Top 10.5 Reasons To Attend BlogPaws

Guest post by Carol Bryant, Social Media & PR Director, FIDO Friendly magazine

1. Location, location, location. Not the physical real estate kind but the location of your blog, how to position it in today’s nanosecond-changing cyberworld, and upon which platform (i.e. WordPress, Blogger, etc.) it should reside.

2. The Art of SEO and other books that must fill your real-life hold-it-in-your-hands kind of collection. After attending the author’s session at BlogPaws Denver, this became a reach-often-for-staple on my bookshelf.

3. Spinning a web that is unique to your nook of the superhighway. Putting a face to the name of comments on your blog, the tweep you help RT and the friendships formed along your blogging journey are worth the price of admission. Serious solidification occurs when a hug replaces a keystroke and a verbal laugh replaces an LOL.

4. Idea train. I am so inspired in every session, in walking amongst comrades in arms, fellow travelers in the animal advocacy and awareness journey. From ferrets to rabbits, cats in costumes and canine couture, if its got a subphylum of its own, you’ll likely find it at BlogPaws.

5. Colons: Did you know a colon after an intro phrase but before a link in a tweet is likely to garner more hits/views/RTs than without a colon? I had no idea either. Until a session at BlogPaws Ohio taught me so.

6. Everything old is new again. There is something revitalizing about being around like-minded “they really get it like I do” kind of people. One tends to depart with a sense of shared sameness when trekking back to the keyboard that brought them to the event in the first place. Being a part of the change comes to life. Disneyland for bloggers kind of feeling.

7. Thinking outside the blog and getting traditional media to notice you (shameless plug). In conjunction with co-presenter Ryan Rice of Houston Dog Blog, I’ll be presenting a seminar on this topic. We are so much more than bloggers; we’re an entity of powerhouses with the power to change and influence: that includes the media.

8. Traffic jams and not the kind likely found on D.C. highways and bi-ways near Tysons Corners. BlogPaws provides the tools necessary to increase the numbers on your blog and social media outlets. Having taken a blog from 222 members to just over 6,000 in slightly over a year, I’ve applied what I’ve learned and then some. Oh and then I also recently launched my own dog blog in addition.

9. Same place at the same time syndrome. When you attend, look around and ask yourself when will you ever be with these same people at the same time in this same location. Savor the moment and grow the relationships you find there. It’s amazing what comes back tenfold.

10. Numbers. Did you know numbers in titles draw more traffic than blog posts without? 10.5 is interesting, no? (it’s slightly more intriguing than ten, too.)

10.5 Though it’s probably one of the best reasons, I’ve saved it for last: Swag. Not the kind that greets you on check in or is peppered throughout the weekend, but the cerebral type. Brain swag is what BlogPaws is to me. All the goodies for pet bloggers under one roof. Let the change begin.