Jason Price has been blogging about personal finance for 3 years at One Money Design. Check out his blog and connect with him at #FinCon12.
Jason (2nd from right) making the most of FinCon11.
Many of us financial bloggers are spending some hard earned blogging money to attend #FinCon12. Well, if this is your first FinCon visit I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed.
The program is packed full of great content that will help you become a better blogger and provide the opportunity to connect with many other financial bloggers. It’s full of budget crunching, debt snowballing, smart spenders who all want to deliver a better online product to readers and customers!
So, how do you ensure you’ll get your money’s worth? The program delivers, but you’ll need to do your part too and here are a few ideas:
Bring your business cards. Yep, get some good old fashion business cards printed up and pass them out to everyone you meet. Make sure you get one in return. Why? This is a tight community and FinCon goers aim to learn a lot and support one another. As a follow up conference action item, I recommend you visit the blog of everyone you meet, add it to your reader, add a value added comment or two on some recent posts, and include them in your next roundup.
Polish your elevator speech. “What is your blog about?” “Uh…I blog about personal finance.” Nah, that won’t do it! Tell others why you started blogging, your unique perspective and experience with personal finance and what you hope to accomplish with your blog. Share your blogging mission and vision.
Get a game plan. As I said, the content will deliver but you need to make sure you have a plan on what sessions you’ll attend. Take a look at the schedule ahead of time and map out the speakers and topics most interesting to you. Make sure you allow for plenty of time for hallway conversations and networking too. Your plan should align with your blogging goals, the things you want to improve, and learn more about.
Capture tips and action items. I know I can’t attend and absorb everything in memory and expect to walk away and follow through on all the things I learned across these three days. I have to capture notes. Bring your laptop or iPad with you. I’m an Evernote nut because I can use tags to store my notes and easily search for them too.
Hey, here’s an idea…why not store your FinCon notes in the cloud and share with some blogging buddies? Maybe something you picked up on well help someone else.
Connect with others. Try to meet people you’ve never spoken to before. Introduce yourself, chit chat about your blogs. Offer to help one another. Keep it short if the conversation is weird or doesn’t go far, but definitely get a business card and follow through as I mentioned above. You never know how you might be able to help each other. And keep in mind; you don’t have to be best friends with everyone you meet. Just connect.
Celebrate! Hey, you’ve been working hard, right? Probably been up late blogging and losing sleep more than you care to talk about. Well, why not use FinCon as your pat on the back. Celebrate a little and have some fun in the evenings with blogging buddies. This conference is about having fun as much as it is about learning.
Recap your experience and what you learned. I recommend rounding out your visit with a great blog post sharing the FinCon experience with your readers. Touch on the things you liked best. Share why this was such a good trip for you, your readers and the blog. Share your blogging post with blogging buddies that couldn’t attend this year. Finally, ride the wave of energy you’re going to be on after FinCon. Try to implement 2 – 3 action items on your list within the first 2 weeks post the conference and write some kick butt posts!
#FinCon12 is going to be a lot of fun. Enjoy the experience and take your blog to the next level. See you there!
Image by PerkStreetJenna
Thanks for this post. While I’ve been in the “industry” for 15 years as a private money coach and financial therapist for women, I’ve never been to a convention such as this. I do blog, but not at the level of many of the attendees. So it’s a little intimidating, to be truthful. But I’m getting more excited about the conference. So thanks!