Alt Summit Recap

I recently returned home from Alt Summit, a conference geared toward bloggers and small business owners. It was a blast! Who knew a conference could be so fun? I learned a lot and met a lot of incredible and talented people. I stayed with my friend Krisen at the Grand America hotel where the conference was being held. It was nice to be at the hotel because it was so convenient. Our room was amazing!!! The hotel overall is so beautiful. I felt like royalty!

The reason I went to this conference was to be inspired. I have had so many ideas in the past come to my mind on business and blogging, but felt like I needed to get more creative energy and needed a boost to get started. I felt like going to Alt would give me that boost and motivation to make my dreams become a reality. Although I haven't launched an official business yet, I am confident that alt has helped pave the way for me to do so. I went to Alt as a "blogger" with my new blog name, Keen on Karly. I really don't consider myself an official blogger, but it was the only creative outlet I had at the time. I also went to gain new ideas and perspectives for my marketing position at AXS. I am currently a social marketing associate there and felt like this conference would definitely apply to my current job.

I learned so much at this conference so I thought I'd put together a recap of lessons learned.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Be consistent with content
- Stay consistent with your theme and message

2. Only post quality content
- Don’t post anything that isn’t quality – photos, videos, and articles

3. Know your audience and engage with them
- Find out what they like, ask more questions in posts, etc.

4. Constantly define your purpose and brand identity
- Everything should always tie back to your brand

5. Focus on what works best
- Only focus on things that are working to build your audience, brand-awareness and ticket sales

OTHER TAKEAWAYS:
1. 5 Tools for Building an Online Brand
- Define It

2. Your brand is what you tell people it is
- Consistency

3. Consistently give people what they expect but also surprise them
- Context

4. Put your content into the context of your brand
- Know Your Audience

5. Know what people expect of your brand and what they want from it
- Let It Go

6. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody

7. Facebook Tips
- Schedule posts a couple hours before high peak times
- Make your audience feel like they’re an expert – ask their opinion and thoughts, give them a voice
- Get people to interact with your page early on by liking, sharing or commenting so others see it
- Try out videos, pictures with no links, only text posts

8. Pinterest Tips
- Rich Pin – content that is ensured to be good and valuable
- Get a business account – for analytics
- Time doesn’t exist – the feed is a smart feed based on interests people follow
- SEO matters – optimize your pin descriptions for SEO (Bing and Google now pull in pins)
- Image matters

9. Instagram Tips
- You have to be passionate about it and it has to be sustainable
- Content is still king
- Edit, edit, edit
- Contests and giveaways
- Check your stats (Iconasquare)
- Be someone you would want to follow

Overall, I am so glad I went to this conference. It was so worth it and so much fun. Until next time!