All photos by @HannahLozanoPhoto

If you follow along with me on Instagram Stories, you may have seen that I attended The Blog Societies Conference, affectionately called #TBSCon, in August. This year, the conference was at Barnsley Resort, about an hour north of Atlanta, Georgia.  I was thrilled when Cathy of Poor Little It Girl and Jessica of My Style Vita, co-founders of The Blog Societies, reached out to see if I’d be interested in returning for a second year to host a workshop session on contracts for bloggers. You can check out my recap from TBSCon 2018 here!

Not only have I known Cathy and Jessica for a few years now through blogging, I’ve actually attended #TBSCon in the past as a blogger.  Cathy and Jessica have created such an amazing community of bloggers supporting bloggers with TBS.  The conference is always such a great weekend, packed with networking, learning, and building even more community.

I loved teaching my workshop, Reading and Creating Contracts For Your Blog. I wanted to share a full recap of the weekend in case you’re interested in attending next year! So here we go!

friday

Friday night consisted of a fun, welcome party.  All of the speakers, workshop leaders, and attendees mingled with brands that were on hand for the conference.  This is a great opportunity to meet brand representatives and brands’ PR contacts. It’s also a great time to reconnect with friends and meet new people in the blogging and creative industry as well! It was such a fun night.  I loved connecting with familiar faces and meeting new folks as well! We ended the evening with a buffet-style dinner provided by Barnsley Resort. I have to give credit to Barnsley as the food throughout the entire weekend was outstanding!

saturday

The next day, Saturday, was a full day of workshops.  The day started off with a beautiful breakfast hosted by La Croix. Following breakfast, the workshops kicked off. There were several different workshops going on throughout the day including: Defining and Refining Your Brand with Abbey Estep of Wayfarer Design Studio, Perfecting The Art Of The Pitch with Eric Ligenza of BOSSPITCH, How To Organize & Streamline Your Business To Become More Profitable with Kate Jones of Kate Waldo + Co., How to Leverage Email Marketing for Better Blog Readership with Kara Ferguson of Politics of Pretty, Instagram + Blog Photography Tips And Techniques with Allie Provost of Prêt-â-Provost, SEO Strategy To Grow Your Organic Searches + Pageviews with Jessica Camerata of My Style Vita, and my workshop, Reading and Creating Contracts for Your Blog!

There was a break during the day for a lunch hosted by Marc Fisher. And then the workshops picked back up again in the afternoon. A new addition this year was the creative workshops. They were optional, but a fun opportunity to learn a new craft like cookie decorating with Renee Bledsoe of High Waisted Cookies or floral arranging with Malorie Orme of Petal + Fold.

A bit more about my workshop …

You might not realize how important it is for bloggers to have some base-knowledge on legal contracts.  Depending on the type of content bloggers are producing, bloggers could be responsible for reviewing and drafting multiple contracts per week.  There are contracts with photographers, videographers, and brands.  All of these contracts are 100% necessary to have in place.  There are so many moving parts when producing and publishing content.

In my workshop, I covered the basics of reading and writing a collaboration contract. We went through what bloggers should look for when reading a brand collaboration contract and how to negotiate changes. We also went through how to write your own collaboration contract, what to include, and how to address revision requests by brands.

The workshop was so much fun!  I loved fielding questions from the bloggers regarding actual contract issues they’ve faced when working on collaborations with brands.

Saturday ended with a lovely cocktail hour and dinner hosted by Yankee Candle followed by a s’mores roasting station set up by Barnsley Resort – it was so cute and the s’mores were delicious!

sunday

The conference ended on Sunday with a presentation on Federal Trade Commission rules and regulations by Brittany Stevens, a presentation by Manu Muraro of Your Social Team on How To Grow Your Instagram + Expand Your Reach, and a presentation by Matt Ragland of PODIA on How to Expand Your Revenue Streams Through Courses + Downloadable Resources.

The conference was not only fun, but really educational as well.  If you’re a blogger, I highly recommend joining  The Blog Societies and attending next year’s #TBSCon!  Huge thank you to Cathy and Jessica for having me!

If you’re a blogger and need assistance with drafting your own contract for brand collaborations or if you need help reviewing brand contracts, shoot me an email at [email protected], and we can set up a (free) consultation to walk through any of your contract needs!