Top takeaways from attending the Type A Parent Conference

I attended the Type A Parent Conference last week.  In the past I’ve attended a handful of social media conferences.  They’re a balance of freebies, networking and seminars where you probably won’t learn anything.  At one such conference I asked someone, “what’s the best conference you’ve been to?”  They replied Type A Parent Conference because it helped get them to the next level.  Fast forward a couple of years and I know why they said what they did.

I’m not saying that Type A Parent Conference was great because I spoke there.  However, Mocha Dad, Makes Me Wanna Holler and I spoke on a panel about the state of dad bloggers.  It was moderated by Clark Kent’s Lunchbox and our conversation was insightful, fun and educational.

The other sessions I attended were full on educational, covered a wide variety of topics and were suited towards social media users or parent bloggers of any knowledge base.  Here are the high points from my notes at the sessions that I attended at Type A Parent 2013.

• Use Pinterest more
• Blog.pinterest.com is a good source for Q & A regarding Pinterest
• Schedule the pins
• Always write your own description when you re-pin something.  This puts it in your voice and is more earnest than simply re-pinning something.

Woah, you can schedule pins? I also heard some chatter about changing your blog account to a business one and I’m looking into that.

• Personalize your twitter page

The background where your bio is?  Mine had been black ever since I started it.  I had no idea that you could switch that out.

Gary Buchanan, the Social Media Managing Editor for the Disney Parks Blog spoke.   He is always a pleasure to hear speak, part motivation and energy, wrapped with stories about Disney.

• It’s not where you take things from; it’s where you take them to
• Don’t marry ideas
• Collect the questions that you want in order to move forward
• A relaxed mind often pops up the great ideas

Create a media kit I’ve been telling myself for the past two years.  There was a great session about creating a media kit.  It’s surprisingly simple; it just has an intimidating name and possible unknowns about pricing.

• Our media kit will be done by the middle of October

Google +, I’ve been meaning to love you.  I use you once in a while, but I’m now convinced of your SEO powers.

• Upload image from computer when adding to G+, this will post a bigger image
• Get google authorship.  We did that and now our mug shows up on Daddy Mojo searches.

When to be pro bono stuff? 

• Is it relevant? Am I passionate about it?
• Either way, set an annual limit of how much you do and stick to it.

Daddy Mojo was also a finalist in the We Still Blog Awards for our post about our vacation in Michigan with beef jerky, Harley riders, judging people and John Stamos.  There were 10 posts that were honored to do this and it was great fun to be in such a high class of bloggers.  (I’m the one in the red shirt, front row…)

But-wasn’t the crowd mainly women?

Yes, but I had my cootie shot, so I was covered.  It was a mixed crowd of some of the biggest bloggers in the country to people that had only started writing this year.  Everyone that I met was down to Earth, willing to share, learn, ask questions or answer them-and had fun.

“What does your wife think about you going out to dinner with 15 women”, I was asked one night.  It was said in jest because my wife is cool with it and knows the demographics of most blogger conferences.   There were a couple of dad bloggers in the audience including Ryan from Life of Dad and some social media experts who spoke on Facebook, web hosting and other topics.

Type A Parent Conference will be in Atlanta in 2014.  Our next conference stop is Dad 2.0, which will be the demographic opposite of Type A, but hopefully as educational.