Shelter’s Edge

Tysons Corner, VA, August 25-27: What a week—an earthquake that rocked us from DC to New England and back again, followed by Hurricane Irene…and BlogPaws 2011 right in between!It was our first time attending a BlogPaws event, and we were thrilled to hook up face-to-face with this vibrant online community that offers resources and networking for pet bloggers. It doesn’t get much better than a conference where you can learn about the latest widgets while the attendee next to you snoozes on the floor in between sampling all the chewies in his swag bag.Here’s some of the juicy stuff we learned when we weren’t cribbing notes with fellow bloggers or watching a press screening of Disney’s Spooky Buddies with a bunch of dogs who joyfully expressed their approval whenever an on-screen animal had an especially dramatic line… (FYI, they thought the owl was a hoot.)

Better Bloggin’ in 3 Bullets
Kyla Duffy passionately spoke about common writing no-no’s for your blog in her workshop, “You Said What?! Basic Writing & Communication.”

When writing your blog, chill with the:

- excessive CAPS and exclamation points!!! Use them sparingly to emphasize a point. Otherwise, err on the side of italics and one punctuation mark at the end of a sentence.

- smiley faces. “If your writing is descriptive, people will get it,“ Duffy encouraged.

- purrrrfect. “Stop saying that! Just stop! It’s fine once in a while, but it is so very overused,” Duffy told us. (And quite passionately, at that.)

P.S. We also got pretty excited when Duffy discouraged the audience to stop calling pets “it” instead of “he” or “she.”

Click and Treat
Links we love, as shared by BlogPaws workshop presenters and attendees:

- Grammar Girl: Quick And Dirty Tips — when words fail (or participles dangle)

- Akismet— find out how to get rid of spam on your blog here

- The Pet Wiki — cool tool for finding (and sharing) pet-related content

- Creative Commons — Free Pictures on Flickr.com — Ohhhh YEAH! No-cost images to use on your blog (or website, or Facebook page, or…)

What’s Cooking About Who’s Looking
Michael Ayalon of petwebdesigner.com was bombarded with questions during his session, “Demystifying Search Engine Optimization.” A few choice tidbits re: how to get more eyeballs on your blog or website:

- Is your blog on WordPress? Make sure you’ve got it configured so that the page title includes key words.

- Think twice before adding Flash plug-ins to your blog/website. “That’s a dirty word!” says Ayalon. “Flash does terrible in search engines, and iPhones can’t see Flash.”

- Post free ads for your blog/website on craigslist.com and backpage.com.

- Consider guest blogging–this is a great way to reach new folks and link back to your blog. Shelters, how ’bout a guest post on a local news blog?

- “Keep your keywords narrow and focused,” advises Ayalon. “Too many tags can cause your post to be considered as spam by search engines.”

Tips to Try Today
Easy-peasy things you can do right now:

- Make sure readers have a way to submit testimonials on your blog to let you know how your agency is making a difference. Your donors, adopters and local business partners will love to see them!

- Tie current events in to your blog. For example, did you cover disaster preparedness/emergency planning while Hurricane Irene or the East Coast quake was in the news?

- Wanna add a soundtrack to your latest video but concerned about copyright infringement? Google “copyright free music” and see what comes up—many artists would love the exposure and will allow you to use their work free of charge.

You know you’re at BlogPaws when the swag bag stuffing party looks a little like this…

Visit BlogPaws to learn more about this community of pet bloggers and what they’re doing for shelters and rescue groups.

Short on time? Here’s the conference in just a little over a minute, courtesy of Roscoe’s Remedies:

Related links:
BlogPaws
“We Were There: 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference”

Tags: blogging, BlogPaws, communications, conferences, pet blogs, social media, technology, We Were There, website writing

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