A few days have passed now since the Brisbane ProBlogger Evolve 2017 event and once again, I have come away from there feeling inspired and motivated by the event that is one of my favourites in the annual calendar. This year’s conference was a little different to the previous 2 I had attended….and I was a big fan of the simplified more streamlined version this year. See in previous years the conference spanned over 2 days and there were A LOT more sessions to choose from. Which was also amazing but for me, I walked away a little overwhelmed with what to prioritise and where to start. Yet this time my list is clear and concise.
The past couple of years has definitely had more emphasis on podcasting. And this year was no different with quite a number of speakers discussing the uprising and advantages of podcasting as a content method.
The day started with yet another engaging opening presentation by Darren Rowse – the man behind ProBlogger himself. He spoke about the fact that everything around us is evolving in the online world and then went on to discuss some of the pillars of success. Break them down, work out which is your weakest pillar and then concentrate on that one thing.
The pillars of success:
- Content – creating an archive of useful content
- Community – give your community a sense of belonging through engagement and participation
- Traffic – where do your audience hang out and how can you direct them to your blog
- Monetisation and Conversion – profit by finding a win/win for both your readers and you.
Following Darren’s opening, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income joined him on stage and they had an informal chat and Q&A session. They both had some great advice such as:
- Nobody is You
- Failure will happen so fail fast, learn and move forward
- They’re are always going to be haters – work out your way of dealing with them and move on – if you’re pleasing everybody, you’re probably not going big enough.
And one of my favourite quotes of the conference….
The rest of the day was a flow of speakers reiterating that theme of evolving and building a community of engaged and loyal followers of readers and listeners. Kelly Exeter from A Life Less Frantic was up next with a fantastic presentation about creating opportunities to earn through content and the importance of building relationships through your content. My key takeaway was when we think about strategy, we must be mindful and intentional.
Next up was Jadah Sellner talking about Love over Metrics and how to build your tribe with love – treat your audience like a date for an ongoing relationship, not a one-night stand! Wow I took a lot away from Jadah’s session but the one highlight of the day for me was the quick-fire exercise to outline topics for a key piece of content – and what you can achieve in a minute of focus to get your ideas on paper.
Laney Galligan from ProBlogger was first cab off the rank after lunch and gave us a presentation on how to assess your traffic and develop a monetisation strategy. I really liked Laney’s advice to dig deeper into Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to get a real sense of what’s going on with your readers because everyone comes to you with a different intent.
Next was James Schramko from SuperFastBusiness.com. I loved James’ advice and message to ‘Make yourself a solution to a problem and you won’t have to sell’ and, that selling really doesn’t need to be icky.
He outlined this great SPIN selling process to implement…
- Current Situation – find out exactly where the customer is at
- Problem – identify what the problem is
- Implications – what happens if it doesn’t change
- Needs (solution) – recommend the solution to fix the problem.
And lastly, the keynote from the amazing Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. I was just a little excited to see Pat Flynn as he is someone I look to a lot when it comes to everything podcasting. He’s the person I often refer people to when they want to learn how to podcast. But his keynote had nothing to do with podcasting and all to do with keeping it simple and caring about your people. Pat went through a couple of really great processes about Validating your Ideas, creating your Customer P.L.A.N and my favourite, learning how to build a Market Map.
All in all another amazing event. A huge thanks goes out to the ProBlogger team – I am so grateful that I have been able to attend the past 3 years and am in awe of the effort that you guys put in to make it such a great experience for the attendees. Thank You.
Already looking forward to next year’s event.
