Ace Department

The internet has been buzzing about Alt Summit for the past week and I am happy to report that I was able to attend the design and blogging conference this year in snowy, mountainous, beautiful Utah. Alt was held at the luxurious Grand America hotel in downtown Salt Lake City and it was attended by creative entrepreneurs (mostly women) from all over the country.

Alt Summit consisted of three days of informative discussion panels, keynote lunches, evening parties, and general networking and fun. There are already many excellent recaps of the event out there (like here, here, and here) but I wanted to share some of the concrete tips and inspirational quotes that I took away from the experience.

I’ve divided the info by session and did my best to attribute it all to the original speaker or author…

The Business of Blogging

With Ami Price, Chris Gardner, Pam Kueber

I’ve been to quite a few blogging business conferences in the past, so some of this info was repetitive for me, but I like how the panel laid out the process in a step-by-step way.

To take your blog from a hobby to a successful business, you must:

• Choose a name you can trademark. Search TESS to make sure name is available.
• Form a legal entity, like an LLC.
• Open a business bank account.
• Trademark and copyright your name and logo.
• Write terms of service and policies, including writer’s guidelines.
• Set up Google Analytics.
• Be consistent, update regularly, schedule posts in advance, have a strict editorial calendar.
• Create a professional media kit to send to related publications and media outlets.
• Use a “related posts” plugin to get more clicks and pageviews.
• Publish standard size ads using ad networks like Google Adsense.
• Learn some code and how to do the technical things to modify your site. You are a “geek girl” now!

Best Tools for Managing Your Online Life

with Adelle Charles, Holly Burns, Brittany Egbert, and Melissa Esplin

I was curious about what the panelists would suggest in this panel, but was also looking forward to hearing Melissa Esplin speak. Her blog is one of my favorites and she seems like a down-to-earth and successful entrepreneur. Of course, they mentioned Google Docs and Pinterest, but they also suggested a few tools which were new to me…

Online Tools:

• Evernote – a note-taking, bookmarking, snippet-gathering repository that you can access anywhere.
• Flipboard – a customizable magazine that aggregates all of your social media.
• Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin

What Can Small Sites Learn from Big Online Communities

With Heather Armstrong, Nora Abousteit, Lilli Zarghami, Sarah Bryden-Brown

I admit, I mostly attended this panel to hear Dooce speak, and she didn’t disappoint. It was interesting to hear the back stories for each the panelists’ online communities and how they handled challenges and growth. I collected a few quotes from the session:

• “Listen to your users. Your site will tell you what to do.” – Heather Armstrong
• “Life stages make good stories.” – Lilli Zarghami
• “Content in context with commerce is the future.” – Nora Abousteit
• “Have an ideal reader in mind that represents you target audience.” – Sarah Bryden-Brown
• “There is so much more beautiful on the internet than there is bad.” – Heather Armstrong

Blogging Ethics & Etiquette

With Danni Hong, Kal Barteski, Sarah Wert, Tracey Clark

This was one of my favorite panels, but sadly, it was also the one with the smallest attendance. Kal Barteski is one of my favorite bloggers and it was a thrill to meet her and hear her speak about Link with Love, a project aimed at encouraging bloggers to share images and content more respectfully online. Kal shared her story of how her art was stolen, reposted, repurposed, and ultimately sold without her permission. (You can learn more about the situation here.)

What is blogging ethics and etiquette? Basically, stealing artwork (photos, images, text, etc) is bad. If you share an image or text that you did not personally create you must credit the artist/writer/creator and link back to the ORIGINAL SOURCE, not a random Pinterest pin, not a friend’s uncredited Tumblr post. Even better, ask the artist if you can share the image. Linking appropriately will show that you understand intellectual property and it will put you in good standing with the artists you link to.

Personal tangent: Blogging etiquette is similar to academic writing. Yes, you can certainly cite your inspirations and influences, comment on popular culture, or call out things you love, but you must credit the author/artist and say where you got it. I see very popular, big-name style and design bloggers who produce beautiful, artsy, fabulous blog posts, but they do it by stealing random pretty images that they find on the web. They do not create the images and they do not say who did. It is wrong to build your business on the backs of hard working artists and not even give them credit! I feel strongly about this.

Growing a Readership

With Jordan Ferney, Kelly Beall, Nicole Balch, Maggie Mason

I was again very excited to hear from the big name panelists in this session, but it turned out to be the session with the least amount of new-to-me content. However, I did come away with some good general tips for growing an online readership:

• Post original content, be consistent, have a professional site design.
• Posting consistently is key, but you don’t need to post TOO much. Multiple posts per day is not necessary.
• “I only feel insecure or competitive when I know that I don’t have my best work up on my own site.” – Jordan Ferney
• Don’t get obsessed with your stats.
• Pay attention to current events and write original posts on trending topics.
• Treat blogging like a job. Invest in yourself like you would a business.
• Use Facebook! Everyone is on Facebook.
• A “related posts” plugin that links to similar past posts (preferably with images) really helps to increase pageviews.
• When promoting on social media, target your message to each type of social media site: on Twitter use humor or a bit of mystery, on Facebook include great images, on Google+ share interesting facts or biz tips.
• Keep in mind that the big bloggers have help. Consider taking on contributors.
• Quality content is more important than clever SEO tricks.

Keynote from Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest

Ben Silberman was adorable and smart. All of the Alt ladies went crazy for his keynote and I was personally impressed by his positive attitude and work ethic.

A few of his memorable quotes:

• “I want to be know for what I do and make, not for what I say.”
• “If you don’t bet on yourself, no on else will.”
• “People succeed because they don’t stop.”
• “Make one thing perfect.”

Keynote from Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project

I LOVED the keynote talk from Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen is the author of The Happiness Project, and her talk reminded me that to be happy, you have to be honest with yourself about your true interests and passions.

A few of my favorite quotes from Gretchen Rubin:

• “You can only build a happy life on YOUR interests, YOUR nature, and YOUR values.”
• “Technology is a good servant, but a bad master.”
• “Preserve open space to think. (And don’t feel guilty about it!)”
• “The days are long, but the years are short.”

If you feel a little bit overwhelmed by this epic recap then you have an idea of how I felt by the end of the conference. There was a lot to absorb in a short amount of time!

Overall, Alt Summit was a very good experience. I met some of my favorite online personalities, discovered a few new favorites, and had a lot of fun. However, I am not sure whether I will plan to attend the event next year. It was a long trip from New York to Utah and I am not sure if I 100% fit into the hardcore design and fashion crowd… we’ll see what happens in 2013…

Were you at Alt Summit? What did you take away from the experience?

————

For more info and reflections on the conference, check out my personal recap of the Alt experience on my blog and the “link love” round-up on the Swap-bot blog.

For more inspiration, view my Alt Summit Flickr set or the Alt Summit 2012 Flickr Stream.

For the play-by-play from the conference, search #altsummit on Twitter.