Mamas Write Mini-Con Wrap Up!

Several weekends ago I had the chance to attend a blogging Conference in the Dallas/ Ft. Worth area that was specifically geared towards Christian Mommy Bloggers – a one day mini conference!

It was a lot of fun- and I’ve been meaning to recap it for you all. The conference was held by Mamas Write – a labor of love started by Devotion Mama and Mama Hall. More confrences and meet ups are planned in the future, so if you are DFW local I would definitely check them out!

The conference had 4 speakers – and I took copious notes. I thought I’d share a few of my favorite thoughts from each speaker with you. Though when I got home and looked at my hastily scrawled notes…that became a little harder! My goodness, how did I ever read my notes in high school? See below…lol.

Fortunately I was able to excavate a few wonderful pointers from each speaker from that mess of squiggly lines:)

The first Speaker was Crystal Sparks of Sparkled Life  – she talked about the spiritual life of bloggers. Some of my favorite nuggests of wisdom from her were:

• Don’t get caught up in how many “followers” you have on your blog. Remember your real followers are your children!
• Don’t compare yourself or your blog to other people. You and your blog are not called to do what they do. If God had wanted you to be an echo, he wouldn’t have given you your own voice!
• Be aware when the voice of disqualification starts talking inside your head. There will always be bloggers who know more about something than you and those that know less. Don’t let the voice of disqualification  paralyze you.

 

The second Speaker was Rachel of Quirky Mama, She was also joined for a Q&A by Holly Homer of She is Dallas. Some of their absolutely fabulous tips were:

• Find the potential readers of your blog where they already are. If its a forum- join that forum and start being a valuable member there. If it’s another website, engage in discussions there. The readers of those places will clue into you, and begin to read you too.
• Build Community. Find other bloggers and figure out ways to work together, and promote each other.
• Liberally feature other people! If you see people writing great posts, give them a shout out on your blog or Facebook page. Tag them! Build goodwill!

 

Rachel Holland of Surviving the Stores blew my mind with info on monetizing! And provided me with 4 pages of notes just from her segment! Three of my faves were:

• Grow your content! The more content you have the more your in search engines the more you can get advertising dollars.
• When you are recommending a product anyway- put an affiliate link to where consumers can buy it.Saves them time and can potentially earn you a commission for being helpful.
• Go back to old posts where you could have linked to places to buy things and link now! It’s not too late to monetize older content. This is especially true if most readers find you via a search engine.

 

Stephanie Brown of  UpLifting Words concluded the conference talking about how to make your content unique -through photographs:

• Be inspired to write posts by looking through pictures you’ve previously taken and thinking “what does this shot make me think of?”
• Bring a camera with you so that if you see something during your day that caught your eye- you can take a shot and file it for later use.
• Consider watermarking your photos as a way for others to find your blog when they look through images on a search engine. Also to keep your photos from being taken without your consent.

 

The Mamas Write mini-con was full of great information and there is just no way I can relay so many more wonderful pieces of inspiration and advice I received during the day. And as with most blogging conferences so much of the benefit of going is the networking and community building that happens when you meet in person bloggers who you have read online! I really enjoyed making some new friends and also getting a chance to give a hug to some older ones!

Hope this wrap up was helpful to those of you that couldn’t attend!

 

For more info on Mamas Write  you can follow their Twitter and Facebook page.

Special thanks to Texan Mama Photography for the great conference pictures!