Getting serious about your blog? I can help

Join Me!

For those of my readers who are interested in really ramping up their own blogging skills, I’ll be participating in a Webinar next week called the Girlfriend’s Guide to the Business of Blogging.

(After blogging about family travel for almost four years here, you know I have stuff to talk about! Conference organizer Debbie Lawrence saw me on Twitter – where I can’t shut up either – and was kind enough to invite me to speak.)

There are lots of sessions, all online, across three days (Tuesday, December 8 through Thursday, December 10) all for only $15.  You can even earn a free ticket through their affiliate program.

Speakers include Michael Martine (Remarkablogger) Julie Gallaher (travel site Things You Should Do) a TweetNote keynote by Charles J. Orlando (he’ll be talking about “How to Build a Sustainable Brand from Scratch—for Less Than $250/mo”) and a lively bunch of others.

My speaking session is scheduled for Thursday, December 10 at 9 am EST (yes, that’s 8 am my time in Texas. Gawd, I hope my coffee is strong.) It’s called “Let’s Get Visual: How Flickr and YouTube Can Amp Up Your Blog.”

Here’s a preview:

“Studies confirm that the Web is a pain in the neck for long stints of reading.  Web design analyst Jakob Nielsen’s work shows that people mentally recoil from big long blocks of text online, when they might dive right in if the same information was presented in print.

One of the easiest ways to help with this problem is liberal use of images: pictures or graphics.

Not only do images make your blog content easier to digest (thereby encouraging your readers to hang around longer and keep reading, called “site stickiness”) but just as with print publications, they help you tell a more interesting and compelling story, and can help to set the atmosphere for an entire blog post.

For a searchable, constantly changing, wildly diverse group of free photographs, you can’t do much better than the Flickr photo sharing site, but only use those images with the appropriate Creative Commons alternative copyright.  Here’s how….”

You can read more in my guest post Every Picture Tells A Story on the Girlfriend’s Guide blog, and I hope you have time to attend the entire Webinar.  I think it’s a ton of good information for an incredible price, and even better, a portion of the proceeds go to the American Stroke Association in honor of blogger Anissa Mayhew, who recently suffered a devastating stroke.

See you next Thursday?