Highlights From The Blog Paws 2014 Bloggers Conference

I attended my first pet bloggers conference, a BlogPaws conference in 2014 in Las Vegas. I want to share a couple of my favorite highlights from that first conference.  I learned so much from the workshops and from other bloggers.  I met some wonderful people and discovered lots of great new blogs and products. 

One of my favorite highlights from the conference was Susan Getgood’s  workshop, Monetization:  Revenue, Reputation, and Recognition; Defining your Path to Professional Blogging Success.  Susan is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at BlogHer, so she knows a thing or two about online marketing!

Susan with one of the four legged workshop attendees

I had read Susan’s book Professional Blogging for Dummies, a great resource for bloggers interested in monetizing their blog, or optimizing their current monetization strategy.  I had the book with me at the conference and Susan was kind enough to sign it for me!  Some of the things she discussed were:

DEVELOP YOUR PROPOSITION; Define the unique thing you have to offer your readers.    Mine is having insight into dog behavior, issues, safety and health because I have years of experience as an animal welfare volunteer.  I also have two dogs I travel extensively with, and Icy and I are a registered therapy dog team.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE; Who reads your blog and where they hang out online. 

DEFINE YOUR NICHE OR CATEGORY; What specific area the products, information, or services you provide fit into.

IDENTIFY YOUR “AWESOME”; What you are an expert in, and what makes you an expert.  She asked us to complete this sentence:  I am an expert in _________ because of ________.    Tout your awesome on your blog!

One of the things I found overwhelming was thinking I had to be on every social media network; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest,  LinkedIn.  During her workshop I asked Susan if she felt we needed to be on all these networks in order to be successful.   She advised us to select social media networks to participate in based on what they do well and on which networks our audience hangs out on.  That was a relief to me.  It's not so overwhelming knowing I don’t have to be on every single network to create an effective online presence and be a successful blogger. 

Another of my favorite presentations was given by Steven Feldman and Dr. Kate Hodgson of HABRI, The Human Animal Bond Research Initiative foundation.   I’m a huge believer in the power of the human animal bond.  I’ve seen incredible responses from some of the people Icy and I have visited in the course of our therapy dog volunteer work.

Steven talked about the positive chemicals that are released in humans when they touch an animal.  He also talked about pets being a "prescription for health" and that doctors are including pets in patients' treatments.

Some interesting facts Dr. Hodgson shared with us were:

Pets can be a catalyst for their owners to stop smoking; they don't want second hand smoke to harm their pet.  This fact really surprised me!  Does it surprise you? 

Pets can be motivators for healthy lifestyle choices by increasing exercise.

Pets can provide therapeutic intervention to treat illness.

Pets can counter the risk factors of major diseases; inactivity, tobacco or alcohol use, hypertension and high blood pressure.

Check out HABRI's web site to learn more about the science behind the human animal bond.

There were many other great workshops and keynote presentations, these are just two of my favorites.   I look forward to attending BlogPaws 2015 in Nashville.  BlogPaws 2014 definitely exceeded my expectations!