The 6th Annual Blogging While Brown Conference 2013

About this time last week, with anxious anticipation, I walked into the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for the Sixth Annual Blogging While Brown Conference. Bloggers of color from all over the country would be assembling here to be educated and obtain tools necessary for success as well as networking opportunities and brand connections that could take us where we wanted to be.  Receiving a scholarship to attend the Saturday session was more than an honor. Sharing the space with bloggers of various genres, skill sets and levels of expertise conjured up feelings of both excitement and mental nail-biting. With badge and coffee in-hand, it was off to the races!

Kicking off the morning with a screening of the TV Land sitcom The Soul Man was a great ice-breaker as I sat at a table full of beautiful brown bloggers sharing laughs and light commentary. Although strangers, you could feel a sense of camaraderie in the packed room (shoutout to the sista who gave me her seat!). Afterwards, it was off to the main auditorium for opening remarks form our “Mama Bear”, Gina McCauley, founder of Blogging While Brown.

Gina’s passion and dedication came through as she spoke of how far BWB had come since its inception in 2008 and the overall mission of the conference.

The day was organized into breakout sessions filled with LOADS of invaluable information and tips from business owners, tech pros and social media experts. Here’s a taste of what stood out to me:

In his opening keynote, Markus Robinson of Interactive One showed us the importance of staying on top of our stats. “Getting people to your blog is easy, getting them to commit is the difficult part.” Mixpanel and Social Crawlitics go beyond the number of page views to give us clues as to what adjustments we may need to make to be more effective. Robinson suggests focusing our interaction on social media that brings us the most traffic. Guest blogging and attending events are great to get folks coming your way but he doesn’t rule out email and word-of-mouth, “these are still powerful tools!”

With so many social media connections out there, Instagram was my last straw. But Nicole A. Taylor of Hot Grease and Jeneba Jaloh Ghatt of Ghatt Law Group opened my eyes regarding Pinterest. “You have to go to your target market to build your brand”. What I didn’t know: Instagram targets the young and allows you to connect internationally. Pinterest draws females while Google Plus has more of the male crowd. “But I don’t have TIME for more social media”, I thought. Well, Taylor spends only 20 minutes a day on Pinterest! Hmph, now THAT I can work with.

The presentation Starting a Business While Working Full-Time by Karla Trotman of BellyButtonBoutique.com was thorough and on point! Key takeaways: The type of business you want to start are a mix of your interests, skills and opportunities. Connect on social media well before launching to create a buzz. Set it up legally and speak with an accountant. Create a schedule- be clear about what you need to get done when. Your business must be manageable while you’re working but look like it’s full-time.

Susan Getgood and Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer gave us much food for thought and got most of my notes for sure! Here’s what I gleaned: Begin with the end – understand what your goals and objectives are to build a strategy. Deciding where you don’t wanna go is just as important as where you DO wanna go. Do it because you love it! When reaching out for opportunities, don’t downgrade yourself – make sure that your credentials are clear. It’s not bragging if you really did it yet don’t overstate it.

To say that the closing keynote was the highlight of the day would be an understatement. I’m talkin’ about a panel moderated by Alfred Edmond, Jr. of Black Enterprise (brotha was sharp!) featuring blogger bosses Angel Laws of Concrete Loop, Fashion Bomb Daily‘s Claire Sulmers, Necole Kane of NecoleBitchie.com and Karen Civil of hip-hop blog KarenCivil.com – it just got REAL! I managed to stop gawking long enough to jot down some of the knowledge being dropped:

I thoroughly enjoyed the candor, no one held back as to what it’s really like to be in the blogging business. The realness was refreshing, to say the least.

It was an amazing day and I was excited to find out that Blogging While Brown will be returning to NYC next year!! As soon as that date drops, I’ll be saving my duckets to attend. Many thanks to Gina McCauley and the BWB team, speakers and sponsors for all of your hard work. To my fellow bloggers who couldn’t make it, I think you’ll find this conference to be most helpful and urge you to join me next year!

Until next time,

xoxo

~Toia

LOL! Blogger Buddy Monet of CurlsAndMo was also excited to be there!

Savvy Brown! Peep the fro love!!