Hi there!  So since I was sick on Friday I neglected to post by Blogfest IDEA Conference 2015: What I Learned.  And I NEED to post this because, quite frankly, I learned a lot!  So grab a paper and a pencil or your smart phone and let’s get ready to take some notes!

Blogfest Keynote Speaker:

Gabby Reece

As I mentioned in the Highlights post, Gabrielle Reece was our keynote speaker and as a professional athlete, model, mom and fitness buff, she had a lot of great things to share:

• Fitness doesn’t have to be all down and dirty.  It can be functional and incorporated into our everyday lives.  We want to exercise not just to look good but to help us with our daily activities.
• We need each other to get it done, so look to those friends and loved ones for help and inspiration.
• We all have high and low cards in life. You need to learn to play your high cards and not complain about your low cards.

[bctt tweet=”Play your high cards in life and don’t complain about your low cards. #blogfest #sweatpink @gabbyreece @fitapproach”]

• Understand the breath in your movement and get strong through full range of motion and spine mobility. 
• Real food is important.
• Remember the 30/30/30 rule. Thirty percent of people will love what you do, thirty percent will hate it and thirty percent will not care.
• Have faith and things will work out.
• Remember when it is just a game (or insert other thing here: job, car, money, etc).

[bctt tweet=”The 30/30/30 rule: 30% will love what you do, 30% will hate and 30% don’t care! #blogfest #sweatpink @gabbyreece #ideaworld”]

Blogfest Sessions:

The Future of Blogging

Is blogging dead?  So many people are saying it is and we need to move on!  Well, as a blogger who just celebrated their third blogiversary, I can tell you it isn’t dead, it is just evolving.  Like everything else in life, things change and blogging has changed too.  But, you can still be an amazing blogger with these tips:

• Tell your story and be GOOD at telling it.
• Think about providing programs for an a la carte fee.
• Think about writing for other sites and getting paid to do it.
• Be interesting.
• Tell the truth.
• Live the truth.
• Make your reader feel like the star of the story.
• Make people feel empowered by reading your blog.
• Make people want to feel like better versions of themselves reading your blog.

[bctt tweet=”Tell the truth. Be interesting. Live the truth. #blogfest #sweatpink #ideaworld “]

SEO Tips and Tricks

SEO is one of those things that most people hear and then draw a huge blank face.  Search Engine Optimization.  What does that mean anyway?  Well, basically it is the key to getting your site found when someone does a Google search.  I am the first admit that I’m not all that SEO savvy so here are some of the amazing takeaways I got from the session:

• If you are writing about something extremely specific or just a personal update, set your post to “no index” to avoid getting crawled by the Google spiders.  Essentially Google uses these “spiders” to crawl and index your website and you have no idea how many pages the Google spiders are going to crawl so you want to make sure your best content is featured.  By doing this, you will more likely come up in search results.  If you are writing about something that isn’t necessarily representative of your strongest content, checking “no index” will prevent the spiders from crawling that page.  As a side note, I use the Yoast SEO plugin and this makes it really easy to do these little SEO tricks.
• Research popular keywords and use them in your posts to make it more likely that you will come up in search results.  
• Define the person who you are targeting with your post and try to come up with keywords that your person would use to search and hopefully find your site.
• Make your posts 500 words plus.
• Choose 1 keyword.
• Use Google Keyword Planner tool to find keywords.
• Put your keywords in your title, url, byline, meta description, H1 and H2 tags and in the content.
• Never buy links or keyword stuff!

How to Make a Career Out of Your Blog

I think every single person who writes a blog is interested in this topic.  We put so much time and effort into it, we want to know what we can get back from it!  We heard from three great speakers: a health coach, a fitness instructor and a blogger who works with a lot of brands.  Here’s their insight:

• Establish an expertise in an area.
• Be consistent with your message and offer some freebies to get people hooked on how wonderful you are!
• Think of different ways to reach out to your audience and don’t forget to provide helpful content.
• Market yourself on your blog.  Constantly push your qualifications on social media.
• Build your brand on your blog.  Think global and not local. 
• When working with brands, under-promise and over-deliver.
• Look for a mutually beneficial relationship with brands.
• Follow up with brands after you work with them and let them know how things went.
• Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. 

[bctt tweet=”The latest and best #blogging advice to make your #blog top notch!”]

See my Highlights from Blogfest 2015 here!

Readers, what tips do you have to add to any of these categories?  How do you tell your story?  Do you train for functional fitness?

P.S. I’ll be back later today with an exciting announcement so stay tuned!!