tips for myself, as you all know I write a lot about Cancer, Pre-Eclampsia, First Aid and Fairtrade. I got to chat to Christine in the coffee break too and was chuffed to hear she actually knew who I was! As a relatively new blogger (under a year) you always assume that the more established bloggers don’t read your stuff, and it always comes as a pleasant surprise when they actually want to chat, AND know who you are! Another blogger I was desperate to meet (for her sheer awesomeness), also gave a talk on working with Charities after she recently flew to Ghana for Comic Relief! This was Mammasaurus – this LEGEND writes a shocking TWENTY FIVE blogs (assuming I’ve counted right… she has over 40 domains)! All that WHILST bringing up her EIGHT children! I struggle to find the time for one blog, with three children, so I think a lot of us newbies, can learn a lot from her. Feeling slightly shy and intimidated, Sarah and I went and introduced ourselves and found her to be as awesome in real life, as she is on her blog!

We met FAR too many bloggers to mention on here, including the Tots100 and MAD Blog Awards Founder Sally Whittle, who also intimidates me with her wealth of knowledge and experience in the blogosphere. Sally also turned out to be lovely in real life and not at all scary! Sally blogs at Whos The Mummy.

We also listened to Tom from Fresh Egg talk about SEO, which I’m pleased I managed to keep up with and understand. He explained Google algorithms, PageRank and other technical tip bits that I never knew existed! I think I need to make more use of my G+ page too and I am hoping to go for Google Authorship when I can find the time.

Cathy from Nurture Store talked about Facebook algorithms, increasing interaction from readers and maximising traffic to your blog from Facebook. She also told us about how to use Pinterest more effectively, which I am guilty of NOT doing! I am going to make much more use of Pinterest too.

Tom and Becky from Arblog did a fantastic demonstration and talk about improving blog photography. It was thanks to Becky’s post about Macro photography a few weeks ago, that I took some stunning close-ups of the girls. The day after blog summit, I stopped my car to photograph a rainbow and took the time to experiment with different effects and different light angles. I will post these for you to see sometime.

I had a fab time at Blog Summit and am really looking forward to my next blog event!