May 7th – Blogger’s guide to using Google+, Google Authorship and Hangouts

April 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This month’s event will be on the topic of Blogger’s guide to using Google+, Google Authorship and Hangouts.

google plus and google authorship

If you want to get more exposure for your blog and lots of search engine love, you need to understand and know how to use Google+ and make sure that you have completed your Google profile.

We’ll cover how to leverage all these free Google tools to leverage your blog’s presence online.

Date: Tuesday 7 May 2013

Time : 6.30

Tickets: £15 incl a drink and canapes




Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Venue :Avista Restaurant,

39 Grosvenor Square

Mayfair, London W1K 2HP

 


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Filed Under: Networking Events

Sheryl Sandberg’s New Book and Community – Lean In

March 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I think that there are not enough women mentors around, someone who talks sense about the issues that women face in the modern world and not just in their career or business. It is not the same “Women can have it all debate”. She adds her voice to this issue in her book.

I think that women should feel empowered by this and take whatever wisdom they can and incorporate it into their their lives and work.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook’s new book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
 has just launched and has generated a lot of commentary in the media already.

The reaction just shows that it’s still so hard for women to be ambitious and be anything they want to be.

I have not read this book yet, am still waiting for my copy to arrive.

The message says that you don’t have to choose a career or family and also it’s not wrong to reach higher in your career.

Her message: “Don’t leave before you leave” – is referring to women of child bearing age, planning to take time out to have children and in their mind start leaving behind their ambition and stopped striving before it’s time for maternity leave.

You can participate by joining the online community at http://leanin.org/

Here are some reactions to the book taken from youtube video :

sheryl sandberg lean in book

There are various interviews online but here is one of them where she talks about her philosophy.

Here is her talk at TED about “why we have too few women leader “that has generated a lot of commentary, some agreeing and some comdemning. It is food for thought.

Some home truths:
6:40 Ask a man why he succeeded – Anwer – It’s beacuse I am awesome.
Ask a woman the same question – Answer – It’s because someone helped them, they got lucky and they worked really hard and

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Mar 12th – Getting More Traffic to Your Blog

March 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

All bloggers have the same question, how do we get more traffic?

Someone who has cracked it for her food and travel blog is Fiona Maclean. She has been blogging for less than 2 years and her blog, London Unattached,  is now getting over 30,000 uniques a month. She will share her secret sauce (or her blogging tips) on what she has done to get that increase in blog traffic.

A bit more about Fiona in her own words:

My freelance writing activity focusses on food and travel.   I work as the restaurant reviewer for MyChicCity and have published travel articles in The Cultural Voyager, A Luxury Travel Blog, SmittenbyBritain and About My Generation.  I’m currently working on a number of print media features around Italy and Spain, with a focus on agritourism, artisan produce and organic/natural wines in addition to features about the London restaurant scene.

London-Unattached is my personal blog and was started to give me a hands-on understanding of social media and provide hands on experience.   It has recently been listed as one of the UK’s top 100 food blogs in Woman and Home, in the category of Travel and Writing.  The blog currently averages around 50,000 unique visitors a month.

An entrepreneurial self-starter, I have worked in Marketing and Communications for much of my career.   My first role was for Kennedy Brookes, a Restaurant, Hotel and Event Management group which at the time owned over forty London restaurants, a number of boutique hotels and an events management business.   Prior to establishing a writing career I worked for a number of blue chip companies, including Vodafone and Lloyds TSB.   I have an MBA from Warwick Business School.

London Unattached

Date: Tuesday 12 March  2013

Time : 6.30

Tickets: £15 incl a drink and canapes




Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Venue :Avista Restaurant,

39 Grosvenor Square

Mayfair, London W1K 2HP


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Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Filed Under: Networking Events

April 16 – How to use social media to build a loyal following for your blog

March 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This month we will be talking about using Social Media to build a loyal following for your blog

One of the main ways we can engage with our audience is to blog about things that will interest your audience. Social media is the tool we then use to engage with our audience.

Our guest speaker this month is Julie Falconer

Julie Falconer is a London-based travel writer and consultant. She writes an award-winning travel and lifestyle blog, A Lady in London, for which she has traveled to 90 countries. She is also an online strategy and social media consultant, public speaker, and freelance travel writer. Julie’s writing has featured in the National Geographic Intelligent Travel Blog, Time Out, Lonely Planet, and other travel publications.

Additionally, she has been interviewed on Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio and on leading travel guidebook websites like LUXE Guides. She also teaches monthly classes on social media and blogging at General Assembly in London. Originally from San Francisco, Julie attended Brown University and came to the UK in 2007 after leaving a career in finance, during which she worked for Goldman Sachs and a hedge fund.

 

Date: Tuesday 16 April 2013

Time : 6.30

Tickets: £15 incl a drink and canapes




Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Venue :Avista Restaurant,

39 Grosvenor Square

Mayfair, London W1K 2HP


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Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Filed Under: Networking Events

International Women’s Day Networking Lunch 8 March

January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

cote restaurant islington

It’s the International Women’s Day on 8 March and we are organising a lunch to celebrate this and at the same time to raise some funds for charity. A group of ladies at our networking group thought that a day time event would be better for some of them as they can’t get to the evening networking events.

We recently met the ladies who work on fund raising events for Oxfam so we thought we would mark International Women’s Day and hold a networking lunch which also contributes towards a good cause. Cote Restaurant in Islington has kindly offered to host our lunch and in return, they will also be making their own contribution to Oxfam too.

So come along and join us and celebrate International Women’s Day and bring a friend too.

About Oxfam Get Togethers

Oxfam Let's Get Together CircleOxfam Get Togethers is an initiative that encourages communities to raise funds to transform the lives of women in the UK and abroad.

Oxfam puts women’s rights at the heart of all they do so you know that the money you raise will truly transform lives around the world. As well as overseas Oxfam also works to empower and enable women living in the UK to transform their lives.

 

 

How Oxfam is helping women

  • In Sudan, where 70% of those living in poverty are women and where many die from domestic violence than war, traffic accidents, malaria and cancer combined. They trained 2 million women on women’s rights in 2012.
  • In Ghana they are paying to train midwives at £31 each.
  • •In Cambodia, Oxfam’s revolutionary digital project is supporting women like Chum Kor by providing them with invaluable access to information via mobile phones, information on market prices and vital weather warnings as well as the ability to call a doctor when their children are sick.
  • In the UK, the Tea in the Pot drop-in centre in Govan, Glasgow is a real life line to the women in the local community. It provides women from this impoverished part of the city with the ability to get together, share their problems, learn new skills and find out about opportunities in the area. For many women, the Tea in the Pot project has offered them the chance to turn their life around.

Venue: Cote Restaurant Islington

Date: Friday 8 March 2013

Time: 12.30

Price: £19 which includes a 3 course French menu and a welcome drink




Address:

4-6 Islington Green

London N1 2XA

Tel: 020 7354 4666

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Monthly Networking Feb 26 – Using Blogging and Social Media to create and grow businesses

December 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This month we have a panel of 3 exceptional women who have succesfully used bloggging and social media to find new clients globally, grow their business, secured a book deal, created a whole new life in a new city, found a new social circle and created a business with these tools.

Our panelists are:

Betty Herbert @52Betty

Betty Herbert is an award-winning blogger, who used her social media presence to secure a book deal.
Her book,  “The 52 Seductions” is now available in 9 languages, and Betty’s writing has appeared in publications including The Times, Cosmopolitan, Psychologies and Glamour. Alongside her writing, Betty is a co-director of The ReAuthoring Project (http://reauthoring.co.uk), which works with authors to create new ways of interacting with audiences.
Betty currently blogs at http://bettyherbert.com, and tweets as @52Betty.

Rachel Mc Cormack (@Catalancooking) 

Rachel is fesity Scotswoman who lived in Spain for a long while. She is an expert on how to use Twitter to create a whole new life. She runs Catalan cooking classes in London and is an authority on Spanish food.

Tracy Kellett (@BuyingAgent)

About Tracy:
Tracy Kellett has a day job buying properties for the rich, not so rich, famous and the possibly infamous. When not doing that she is a prolific tweeter and blogger, wittily busting myths about the property market and writing tongue in cheek about the vagaries of her working life and clients.

Tracy will be sharing her story on how social media tools like Twitter and blogging has opened up doors and business in more ways than she could have imagined. If you blog for business, you can’t miss this session.

Read the Tips on How to Make the Most of Networking Events here.

Date: Tuesday 26 February

Time : 6.30

Tickets: £15 incl a drink and canapes




 

Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Venue :Avista Restaurant,

39 Grosvenor Square

Mayfair, London W1K 2HP

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Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

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Monthly Networking Jan 8 – All About Blog Traffic

December 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Topic for our January Networking Meeting is about Getting More Blog Traffic Using Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media

All of us bloggers want more traffic to our blogs. There are so many ways that you can get traffic to your blog like using Social Media and Search Engine Optimisation. For bloggers, getting more traffic to your blog means more recognition, winning blogging awards, climbing up blog ranks, make more money, more offers to work with brands and lots more invitations to fun events.

Come and learn why it’s important to leverage both these free tools to gain more traction for your blog and to get more traffic to your blog or website.

At this month’s networking event, we will cover

  • the main ways that bloggers use to get more traffic.
  • We will also share tips on how to make sure that your blog has been fully optimised to get the most love from search engines and in particular Google. If you are serious about blogging, you really need to know this.
  • We will also share the list of things that you should avoid to make sure that you don’t do anything wrong that will knock your rankings on Google.

You will take away some practicle and easy to implement tips that will boost your blog traffic, get you higher rankings and you can rake in the rewards that brings.

Our Guest Speaker is Judith Lewis, an SEO expert.

Judith is a specialist online marketer with skills in SEO, PPC, social media marketing as well as other digital marketing techniques. She also blogs about Chocolate on MostlyAboutChocolate.com (@MostlyAboutChocolate)

Read the Tips on How to Make the Most of Networking Events here.

Date: Tuesday 8 Jan

Time : 6.30

Price: £15 incl drinks and canapes




 

Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Venue :Avista Restaurant,

39 Grosvenor Square

Mayfair, London W1K 2HP


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Reading Blogs on Your Smartphone with NuffNangX

November 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

What is this strange animal called NuffNangX? Their tagline is “Social Blog Stalking”. Basically it is a mobile app and website that lets you follow and read blogs on the go via their app.

Signing up on their website.

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After signing up and logging in, you are brought to this page and the little message that is like a guide. Let’s see where this takes us.

Step 2 of 8

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Helpful arrows to help you navigate the site.

Step 3 of 8

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You had to add a blog to get in so I added my food blog as shown in the sidebar.

Step 4 of 8

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A little bit of social interaction begins where you can “heart” your favourite blog and it will let the blogger know that you have done this. Not sure I like this as I can’t stalk blogs anonymously.

Step 5 of 8

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You can find more blogs to add via the search bar.

Step 6 of 8

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Nice feature, you can comment on the blog directly via the interface.

Step 7 of 8

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So conversations are one the main interactions as it has a prominent place in the navigation bar on top. We shall see how this functions in practice later.

Step 8 of 8

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Where you can update your settings.

Down to the nitty gritty – Claim Your Blog

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You will need to then verify ownership

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I ran into a snag at this point as I use a custom theme where I can’t edit the code to add their little snippet of code. Their support has not offered an alternative way of doing this so I have not been able to add my blog. Will revisit this at a later date. An easier option for those less technically inclined and people who do not dare to mess with the code side of their blogs, a handy wordpress plugin would help.

They have a feature where you can replace regular blog comments with NuffNagX Conversations. Since I don’t know anyone on the platform, this might not be useful for now. Maybe later when it gets a bit busier. So for now, I will just verify my blog and ignore the conversations.

At this point, I have a slight problem as it requires pasting code into my header file in my WordPress theme. I use a non standard theme which doesn’t allow editing of the main files. Will have to wing it and see what works.

Well, that didn’t work. Will have to wait for support to get back to me.

Editing Your Profile

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Meanwhile, I updated this.

Browsing around NuffNangX

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Since I have only followed my own blog, this is what shows up on my “timeline”. Nice clean layout, an image and an excerpt.

Finding blogs to follow

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Since this is a Singaporean venture where they have a massive list of users, most of the blogs on the system are Singaporean. This page has a twitter like feel with big follow buttons. Have not checked out the usability on the phone yet.

The Social Buttons

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When you hit share, it opens up the twitter and Facebook buttons. You can also start a conversation with another NuffNangX member.

Conversations on NuffNangX

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Conversations are limited to 500 characters and it seems to be only within the platform. I thought it had the ability to make comments on the blog itself. This is a major issue for me. There is no incentive for me to make comments on this platform except to create more engagement on yet another social platform. I would prefer to comment on the blog itself to get a link back to my blog. I believe they are working on adding this functionality. Watch this space.

In Summary, I think NuffNangX can be a great tool to help us consume content via the mobile. I think they will totally dominate if they added some functionality where their platform is integrated with other bigger social platforms out there.

You can try it out on their site http://www.nuffnangx.com/

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ,

Tuesday December 4th Ladies in Blogging Christmas Party

November 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Thatched Ladies In Blogging Christmas Party

Join the Ladies in Blogging Network at our first Christmas party. Inspiring speakers, networking, food, drink and laughs.

The Special Christmas Menu is a 3 Course Meal with several choices including a vegetarian option.

Venue:

The Thatched House

115 Dalling Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 0ET

Time: 6.30pm

Tickets: £25 (RSVP and tickets through the link below)




or alternatively you can RSVP For Christmas Party via Meetup.com

Filed Under: Networking Events Tagged With: , ,

Tuesday 13 November -Top Photography Tips With Paul Winch Furness

October 22, 2012 by 1 Comment
Women's Networking Group Ladies in Blogging

Avista Restaurant, Mayfair

Speaker of the Month

Paul Winch Furness is London based Professional Food Photographer.  He has a stellar array of clients from Mishkins to Pizarro. He will be sharing his tips on how to get the best images whether it is a still life shot of your recipes that you have cooked at home or taking the best shots of a dish in a restaurant.

We know that images tell as much of a story as your words on a blog. There is so much to learn in photography that I am sure these tips will help you improve the way you take pictures for your blog.

Read the Tips on How to Make the Most of Networking Events here.

Date: Tuesday 13 November

Time : 6.30

Price: £15 incl drinks and canapes

Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Venue :Avista Restaurant,

39 Grosvenor Square

Mayfair, London W1K 2HP

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Please email us at hello [at] LadiesinBlogging.com if there are any questions.

Get ready to network- Some tips

  • Get some new business card,we like these cute mini cards from Moo.
  • Prepare a short elevator pitch to tell people what you do in one sentence. This helps break the ice.
  • If you are shy, just smile and introduce yourself as the other person is probably just as apprehensive.
  • Just join in conversations in groups
  • Offer to help someone with something or introduce them to someone, that leaves a lasting impression on people you meet.
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