So when my wife asked me three years ago if I wanted to start ‘Vlogging’ I thought she had been watching too much Fifty Shades and had to make her explain what the hell it was. I only just got my head around why people blog, let alone film themselves for other random folk to watch. My wife had the idea of making a daily video of what we got up to…
I know many bloggers have delved into the art of vlogging at some point since starting their blogs. Many of whom have given up at the first hurdle, some have managed to mix the two merrily and others have given up the written blogs completely in favour of the vlog life.
Bex Spiller & Codie Wright
Bex and Codie run Blogger to Boss, a course which aims to take bloggers and help them become freelance writers, using the skills they already have from their blogs. This isn’t about how to get sponsored posts, or how to monitise your blogs, it’s about how to make an actual career from your writing, whether you want to take it full-time and quit the 9-5, or just as a side hustle for some extra money.
This session is an interactive workshop, looking at the basics of freelance writing, with Codie talking from the point of view of someone who has juggled writing with studying, a full-time job and now a baby, and Bex who has grown her freelance writing career to now run Gee Gee Media, an international content agency, and her unique perspective as a client.
The session will cover
– Goal setting and manifestation
– Creating a successful ‘work with me’ page
– Where to find work
– How to pitch.
Grace Hall
How to make ‘Tasty’ style overhead videos for recipes, crafts and other tutorials. In this session you’ll learn how to make videos right in your home with minimal basic equipment. We’ll talk through lighting, camera angles, planning your shoot, styling and props, and discuss how to repurpose the same basic footage and photography for multiple uses across different social media channels.
Ellie Bates
We know what our readers want, but do we know what the brands we work with want too? Find out how your blog posts are used by clients and how to keep the content inline with what they need, and also what your readers want.
Emma Conway
In this session Emma will chat how she has succeeded in the tough online world whilst remaining true to herself. She will offer tips on how to be yourself online whilst engaging your audience, how to stop comparing yourself to others and how she deals with the more negative aspects of social media.
Tim Nash
Tim has seen a lot of hacked sites, he also helps thousands of people keep the bad guys our of their sites. In this talk he will look at simple, practical tips to improve your site’s security. Each on their own might not be the silver bullet, but they all add up. Tim will guide you through changes anyone of any ability level can implement to improve their site’s security.
Emma Vanstone & Maggy Woodley
Aby Moore
How to connect with your audience for more views, leads and sales through live broadcasts
We all want more views of our blog posts, more sales of our products, more people in our audience, more affiliate commission – the list goes on! Most people are not utilising one of the best tools to make this happen – Live broadcasting. This session will explain how live broadcasting can help your business AND we will be getting super practical too. I’ll be giving you a template to use in your own ‘lives’ and we will be going live in the session (with willing volunteers!).
Sara-Jayne Jones
Instead of speaking about editing, Sara-Jayne will be live editing in Photoshop, showing that it doesn’t need to be scary and that a few minutes here and there can make the world of difference to your blog and Instagram photography.
Sara-Jayne’s session will encourage you to follow your heart with your photography instead of following the crowd. If you’ve never used Photoshop before, don’t panic! She will go through the basics of Adobe Raw and into Photoshop, and show what you can do… and you can do quite a bit.
Jessica Sheppard
Building brand relationships – from finding the right brands to bolster your blog, making contact with the right person and how to create lasting relationships, this session will cover everything to build relationships with PRs and brands.
Mel Knibb
Do you find it tedious to carry a ‘big’ camera with you all the time?
Wonder how some people manage to get great photos on their phones?
This session will be full of practical tips and tricks you can implement straight away.
Cora Harrison
Rachel Palmer
Rachel has been blogging since 2011 and has taken her readers on a journey with extreme highs and lows. From winning multiple awards and featuring on the telly, to dealing with infertility, a house fire and depression.
Having turned the negatives into positives and finally finding herself en route to her dream life, Rachel’s session will teach about the power of positivity, the law of attraction and the magic of vision boards.
Come to this session to work out what you really want from blogging and from life and create the vision board of your dreams.
Warning – there will be glue and sparkly things and people becoming even more amazing than they were before.
Kayleigh Thorpe
There are plenty of ways to create a blog. Perhaps you’ve been using Blogger, or a pagebuilder like Squarespace. If you’re looking at a move to WordPress or have recently made the upgrade, in this talk and live demonstration Kayleigh will deal with the basics of the WordPress dashboard and how to get your site up and running. She’ll also look at ways to improve your site’s appearance and functionality with an overview of themes and plugins before addressing SEO and contact forms.
Karin Joyce
Have you lost your sparkle? Is the weight of parenting causing you to feel overwhelmed, anxious and stressed out? Are you the Shouty Mummy you swore you would never become?
It’s time to start looking at the world in a different way! Learn how to celebrate the good in every day by starting your own Gratitude Practice and creating strategies to cope with the daily strains and stresses of your parenting life. You will leave this workshop with renewed energy, more sparkle and a smile on your face!
Alex Wing
Cerys Parker
Bring your tablet or laptop to this session and get ready to create a plan for your site to rock the Christmas search traffic.
Using free tools you will go away with a plan for a minimum of 12 posts that Google will love in this hands on session and will make you money!
To make the most of it you will need to have at least 3 months of blogging on your site and your site set up in Google Search Console.
If you haven’t set up Search Console then Cerys has put together an easy to follow free course with video instructions on how to do it here -> https://theblogsurgery.teachable.com/p/site-maps-and-search-console
