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This past Monday I co-hosted a blogging workshop at Block Studios in St. Paul. It was SO.MUCH.FUN. Best of all, I got to meet some great local business owners and bloggers. Thank you to all you lovely ladies for coming.

Heads up- I had a lot of other local bloggers reach out to me in hopes of having a night-time workshop. I heard you. I’m in the works of getting that together. Super excited. Stay tuned for more details.

Block Studios is starting this out as a monthly group, the 2nd Monday of every month from 8:30- 10:30 AM. Be sure to check out the next one. They’re free and you can sign up HERE. Next workshop is November 9th. Jeannine has these workshops for small business owners to gather and to make the most of their time and efforts to effectively and consistently blog.

From this past Monday’s workshop, I asked everyone to share their goodies so I am sharing a little recap of what we learned. So here we go…

Tools to Use

1. Blogstomp | Picture collages
2. Picmonkey | Picture collages
3. Google Trends | Trending keyword topics
4. Hootsuite | Scheduler
5. BuzzSumo | Enter a topic and get a wealth of information
6. Quick Sprout | Enter URL and get an analysis of site performance
7. Portent Title Maker | Helps with blog post titles
8. Blog Post Generator | Out of ideas of posts to write about? This will help.
9. Twazzup | Real time monitoring and analytics for Twitter

 

Favorite Plugins

1. Akismet | Spam Blocker
2. Pinterest RSS | Hover Pin-it button for images
3. Yoast | SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
4. Google Analytics Dashboard | Puts the analytics right on your dashboard
5. Frizzly | Social sharing
6. Comment Reply Notification | Tells commenters when you have replied
7. Gravity Forms | Helps build contact forms, surveys, much more
8. Digg Digg | Social media shares

Top Tips

1. Read Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk
2. Read Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi
3. Don’t give up!
4. Don’t steal use pictures off of Google
5. Tell the truth
6. Be awesome
7. Know your brand
8. Measure your stats but not too early, and take them lightly
9. Don’t become obsessed with likes, followers, and your stats
10. Install google analytics
11. Guest post
12. Watch what people do within your niche
13. Support & engage with your tribe

Thank you again for those of you that came. Really do appreciate it. I hope you all learned a thing or two. And don’t forget to sign up for the next workshop at Block Studios HERE, November 9th.

BLOCK STUDIOS
676 Smith Ave S
Saint Paul, MN 55107