Is the International Food Blogger Conference best suited for beginner or advanced bloggers?
As organizers, we do not steer the conference towards one group or another. And the subject is not so black or white – one blogger might be great at social media while terrible at search engine optimization, for example. Plus, our attendees are not just bloggers but also social media influencers and food writers.
But we do tend to see several distinct groups attending the conference:
- Beginners: We are not sure why beginner food bloggers and influencers are comfortable signing up for the IFBC but we have heard this to be the case. And we try to accommodate. For example, this year we have a one hour Intro to Food Blogging course taught by Shannon Epstein of Fit Slow Cooker Queen and myself. Shannon attended IFBC18 in New Orleans and afterwards reached out to tell us she noticed quite a few beginner bloggers were not doing the basics on their blogs. This session will help get newer bloggers up to speed fast before the conference begins.
- Entrepreneurs: We also have a reputation for being focused on helping influencers monetize their blogs, grow and profit from their social media followings, or launch from a blog to a personal business. I know better why this is one of our specialties: as the owner of Zephyr Conferences, I am an entrepreneur myself and believe this sort of content is very engaging and worthwhile for our attendees. You will always find content of interest to those of you on the entrepreneurial path.
- Advanced Bloggers: We have a sizable group of attendees who are quite advanced. This includes most of our alumni and most of our speakers. In fact, even though we try each year to provide advanced content, we are always hearing from our attendees they want us to take it to a higher level. In 2019 we are addressing this by labeling seven different content sessions as specifically for advanced attendees.
So I hate to provide a non-answer to the question in the subject line, but our goal is to be inclusive to all types of bloggers and we work hard to do so.