another awesome sign
I forgot to share yesterday!

Monday After BEA16:
ideas to implement

First, I’d like to highlight that if you are a newbie at book blogging and mean to be serious at it, you should definitely invest in going next year to BEA, in New York, and especially take part in the BEA Bloggers Conference. Having been book blogging for almost 6 years, I probably didn’t receive as many ideas as younger bloggers, but still, plenty enough to work on now!
Some of the following may be too basic for you, this post is mostly intended for newbies and to myself as a reminder, just in case I lose the notebook where I wrote all these down!!

Before going into details, I have to say witnessing the passion of YA book bloggers and Booktubers was very refreshing. They really inspire me to be even more enthusiastic and active at sharing about good books I read.

The keynote in the morning was by Erin Loechner, author of Chasing Slow:
From How to Now: My 10-Year Blogging Journey Off the Beaten Path

There were some good ideas, but I think I would have benefited more if she had started as a book blogger. I think some ideas she mentioned didn’t apply really to me as a book blogger.
Alas, the notes I took from her conference were on the back on my precious paper I lost on day 2: in front was my personal schedule (things I absolutely wanted to do and see — I managed to fix that), but of course could not recover my notes of the conference.

Then there were two morning sessions, with 2 topics to choose from for each session.
I chose:

Growing Your Social Media Presence
Marketing & Engagement Track
10:00 AM- 10:50 AM

For book bloggers – a strong and steady social media presence is an important must!! Social media is one of your best tools to engage with author, publishers and other bloggers. Join the discussion with other book bloggers and gain insight into strategies for building a strong presence. Learn what other bloggers are doing – and determine how to best use social media to engage with others.

Moderator: Liza Weimer, YA Author of HELLO?

Speaker: Hannah McBride – The Irish Banana Review
Speaker: Mishma Nixon, Chasing Faery Tales
Speaker: Andye Eppes, Reading Teen

Notes from this were also on this stupid paper!
But I remember the need to research online the information that was given on:

1. the optimal time to schedule a Facebook post

2. to schedule a tweet

3. keep using Hootsuite (a great tool, not much talked about, but awesome to schedule on several social media platforms at different times of a day (as long as a word or two are different each time), and use it maybe 3 times/day instead of 2

4. also, use more regularly Instagram (now that my app is finally fixed), especially as marketing tool for FBT

5. do photo challenges on Instagram

6. as well as Pinterest

7. not bother too much with Google +, which was not even mentioned I think. Not bother about Snapshot, I was actually surprised, I thought the emphasis had switched from Instagram to Snapshot, but apparently not, at least for book bloggers

8. invest more time on vlogs (more on that below)

Creative Content: From Ideas to Tools
Marketing & Engagement Track
11:00 AM – 11:50 AM

A blogger’s content is their bread and butter, no doubt about it! It’s what sets you apart from the rest and is your unique voice in the bookish community. Join us in a discussion with bloggers from various platforms on their creative processes, from inspiration to creation. We’ll be talking about what inspires them, the tools they use to bring their ideas to life, how they promote their content to their audiences and more!

Moderator: Meg Morley (Cuddlebuggery.com)

Speaker: Samantha (Thoughts on Tomes)
Speaker: Gillian Berry (The Art of Young Adult and Writer of Wrongs)
Speaker: Ashley Evans (NoseGraze.com)
Speaker: Amanda (The Bookcraft)

And from now on, I have my notes, written on the BEA notebook last page! So here are ideas I heard and would lke to try:

1. apart from book reviews, do discussion posts or even discussion videos – an idea would be about judge the book by the cover posts

2. be more consistent at scheduling posts

3. don’t hesitate to change things around

4. comment not only on blog posts, but also on youtube videos

5. NB: publishers do also enjoy reviews on backlist titles

Then we had a lunch voucher coupon and we could bring back our food to the Bloggers Conference main room, to eat while chatting with each other.
The afternoon was really the best part for me, because we could ask very specific questions, so whether you were a newbie or an older blogger, you could get something valuable out of it. Apparently that was a new feature, a bit like the speed-dating feature (more on that below), but for blogging questions. So there were 16 tables, and three rounds of 30 mn each, so you could choose 3 topics.

I chose:

Tools of the Trade: Plugins, Widgets, and the Like
So much to manage, so much to schedule, so much to track … how do we do it all? Let’s talk about the various tools of the trade available. What are the best plugins, widgets, and platforms to help us keep track our our book list, schedule our posts, manage our comment feeds, track our analytics, and more.
Leader #1: Kimberly Costa, CaffeinatedBookReviewer.com

I have been thinking for a long now to jump into self hosting, so this was good for more questions I had on that.

1. importance of looking at ratings before choosing plugins
2. always download the plugins first on the PC, then upload them on your dashboard, not directly
3. close comments on posts older than 90 days, because they mostly get spam
4. use the Tweetly plugin to repost older posts 
5. don’t use Jetpack, to heavy to load, slows down your site
6. use Buffer plugin for scheduling
7. use Better Click to Tweet plugin, to schedule tweets
8. Vaultpress seems to be the best for daily automatic backup – which is absolutely necessary
9. subscribe to Ashley’s site for more ideas on plugins and the like – DONE!
10. jump and use PicMonkey and GIMP for pictures editing
11. NB: when I use wordpress.org, I’ll be able to use Google analytics!
12. NB: Giveaway Tools is NOT mobile friendly!! Thinking of going back to Rafflecopter
13. Use WordPress optimizer to run the blog smoothly, automatically take care of metadata and the like

The Booktube Workshop
All about BookTube! Get tips on being comfortable in front of the camera, growing an audience, finding the right equipment, editing tools and techniques, and more. Whether already on video or thinking about starting, let’s talk about the Tube.
Leader #1: Sasha Alsberg, YouTube.com/abookutopia

1. get my act together and do more videos!

2. the best is to use natural day light for videos

3. stick to 5 t0 7 mn

4. I am looking for a tool to easily insert pictures in a video. They suggested Final Cut, but looks lie it $300, so I’ll pass. If you know of any good more affordable tool to do that, let me know

5. use google adsense for videos monetization

Monetization & Business
Want to turn book love into a business? Let’s talk about opportunities to monetize your online presence – through business planning, affiliate programs, advertising opportunities, and more.
Leader #1: Tirzah Price, TheCompulsiveReader.com
Leader #2: Brittany Berger, BookBumblings.com

1. create products for other bloggers: mugs, etc; spreadsheets, course, planners, tutorials

2. create services: help authors with social media; online assistant; digital book formatting

3. ads: Bookriot, Blogads, Litbreaker = where you can choose ads related to books, not just random ads

4. sponsorship: guarantee publicity, for instance in emails or mailchimp newsletters. And for pack for a book: post with review + post with questions related to the book + post with recap of answers the following week

5. review my affiliates. Do top book lists by themes, with links and excerpts of my reviews

6. propose reviews for local newspaper

7. NB: transforming blog to book also brings more readers to the blog

Speed dating

I promised I would talk about this. Before BEA itself, I had not read nor heard the word speed dating – it is on the BEA site, easy to find through the Search engine, IF you know about it. Otherwise hidden somewhere the newbie I was didn’t notice and had no clue what it was about.
So when I heard other bloggers totally excited about it, I looked, but discovered you had to register by the beginning of May, because they assign you to a table.
But tired with the floor Friday afternoon, I wandered downstairs and noticed the door of that room was open. So I went it and sat at an empty table at the back of the room. I thought it was already great, as they were displaying all kinds of cool titles on the big screens.
But then the moderator Carol Fitzgerald noticed me. I explained and told her I was fine. But she told me to find an empty spot at a table.

So I did, and it was awesome: so for close to 2 hours, you sit with about 5 or 6 other readers at a round table.
There are piles and piles of books in the middle of each table, and you have several publishers or publicists coming to each table to give their elevator pitch about each book – wow, they are so good and enthusiastic, you almost want to take all the books!!
After the session, you can wander to other tables, as books are not presented on all tables. I ended up with 7 books just from this speed dating session, including 2 for my French pile!
Thanks Carol, you are the best!

ANY OTHER GREAT IDEA YOU GOT AT BEA?