Social media star Priscilla Renea

For those of you who attended Blogalicious 2009, you had the distinct pleasure of hearing Priscilla Renea before her album was released. I heard her again today at an event I attended in DC. I didn't realize that she started off on YouTube (just like Justin Bieber), so here's an artist that is from social media and is using social media to share her talent. Please support her by following her on Twitter @priscillarenea and getting her cd. Here's a clip from YouTube and check out her website.

Trends in Social Media

We're in the thick of crafting our conference program for Blogalicious Weekend 2010 and we're curious to hear what you think are the hot trends right now in social media. Is it personal branding? Is it mobile? Is it {still} Twitter? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Blogalicious DC Event Recap

Our first Blogalicious Meetup was a success! Last Wednesday, about 100 women bloggers attended our first local event at the National Council of La Raza. The camaraderie was fantastic, the speakers were enlightening, and the evening left us full of promise for what is now a bonafide Blogalicious DC network. Thanks again to Xina Eiland for pulling together a wonderful evening.

A special shout out goes to Sandra Hicks and Chante Smith who drove alllll the way from Atlanta to attend. Now that's what we call Blogalicious!


Video Recap {Thanks to Tyler New Media for this video!}

BlogaliciousDC Meetup Recap from Tyler New Media on Vimeo.

BET Study: "African Americans Revealed"

MediaPost recently reported that BET published the results of a study finding that African Americans posses major influence in tech, media and buying power.

The "African Americans Revealed" study of more than 80,000 African-American consumers on multi-media engagement and digital applications, shows African Americans are very tech savvy, with roughly 31% of African American discretionary spending dollars, or $39 billion, going toward the purchase of computers, cell phones and electronics - a proportionally higher percentage when compared to non-African Americans.

Some additional findings...

African Americans:

- Spend more weekly time online (18 hours) than watching television (15 hours)
- 93% go online traditionally via their PCs, while 76% access the web via their cell phones
- 60% have downloaded music, a TV show, movie or ringtone in the previous month
- 50% regularly update and access a social networking account

What I found most interesting about that study was the seven groups that African Americans were broken down into:

◦ The Strivers are mostly in their late 20's to early 40's and are adventurous, fashionable, social mavens and opinion leaders who have their eyes on climbing the executive ladder

◦ Conscious Sisters are selfless women that are spiritually connected and highly conscious of their culture

◦ Tech-Fluentials are digitally savvy and travel in globally conscious circles

◦ Bright Horizons are young adults in high school and college that are aware of all available technology and electronic gadgets

◦ Inner Circle Elites are working women rich in their cultural, ancestral and spiritual roots

◦ Urban Dreamers are young, urban adults who are social magnets and trend setters intent on and focused on living life to the fullest

◦ Survivors are a group of risk-taking teen and young adult males who are hustling to keep their existence in check

According to the article, Matthew Barnhill, Senior VP of Corporate Research at BET Networks, says "African Americans Revealed shows us that the black community should never be referred to as one homogeneous population... We hope this report will help organizations better connect with an audience and intimately recognize all of its complexities.

We couldn't agree more!

Blogalicious Bytes #2: How to be #1 on Google without Paying a Small Fortune

Our next webinar is scheduled for March 4th at 9pm EST and we have been lucky enough to get Adria Richards to host another session on "How to be Number One on Google without spending a Small Fortune." Click HERE to reserve your spot for this informative session.

If you're a new blogger or an experienced one, a blogger trying to build a business, blogging for fun or blogging for work, you'll find this webinar crucial to understanding what you need to do to become #1 on Google.

If you're curious about which blogging platform is better for SEO, whether SEO rules still apply when using Wordpress for a blog and CMS, whether page rank is lessened by uploading too much content within a short time, what exactly page rank is and how to get it (these were a few questions asked at the previous webinar) -- then this webinar is for you.

Don't be afraid that this will be too technical for you because Adria will break it down in simple terms for us all to understand.

Please submit your questions beforehand so Adria can expand on the content of the presentation.

Hope you'll join us!

More about Adria

Adria Richards is an organic technology consultant, trainer and speaker. She is dedicated to empowering people through technology. Adria started her career at Geek Squad in 1999 and has 11 years of experience in the IT industry. She launched her own consulting company in 2006. She blogs at ButYoureAGirl, offers online training at Freshworkshops, does a weekly tech show at AskAdria and strives to raise awareness for open source, cloud/SASS applications and equality in technology.

Adria will be speaking at this year’s SXSW and BlogHer. She enjoyed last year's inaugural Blogalicious conference, was able to reconnect with many other women she had met at other events and had time at this event to have deeper discussions with many new people! She plans to return to the Blogalicious 2010 conference in Miami this October.

New Twitter Handle: @beblogalicious

Just a quick announcement to let you know that the Twitter handle for the Blogalicious conferences and other related events is now @beblogalicious. No need to re-follow us if you're already following our updates; this is just an FYI.

Please tweet and re-tweet if you're so inclined!

DC Meet-up scheduled for this Wednesday

Our very first Blogalicious IRL meet-up is scheduled in DC for this coming week and we are so excited. For most of us, it'll be our first time to connect with many of the fabulous ladies that we met at Blogalicious 2009, as well as meet many, many more fabulous people. We've been blessed to have the support of a few amazing ladies here in the DC area to help us get this together - thank you Xina, Tonya and Ananda. Without your unwavering support we don't know how we would have been able to plan this event.

So, look out for pictures and tweets (and maybe even live streaming - we'll keep up updated about the live streaming on Twitter). See you on Wednesday!

Calling All Editorialistas!

Blogalicious is currently looking for blog editors to write for it's soon-to-be-launched lifestyle destination site:My Blogalicious. The My Blogalicious opinion, entertainment and news site will feature columns on a variety of topics including: Politics, Relationships, Food, Style, Parenting, Home, Entertainment and Travel (just to name a few!) We ask for a minimum of 2 posts a week on your topic of expertise.

Applicants should have a minimum of 90 days consecutive blogging experience either on the topic or somehow related to the topic.

We are looking for bloggers who are passionate about their topic, who love to blog, and who will commit the time necessary to establish My Blogalicious as a "go-to" site for what's interesting to women of color on the web.

At this time this opportunity is unpaid, but you will continue to gain experience and gain critical exposure as an expert in your field.

If this sounds like you, then send us a completed application to info@blogaliciousweekend.com.

Recap from BlogaBytes Webinar # 2

Thank you for attending our webinar today with awesome instructor Adria Richards on “How to be #1 on Google without Paying a Small Fortune.”

Please take a moment to complete a short survey (here) and let us know what you thought.

If you missed it, Adria has graciously agreed to host this webinar again on March 4th, and you can register here.

How To Be Number One On Google Blogalicious


Here are a few links from today’s session for your reference:

Google Analytics Signup - http://google.com/analytics

Wordpress.org is the self-hosted version of Wordpress requiring a domain name and hosting – http://wordpress.org/

Great examples of Wordpress websites for Inspiration – http://welovewp.com/

Copyblogger, resource for writing great content for the web - http://copyblogger.com/

What is SEO? Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

What is Google Page Rank? Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_page_rank


Links to Adria’s content

Adria’s training website for blogging and SEO – http://freshworkshops.com/

Original show on this topic at AskAdria, How To Be #1 On The Google Without Spending A Small Fortune - http://bit.ly/Y5liP

Adria’s tech blog – http://butyoureagirl.com/

Adria weekly technology show – http://askadria.com/

More about tomorrow's FREE webinar

Our Blogalicious Bytes: Lessons in Social Media series continues with Session # 2 tomorrow, February 11th at 2 p.m. Please join instructor Adria Richards of butyoureagirl.com and freshworkshops.com as she presents on the topic How to be Number One On Google without paying a Small Fortune.

If you own a business and you’re on the internet, you have probably heard about your “Google rank”. Maybe someone has called or emailed you promising if you pay them a monthly fee, they can get you to the very top of Google.

A study by JupiterResearch and iProspect revealed that 68% of search engine users click a search result on the first page and a full 92% select one of the first three results!

Adria will show you how you can:
- Increase your search engine traffic
- Improve the quality of the traffic so that you have visitors interested in your product, services, conversation
- Use tools from Google to understand what people are searching for
- Install Google Analytics on your blog to measure your traffic
- Evaluate your visitor traffic to make sound decisions on your blogging strategy
- Steer clear of fake offers to artificially boost your ranking

Adria will also discuss what SEO is and what it isn’t using an example of good SEO content development.

Please RSVP today and tell your friends.