Wednesday, June 12
| Time | Event | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3pm-4pm | Early Registration & Swag Bag Pickup | Palmer House Hotel | |
| 17 East Monroe Street, Lower Level Lobby Grab your badge and swag bag after checking into your room at the Palmer House. For those who don’t pick up during this time, registration will also be at Venue SIX10 on Thursday morning. |
|||
| 5pm-7pm | Opening Reception and Brewery Tours | Revolution Brewing | |
| 3340 N. Kedzie Ave Enjoy beer and food pairings (as well as cider) while mingling with fellow attendees. Brewery tours will be happening during the reception for those who are interested. Light bites will be served; we encourage you to make post-reception dinner plans with your blogger buds! |
|||
Thursday, June 13
All sessions take place at Venue SIX10, 610 Michigan Avenue
| Time | Session | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:30am | Doors Open, Registration & Breakfast | Venue SIX10 | |
| Grab your badge and swag bag if you didn’t on Wednesday, then head upstairs for light breakfast and settle in for a day of learning. Gluten-free and vegan options will be available during breakfast. | |||
| 9am-9:30am | Welcome |
Crown Hall | |
| Eric Hochberger Eric Hochberger will talk the future of Mediavine — new products, passions and how we’re going to grow your business. |
|||
| 9:30am-10:15am | Keynote: How to Stay Fired Up About Your Brand | Crown Hall | |
| Jocelyn Delk-Adams With all of the constant shifts in the blogging industry, from social media algorithms to influencer marketing trends, the one thing that stays with you is your brand. Learn how to align your brand with your personal passion and create a community around the brand you love. |
|||
| 10:25am-11:10am | Best Practices for Website Safety: How Do I Protect My Website Online? | Crown Hall | |
| Ashish Kalsi A walkthrough on the 101s about website security and why it’s important for every website, security best practices and tools that you can use to monitor and protect your websites. |
|||
| 11:15am-12:05pm | Actionable SEO | Crown Hall | |
| Courtney O’Dell Quick and easy ways you can help grow pageviews and search presence — today! This session will show you how to write perfect posts and upgrade old posts; how to write titles that readers will click on; the best, easy keyword strategies; and how to grow your RPM with easy SEO updates that add value for your readers. |
|||
| 12:05pm-1pm | Lunch | Crown Hall | |
| Sponsored by Agathon Gluten-free and vegan options will be available at lunch.
|
|||
| 1pm-1:45pm | Embracing Your True Blogger Self and Taking Care of It | Crown Hall | |
| Brandy O’Neill Being your true self isn’t just doing what you want whenever you want. It’s breaking down who you really are and finding a network to help you thrive daily. Let’s shed the “social media highlight reel” epidemic and learn how to use social media to instead share your passions and struggles with your readers, friends and family. Learn how to take care of yourself, give yourself grace and kindness in times of stress and cope with the stressful comparison complex. Content Warning: Mental illness and domestic violence will be mentioned. |
|||
| 1:55pm-2:40pm | Negotiating Contracts | Crown Hall | |
| Jamie Lieberman Negotiation does not have to be a four letter word. As a practicing attorney for nearly 15 years, Jamie engages in negotiation on behalf of clients (and with her kids) on a daily basis. Jamie has developed a framework that she will share in this session so you can feel confident and achieve a successful result. Once you strike a deal, Jamie will also walk through the important factors in structuring that deal and protecting yourself through a written agreement. |
|||
| 2:45pm-3:45pm | Networking Break | Gallery 10 | |
| Head upstairs to grab drinks and snacks, then chat with your fellow attendees! This is a great time to meet Mediavine team members as well as conference speakers and sponsors. | |||
| 3:45pm-4:35pm | Email Jump Start! | Crown Hall | |
| Matt Molen Forget all the complicated things you’ve heard about newsletters! You don’t need a ton of time AND you don’t even have to create new content. Discover actionable techniques that get results, see examples of real campaigns to inspire your creativity and discover the tools that you need to help you “jump start” your email marketing efforts. |
|||
| 4:45pm-5:30pm | Bringing Back the Basics of Blogging to Increase Motivation, Traffic and Revenue | Crown Hall | |
| Karli Bitner In this presentation Karli will be teaching you everything she did to quickly grow her brand new site from zero to a full-time career. |
|||
| 6pm-12pm | Dinner | On Your Own | |
| Grab a few of your blogging friends and hit the town! Chicago has a wealth of restaurants to choose from. Check out our blog post for some recommendations! | |||
Friday, June 14
All sessions take place at Venue SIX10, 610 Michigan Avenue
| Time | Session | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:30 | Doors Open |
Venue SIX10 | |
| Head upstairs and get ready to start your day. | |||
| 9am-9:30am | Breakfast | Crown Hall | |
| Grab breakfast and chat with attendees before sessions begin. Gluten-free and vegan options will be available. | |||
| 9:30am | Brand tables and help desks open | Gallery 10 | |
| Visit with company representatives, learn about new offerings and get help on your website! Mediavine Publisher Support help desks will open at 10:15am. | |||
| 9:30am-10:45am | How to Rock Video as a One Person Crew | Room 722 | |
| Ashlee Marie Prisbrey YouTube is the second largest search engine and video content is important for Google (#1) as well! While short hands-in-pans videos work for Facebook and other social media, it isn’t enough for the platform where 70% of searches start with “how to.” The YouTube audience wants to be educated, they want tips and tricks and they want to connect with you. Learn how to create engaging, professional, long format “how to” videos using multiple camera angles without spending money hiring out a full production crew! You’ll learn a few different ways to achieve the multi-camera look (from using one camera to using more) and we’ll talk equipment, storyboarding, prep, filming and some tips for growing YouTube! |
|||
| 9:30-10:15am | Affiliate Marketing | Room 721 | |
| Hilary Erickson and Katie Clark Learn how to harness the power of affiliate marketing no matter what size your blog is. In this session, you’ll learn how to use your existing posts and traffic to increase your income, write affiliate posts that perform well on Google, utilize your newsletter and start your own affiliate program for products you sell. Katie & Hilary are both top affiliates in several programs across many types of products. |
|||
| 9:30-10:15am | Stop Getting in Your Own Way | Crown Hall | |
| Heather Tullos and Nicole Johnson Come and sit with Mediavine’s director and senior manager of support while they do live site audits and talk about the ways you can improve what you’ve got to increase ad revenue. |
|||
| 10:30am-11:15am | Budget Tools for Bloggers | Room 721 | |
| Latasha Peterson Latasha will be covering some of the best budgeting-friendly tools to use while growing a website/blog. She will cover different tools to help grow blog traffic, help with organization and productivity and help with time management. |
|||
| 11am-noon | Why Podcasting? | Room 722 | |
| Don Jackson You’ve already created the content. Why reinvent the wheel? In this session, Don will talk about how to re-purpose your blog and social media content into a podcast that will help you engage and grow your audience. You will learn how to make that content into an outline for a podcast episode, as well as the “why” you should have a podcast. |
|||
| 11:30am-12:15pm | Cold-Pitching Brands | Room 721 | |
| Dani Meyer Working with brands can be overwhelming, even for experienced bloggers. Dani will give you a full training on picking your ideal brands, how to approach them to ask for a contact and what goes into a really solid pitch email. |
|||
| 12:30pm-1:30pm | Lunch | Crown Hall | |
| Grab & Go Box Lunches Gluten-free and vegan options will be available. |
|||
| 1:45pm-3pm | Photoshop Editing | Room 722 | |
| Jennifer Farley Adobe Photoshop is an incredible tool for enhancing blog images, but it can be intimidating if you’re not sure how to use it. This session removes the mystery from Photoshop with a live demo showcasing how to make your images stand out using Camera RAW, adjustment layers, presets, levels, curves, the clone stamp, the spot healing tool, the burn/dodge/sponge tools and more. Bring your laptop if you’d like to practice alongside the demo! |
|||
| 1:45pm-2:30pm | Mobile First | Room 721 | |
| Jordan Cauley and Amber Bracegirdle More than ever, the web is now mobile. Learn how Mediavine is building products that embrace and enhance your content and advertising for mobile experiences. Learn what it means for SEO and Pagespeed and get a glimpse at all the metrics that are used by Lighthouse to rate your site. |
|||
| 3pm-3:30pm | Networking Break | Gallery 10 | |
| Grab a snack and chat with sponsors. | |||
| 3:45pm-4:30pm | Closing Keynote – Mighty Ugly | Crown Hall | |
| Kim Werker We know that mistakes and failures are an inherent part of the creative process and of entrepreneurship, but do we accept or even celebrate when things go horribly wrong? Nope. Not right away, anyway. Join the author of Make It Mighty Ugly for guidelines to help you embrace the flops and failures in your creative pursuits and business so you can see the upsides faster, connect more authentically with your audience and banish shame from your work. |
|||
| 6:30pm-10:30pm | Closing Dinner | Carnivale | |
| 702 W. Fulton St. Join us for one final toast and dinner at Carnivale, one of Chicago’s hottest restaurants, serving up dishes from South American, Latin and Caribbean cuisines. Gluten-free and vegan options will be available. |
|||