Belle of Beechmont

Photo used c/o Benjamin Marcum Photography

No, I’m not the Belle of Beechmont, but the very awesome (and crazy adorable) Amy – who blogs all the happenings in our neighborhood – certainly is. 

So let me back up…The Louisville Bloggers group held a workshop a few months ago, and I was excited to meet a blogger who not only lives in my neighborhood, but a few houses down right on my street.  I’m telling you, bloggers are everywhere.  We’re multiplying. 

Amy asked to interview me for a new blogger series she’s starting on her blog, Meet Your Neighbor, and I thought, Do people really want to know more about me? Weird.   But I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about not only why I craft, but also why I love the neighborhood we reside in.  Because it’s a pretty great place to live, although sometimes underappreciated in our city full of bigger, more affluent neighborhoods.

And then Amy brought along Benjamin Marcum, a professional photographer who also lives in our neighborhood, and he snapped some awkward photos of me in crafty action.  I don’t take serious photos well, but Ben rocked it and told me to be as goofy as I wanted to be.  And then I loved him for that, because goofy is what I’m all about, really.

You can read the interview on Belle of Beechmont HERE if you’re interested.  (And by IF, I mean, you totally ARE, right? So click to it…).  You can also find more information about Benjamin Marcum Photography on his Facebook page.

So, anything weird happen to you this week?

~julee~

Tweet

SEO Tips: Basic Blogger SEO with LEAP

Last week the Louisville Bloggers Group held its first learning series workshop:  Basic Blogger SEO, presented by Nathan Engels, Search Specialist with LEAP.

Nathan writes two very popular blogs, We Use Coupons and Wanna Bite, and he generously uses his blogging knowledge to help fellow bloggers grow their own blogs.  Nathan’s excitement for blogging is infectious, and he has a talent for breaking down the technical jargon in ways that every blogger can understand.

What is SEO, and how does it effect blogging?  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  It is knowing how to optimize your blog postings so that they are seen by search engines.  Basically, it’s what brings readers typing search words into a search bar to your blog.  Since most of us who write blogs actually want people to find and read our blogs, SEO is important to increase our blog’s visibility in search engines. 

Once our group made introductions, socialized a bit, and filled our plates with delicious snacks, we got busy learning Nathan’s tips for basic blogger SEO. 

Here are a few of Nathan’s Basic SEO Tips for Bloggers :

Be a blogger first.  Write your blog content, and then go back and ask yourself What would I type into Google to find this content?  Most likely it’s not just one word you would type, but a group of words.  That group of words are your keywords.  They should be specific, but not too general.  For example:  SEO is too general.  SEO Tips for Bloggers is more specific.

Use your keywords as your title.  Yes, this may make your titles boring and uncreative, but it is essential.  Let your personality shine through the blog post writing. 

Use your keywords every 100-200 words.  Your keywords should be used throughout the blog post in a natural and organic way so that the blog post still reads coherently and doesn’t sound forced or weird.  You can also alter the order of the keywords.  SEO Tips for Bloggers and Blogger SEO Tips are interchangeable.

Write your own meta descriptions. A meta description is a snippet written to describe your blog and/or blog post.  This description is the first few lines that show up under your blog post title and link in search results.  You want searchers to click your link, so you want to describe your blog post and use your keywords to enhance that likelihood.

Rename your photos with your keywords.  If you use photos in your blog posts (and you totally should), make sure to rename the photo with your keywords, and separate those keywords with dashes.  IMG_1345.jpg should be changed to something like, blogger-seo-tips.jpg.  Also add your keywords to the ALT field on your blogging platform.

There are so many ways to work on increasing blog traffic and readership.  This was just the basics of SEO to get us started on creating good, searchable content for our blogs without being too overwhelming.  Nathan did a great job of delivering this information.  A big thanks to him and LEAP Agency for hosting this event for Louisville Bloggers Group.

Do you find the technical aspects of growing your blog a challenge?  Would you benefit from more information like this to help you grow your blog?

Our group is working on future learning series and we hope to bring Nathan in again to share more of his tips for growing a successful blog.  If you are a Louisville Blogger and would like to join our group for invitations to future events, please join our Facebook group HERE. 

~julee~

Tweet

Local Louisville: Pinot’s Palette

Craft E Magee and I were invited to Pinot’s Palette in St. Matthews this week to paint Louisville’s beautiful skyline as part of a Louisville Bloggers event.  When I received the invitation, I may have squealed with delight, as creating my own painting has been on my bucket list for quite a while. 

What was I waiting for?  Confession time:  I can tackle a sewing machine and a glue gun with the best of ‘em, but put a drawing instrument in my hands and I’m all fumbles.  In short, I have always been scared that my painting would end up looking like a toddlers unintelligible scribbles.  Friends, I can not draw.

Fortunately, at Pinot’s Palette, I didn’t need to worry about that.  Pinot’s Palette is a “paint and sip” studio and the class is designed to teach you how to create the evening’s painting in simplistic, easy to follow steps.  There was nothing scary about it.  Plus, there’s a wine bar if you feel you need a glass of vino to help kick the nerves down a notch.  Or, you can just keep the wine flowing until your painting looks good.  Whichever.

When we arrived, we were warmly welcomed and shown where to grab a smock and where to look for our names at our seats.  Everything we would need for our painting was laid out for us – canvas, paint palette, and brushes.  Then the fun began:  it was time to put paint to canvas.  As I said, everything was explained step-by-step and the artist-instructor gave everyone plenty of time to finish one step before moving on to the next.  There was an additional instructor walking out among the group to offer assistance if anyone got stuck and needed help during any part of the creative process.

Music was playing, everyone was laughing and having fun with their painting, and the atmosphere was easy-going and relaxed.

I love my finished Louisville Skyline painting.  It may not be perfect, the buildings may be slanted in the same weird way that my handwriting slants, but I feel very proud of it.

Pinot’s Palette has locations in many states and you can check out their website to see if there are any located near you.  If you are a Louisville local, I highly recommend checking out the class calendar at the St. Matthews location and signing up for your favorite painting.  I saw several hanging in their gallery that I would love to try my hand at now that I feel more confident.  Pinot’s Palette also offers private group parties – what a fun way to celebrate a birthday or bridal party!

Have you ever participated in a class at Pinot’s Palette or another “Paint and Sip” venue?  Would you like to give a class like this a try?   Leave me a comment below – I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

Happy painting, DIY’ers!

~julee~

Tweet

Free Blogger Meet-Up Printables

Emily of The Em Dash designed all of the adorable nametags and signs used throughout the Louisville Blogger Meet and Greet, and she would like to share them with you as a free printable. 

She’s awesome like that. 

Basically, we had so much fun organizing and attending our event that we would like to give you a few tools to make planning your own blogger event as fun and stress-free as possible.  Cool?

Click the link below each picture for the printable PDF.

Blog Name Badges (prints six on a sheet)

Blank Blogger/Business Cards (prints 10 on a sheet)

Business Card Sign (prints as a tent card)

Binder Ring Card (prints as a tent card) Here’s an explanation of binder ring card holder.

Enjoy!  If you use these for your blogger event (or any other event – I’m not picky), please share a link with me.  I would love to see pictures!

~julee~

Tweet

Louisville Bloggers Meet and Greet: Recap

Put together an assortment of bloggers, yummy refreshments, and awesome swag bags and you’ve pretty much got all the makings for a fantastic blogger meet up.  At least, this was my experience last week when I partnered with my friends Emily of The Em Dash and Amanda of The Hanger to host the first Louisville Bloggers Meet and Greet.

Our event was held at a local boutique,  The Hanger, which was the perfect spot for an intimate gathering.  Amanda, owner and fellow blogger, generously rearranged her shop to accommodate our group and contributed wine and door prizes for the guests.  The girl is a rock star.

Upon arrival, bloggers were asked to sign in and grab a name badge to introduce themselves and their blogs.  Emily designed these adorable badges as well as all of the graphics used for the event.  (Emily shares her free blogger meetup printables HERE.)

Before the event, we sent a Facebook message to the guests to bring business cards to share if they had them.  It’s a great icebreaker to introduce yourself and hand over a card, and it’s a nice way to put faces with blog names.  We supplied business card key rings for everyone to keep track of the cards they collected, and had a prize for the blogger who collected the most cards at the end of the evening.  We also provided blank cards that could be used by those that needed them.

We displayed these #loublogs hashtag signs throughout the venue to easily share pictures and updates of the evening on social media.

I can’t resist an excuse to create a photo booth; I’m completely predictable like that.  Mustaches for everyone! You can download free photo booth props here.

Our swag bag sponsors were amazing!  Every sponsor is a local, small business.  Gigantic thanks to:  LindsayLou Jewelry, Revelry Gallery, Miss Happy Pink, Good Garbage, Craft E Magee, The Hanger, Em Dash Designs, MoMo’s Creations, and Heine Brothers Coffee.

Hosting a social gathering with local bloggers has been a vision of mine for a while now, and I could not have pulled off this wonderful event were it not for my amazing co-hosts and all of the bloggers who attended.  It was a wonderful evening, and I am so happy to have made friends with ladies who are sharing amazing talent and insight through their blogs.  In addition to the bloggers already mentioned, I would also like to extend a special thanks to these Louisville Bloggers for making this event a success:

Erica – Blooming In First

Sarah – The Mint Julio

Dorothy – The Louisville St. Louisian

Christine – Bluegrass Blogger

Amber – The Pretty Gritty

Carrie – My Ordinary Fairytale

Christine – A Daisy On My Toe

Niki – The Hillville

Mary Margaret – Fly Away Fox

Kristen – K D Illustration

Therese – Get Party Chic

Kirsten – The Dupont Diaries

If you would like to learn more about Louisville Bloggers, you can follow the Facebook page here.  If you are a Louisville blogger and would like to join our group, you can send a request here.

Have you organized or attended a blogger event in your city?  I would love to hear your experiences!

~julee~

Tweet

Easy Business Card Organizer

I’ve started to accumulate quite a few business cards from fellow bloggers and crafters, and I needed an easy way to keep them all together.  Enter:  the simple binder clip.  By punching a hole in the top corner of business cards, they easily slip onto a binder clip. Voila!  Easy solution for keeping all those cards in one easily accessible place.

Happy organizing, DIY’ers!

~julee~

Tweet

D.I.Y. Louisville Upcoming Events

Summer is off to a great start with so many community happenings for crafty minded and local blogging folks.  Here are just a few upcoming events that D.I.Y. Louisville will be partnering with this month:

Louisville Bloggers Meet and Greet!  Louisville Bloggers are invited for a fun night out to meet fellow bloggers in our community.  Hosted by Em Dash Designs, The Hanger, and D.I.Y. Louisville.  June 13, 6pm, The Hanger.  RSVP HERE or email at diylouisville@gmail.com.

 

Etsy Craft Party with Block Party Handmade Boutique, Em Dash Designs, and D.I.Y. Louisville!  Keep Louisville DIY and join the global celebration of meeting and making at the local Etsy Craft Party 2013: Craft for the Community.  

The craft du jour will be terra cotta plant pots. Paint them. Decoupage them. Do with them what you will in a crafty way. Just show up. We'll supply the rest!

Some other surprises are also in store, not to mention snacks.

A $5 supply fee will be collected at the door. Capacity is limited, so sign up early!

For questions, e-mail emily@theemdash.com, info@blockpartyhandmade.com or diylouisville@gmail.com.

For more information on Etsy’s Craft Party, check out this article: https://www.etsy.com/craft-party.

RSVP at etsycraftparty-louisville.eventbrite.com.

Make and Take at New Albany Library!  FREE event!  Thursday, June 27th, 6:30pm.  RSVP by calling New Albany Reference Service Desk at (812) 949-3523.

I am excited to be out in the community meeting new friends and hope that you’ll join me at these events!

~julee~

Tweet

Louisville Bloggers Meet and Greet

I have excit­ing news to share! Emily from Em Dash Designs and I have been work­ing to cre­ate a new group in Louisville — the aptly-named Louisville Blog­gers.

And our first-ever meet-up will be from 6 to 9 p.m. June 13 at The Hanger, a chic store owned by Louisville Blog­gers mem­ber Amanda Hinds. Light refresh­ments, door prizes and swag bags are in the mix.

If you’d like to attend, please RSVP on the Face­book event page or e-mail me at at diylouisville(at)gmail.com.

We have a closed Face­book group that all Louisville-area blog­gers are encour­aged to join, and please “like” our pub­lic page, where we hope to share posts from our members.

Work­ing together, we can learn about each other’s blogs, net­work and help each of us gain more expo­sure and skills. The hope is that we will con­nect via Face­book as well as through events, meet-ups and spe­cial train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, where we’ll bring in experts in pho­tog­ra­phy,SEO, web design, etc. Sug­ges­tions are very much expected!

We hope to see you there!

~julee~

Tweet