BlogPaws West - Day 1

BlogPaws West is a continuation of the energy that started at BlogPaws East in April. The day began with a fantastic keynote speech by Mike Arms, President of Helen Woodward Animal Center. Trust me when I say there wasn't a dry eye in the house! For first breakout session, I chose Building Your Brand with Michele Miller of Wonderbranding and pet care and lifestyle expert Charlotte Reed. They presented some great stuff on how to define and build your platform, how to develop strategies to support your objectives, and how to use your blog content in other channels. The second session was Advanced Social Media presented by Janice Kahn of Dogster. She provided an overview of some of the most popular social media tools and recommendations on how to determine which tools are best for you, as well as best practices for incorporating these tools into your strategy.

After lunch was the Be the Change for Pets panel with Jane Harrell of Petfinder, Dorian Wagner of Your Daily Cute, Lynn Haigh of Pawpawty, and Jessica Vogalsang of Pawcurious. Be the Change struck a chord with participants at BlogPaws East, and it has become a powerful movement in the pet blogging community. The panelists issued another Be the Change Challenge - this time to blog about less adoptable pets during the week of September 19-25. The afternoon breakout session was Leveraging Your Social Media Skills to Help Rescues & Shelters. The presenters were David Binowski from Nutrish, Jane Harrell from Petfinder, and Andrew Barrett from Found Animals. This session emphasized how to develop a social media plan based on your organization's goals, how to find unique aspects about your organization to highlight, and how to develop strategies for a social media plan with multiple volunteers.

The final session of the day was a media panel on Finding Great Content in Today's Saturated World. The panel included Sharon Peters of USA Today, Tracie Hotchner of Cat Chat/Dog Talk, and Wendy Toth of Petside.com. All the presenters have been fabulous, and my brain is now crammed full with lots of great information that I can begin to incorporate into Bunny's Blog!