Women Bloggers Unite!

..or at least, check out a group that formed on Meetup: Women Bloggers.  From the meetup site:

This group is for women bloggers to get together in an informal setting to talk about blogging. Let's share our ideas and talk about blog promotion, ads, creativity, tips, and more.

I made it to a meeting last night with two other women bloggers, both from the HoCo area: Elisa, from Things That We Love and founder of the group, and Sara, from Art Sense.

I really like the idea of the group, and the chance to network face to face and get ideas.  Everyone comes to the table with different levels of expertise in different areas.  And it's nice to be out and social.  If you are a lady, you blog or want to blog, and you're in the general area, check 'em out! (if you're not part of Meetup, shoot me an email)


Another great local blogger outlet that offers some of the same is hocoblogs, which hosts Blogtail parties from time to time (I hope to make the next one in January!). 



We had an informal discussion about several topics.. here's a partial list. (I wasn't great with the note taking.)


Generating Content:  Getting on a schedule for blogging, and what to include - how long should posts be?  There was a question as to length, but all agreed that pictures and breaking up the text for easy access to information was helpful. Google Wonder Wheel, if you have access to it, is a useful tool for finding out what people are searching and it can be used to generate relevant content.


Incorporting Video Content: This is something I'm interested in, but don't know much about. Elisa had her first try at video here. She said it took her some time to work through the editing software and find someone to help her take the video.


Increasing Traffic: Things like stumbleupon, twitter, etc. can all be used to increase traffic. There are also, apparently, search engine optimized templates available for purchase (ballpark $60-$100).  Bloggers can also join networks (like Hocoblogs. Also, things like Problogger, blogher, etc).  


Finally, we decided to come up with a few suggestions and settle on a blogging/social networking book that we could go through chapter by chapter.  I'll post up some of the proposed books later, look for blog posts in the future related to that.