Darren Rowse
problogger.net
Darren is the founder of ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and ProBlogger Events. He’s been blogging since 2002 and has been involved in a variety of other projects including co-authoring ProBlogger the Book. Darren’s passion is for helping bloggers find their voice and build sustainable blogs. He founded this event and is committed to helping attendees come away with practical and actionable training.

Brian Fanzo will lead a conversation on the value of digital storytelling focusing on personal branding and leveraging multiple platforms to tell your story. Things like live streaming and social video help you standout from the noise online. Brian will give you on real-world examples to inspire and empower you to value your story and influence.

Brian Fanzo
isocialfanz.com
Brian Fanzo talks fast and tweets faster. A proud pager wearing millennial, he is a keynote speaker and founder/CEO of iSocialFanz LLC, a social strategy consulting agency. Brian is also one of the founders of Backlamp LLC, the parent company of Summit.Live, the largest live streaming event in the world focused on celebrating creators and storytellers leveraging social live streaming video.
Brian’s #ThinkLikeAFan philosophy has powered first-of-their-kind storytelling campaigns for many Fortune 50 enterprise companies leveraging Periscope, SnapChat and Facebook Live under the username @iSocialFanz.
He was recently awarded the Top 25 Social Business Leaders of 2014 by The Economist Intelligence Unit and has been nominated for the first ever #ShortyAwards Periscoper Of The Year 2016. In 2016, Brian will keynote in 9 countries at more than 40 events highlighting his passion for change, collaboration and community – dubbed the 3 C’s these elements are the foundation of his first book A Millennial Mindset due out Spring 2017.

Natalie Sisson
suitcaseentrepreneur.com
Natalie Sisson is No #1 bestselling author, podcaster, speaker and adventurer who believes everybody has the right to choose freedom in business and adventure in life. She’s on a mission to ensure 1,000,000+ entrepreneurs do just that by 2020 over at the SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com

Daniel Flynn, co-founder and Managing Director of Thankyou, will share his story of starting Thankyou from the ground up to inspire you to overcome setbacks, challenges and discouragement in your journey. He’ll talk about the importance of not letting fear get you down, persisting when it’s tough and how to not allow the opinions of others to hold you back from achieving your bold, audacious dream.

Daniel Flynn

thankyou.co
Daniel Flynn co-founded Thankyou at the age of 19 with a simple idea: what if purchasing everyday items could provide life-changing solutions for millions of people in poverty? Seven and a half years on, Daniel’s disruptive approach to making ideas a reality has resulted in Thankyou becoming one of Australia’s leading social enterprises, impacting hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Daniel’s goal is to inspire others to make their own ideas a reality and he believes that every person can do something extraordinary to make an impact on this world. In 2014 he was awarded Victorian Young Australian of the Year and received the title of honouree in the JCI Ten Young Outstanding People of the World program.

As bloggers, our mind is normally focused on one thing, creating more blog posts. In this session, I will get your mind focused on something else, becoming an entrepreneur, and doing it through the medium that you love (blogging). I will share my greatest lessons in 10 years as an entrepreneur and 7 years in blogging, along with some super actionable strategies for turning your blog into a scalable lead generation machine.

Learn:

• A new way of thinking about entrepreneurship and content creation
• A framework for creating high-quality content
• A strategy for skyrocketing your conversions and growing your business through blogging

Dan Norris
wpcurve.com/blog
Dan Norris is not your average public speaker, in fact respected internet entrepreneur James Schramko refers to Dan as the anti-speaker.

With Dan you won’t get “rar rar” and you won’t get the same regurgitated message pumped out from event to event. Dan is not a public speaker, he’s an entrepreneur that loves sharing his up and down story and doing it in a unique, transparent and actionable way. He only presents when he feels like it’s a perfect fit with the audience and never delivers the same presentation twice, and never for money.

Dan’s dry humour and ruthless honesty always make for an entertaining presentation, but the focus is firmly on the audience taking something away. It’s not uncommon for Dan to spend 6 months refining a presentation for a single event, and for his talks to be consistently voted up there with the highest of the events he speaks at.

Dan has presented at conferences from Sydney to Bangkok, The Philippines and beyond, at events like ProBlogger, Superfast Business Live and Tropical Think Tank and alongside speakers such as Peter Shankman, Derek Sivers, Jadah Selner, Chris Ducker, Darren Rowse and Lewis Howes.

The supposed necessity of “choosing a niche” has confounded many aspiring bloggers. Some people set up blog after blog, abandoning each one when their interests evolve (you know who you are). Others confuse their audience by writing interior design tips and ice cream flavour reviews on the same site — that is, not demonstrating how two disparate topics might relate. A third group remains completely paralysed, and never begins!

Emilie will talk about how to craft a multifaceted blog that allows you to write about several topics, and still feels cohesive.

Emilie will cover:

• The niche blog vs the Rennaissance blog
• The importance of having an overarching/umbrella theme, and three ways to find yours
• Defining your audience, and catering to their needs
• Simple exercises to help you mine your passions, interests and curiosities, and come away with new enthusiasm for your blog

Emilie Wapnick 
puttylike.com
Emilie Wapnick is a speaker, career coach, blogger, and community leader. She is the Founder and Creative Director at Puttylike.com, where she helps multipotentialites (people with many passions, skills, and creative pursuits) integrate all of their interests to create dynamic, fulfilling and fruitful careers and lives. Unable to settle on a single path, Emilie studied music, art, film production and law, graduating from the Law Faculty at McGill University in 2011.Emilie has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post and Lifehacker. Her recent TED talk, Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling has been viewed 2.4 million times and translated into 30 languages.

A year or two into blogging it is easy to write a list of things you wish you knew before you started; wordpress vs blogger, build an email list, create a content plan, build a community etc. But 8 years into blogging you gain a different perspective. If you are intending to blog for the long haul, the lessons Nicole Avery will share in this session will help you set yourself up for sustainable blogging success.

Learn:

• How to stop your blog taking every waking moment
• The importance of being realistic about your blog and your blogging skills
• The realities of blog growth
• How to use ‘burn out’ for good
• Why you need to be able to separate yourself from your blog

Nicole Avery
planningwithkids.com
Nicole Avery is a Melbourne mum to five beautiful kids aged 17 to 7 and the master organiser behind the successful blog, Planning With Kids. Since starting her blogging journey in 2008, Nicole has grown her blog into a platform enabling her to establish herself as a freelance writer, consultant and product creator. Nicole runs her small business from her home in part time hours that suit her family. She is also a sought after speaker on a variety of topics including blogging and family organisation and the creator of an online blogging course with the Australian Writers Centre, How to Get More Blog Readers.

Blogging and social media can often be an overwhelming hamster wheel of continuous content, and it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out online. In this session I will aim to show you how you can personalise your brand’s message, and create a content workflow that works for you. We will discuss planning, crafting, scheduling, tools, writing, and inspiration to help you work smarter for better engagement results. Bring a pen and an open mind, and I’ll have you walking out of there with a game plan and plenty of ideas. Say goodbye to writer’s block and social media overwhelm!

Walk away knowing:

• How to never find yourself out of ideas
• How to keep ideas and inspiration organised
• How to plan, keep a calendar, and share your stuff
• How to create a workflow that is doable
• Where to find cool stuff to share with your audience on social media
• How to figure out what your readers want and help create it for them

Stacey Roberts
theveggiemama.com
Stacey Roberts left behind journalism and a career in academics to start a personal blog six years ago, and has never looked back. Now a full time blogger, Stacey blends technical know-how with a lifelong love of writing on both her blog Veggie Mama, and in her role as Managing Editor of ProBlogger. She loves to help people reach their blog’s potential without losing their minds. Has a penchant for yoga, cheese, and old books. Uses way too many emojis.

When you’re starting out, blogging is all about creating content, content, content. But you’re creating it for people to read, so naturally you want to build your readership beyond just your mum! In this session Darren shares his tried and true strategies for building a readership for your blog, no matter what stage you’re at. So if you’re feeling like you’re talking to the ether or your audience just isn’t growing, grab this rare opportunity to learn directly from Darren himself.

You will learn:

• How to create a reader avatar to help you find the right kind of reader
• How to create shareable content to get your blog more eyeballs
• How to create ‘guest content’ on other sites to help build your profile and drive traffic
• How to turn ‘surfers’ into ‘readers’ through building a ‘sticky’ blog
• How to use social media to drive traffic to your blog

Darren Rowse
Founder, ProBlogger
Darren is the founder of ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and ProBlogger Events. He’s been blogging since 2002 and has been involved in a variety of other projects including co-authoring ProBlogger the Book. Darren’s passion is for helping bloggers find their voice and build sustainable blogs. He founded this event and is committed to helping attendees come away with practical and actionable training.

When it comes to building a successful blog, you don’t just want readers, you want a community of die-hard fans.

In this session, you’ll learn: 

• Why building engagement with your readers matters so much and the benefits of building community
• Simple strategies to build a community that trusts you, believes in your cause (because it’s their cause, too), and supports one another
• Unconventional methods that Emilie used to build her community at Puttylike (you’ll also hear about some of the spectacular failures)
• How to take things to the next level and create a paid membership site that becomes an integral part of your community members’ lives

Emilie Wapnick 
puttylike.com
Emilie Wapnick is a speaker, career coach, blogger, and community leader. She is the Founder and Creative Director at Puttylike.com, where she helps multipotentialites (people with many passions, skills, and creative pursuits) integrate all of their interests to create dynamic, fulfilling and fruitful careers and lives. Unable to settle on a single path, Emilie studied music, art, film production and law, graduating from the Law Faculty at McGill University in 2011.Emilie has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post and Lifehacker. Her recent TED talk, Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling has been viewed 2.4 million times and translated into 30 languages.

This session will be for anyone looking for some hacks and ideas to build an effective social media strategy to support their blogs. It will help you to identify which channels to choose to invest in, how to optimise your existing strategy and the best tools you can use to manage your efforts.

In attending this session you will gain a greater understanding of:

• Each social media network and how to choose the right platforms to promote your blog
• The psychology of how users interact with messages on each platform (and how to get your message right)
• Tips on how to ensure your content “cuts through” the noise on social platforms
• How to use social media insights to improve your social media strategy and blog content
• Which tools to use to efficiently manage your strategy

Kate Cook 
smallpaperthings.com
Kate Cook has been a Digital Marketing Consultant and Social Media Specialist for over 5 years. Starting her career working in agency and later moving to head up the social media marketing for Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, Kate has a breadth of experience across a multitude of industries. Kate shares her digital marketing learnings on her blog Small Paper Things. Small Paper Things Blog has been shared across social media more than 80,000 times and has recently been recognised as one of Australia’s Best Business Blogs for 2016.

Can you really make money blogging? The answer is yes, and the ways you can do it are many. However, it all takes hard work and some ways will be better for you and your blog than others. Who else to give you a grounding in what’s possible than the original ProBlogger Darren Rowse? These are not get quick rich schemes, but actual tactics Darren has implemented himself. He’ll also be inviting a few attendees to discuss how they’ve successfully monetised their blogs too.

You will learn:

• The Four ‘pillars’ that profitable blogs are built on
• How Bloggers use up to 40 different methods to make money blogging
• The importance of diversifying income streams to build your overall blogging income
• How to choose the right monetisation methods to leverage your blog’s strengths
• How three Aussie bloggers monetise their blogs through different models

Darren Rowse
ProBlogger.net
Darren is the founder of ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and ProBlogger Events. He’s been blogging since 2002 and has been involved in a variety of other projects including co-authoring ProBlogger the Book. Darren’s passion is for helping bloggers find their voice and build sustainable blogs. He founded this event and is committed to helping attendees come away with practical and actionable training.

You’ve started a blog (or are wanting to), your traffic is growing and you’re gaining traction and popularity. The last thing you need is legal problems derailing your plans.

Would you like to avoid legal issues in the first place; have the confidence to respond to problems if they arise; and know when you do and don’t need to call for further legal advice?

This session is designed to help you understand some of the most common legal issues facing Bloggers and to give you some strategies to deal with them.

Learn:

• How to copyright your content and avoid breaching others’
• Your obligations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
• About the limits of Trade Mark protection
• Why you need a disclaimer to limit your liability
• Why you should have legal terms on your blog
• Whether you need to make disclosures and what kind
• Your obligations regarding other people’s comments on your blog
• The fundamentals of anti-spam compliance

Jeanette Jifkins
onyxonlinelaw.com
Jeanette is really passionate about identifying the practical legal solutions that fit your business. Her strategy is to ensure that legal problems are avoided, or at least contained and managed quickly in the unlikely event that they occur, to give you the opportunity to stay focused on growing your business with confidence. Having a dedicated legal professional available to advise you on the complexities involved in e-commerce and digital media is a more cost effective solution than court action. With more than 17 years experience helping over 1000 clients protect their business both large and small, Jeanette has a range of strategies that give her clients clarity and certainty in the ever changing online world.

Great blog design goes well beyond your site looking really slick or pretty. Your blog needs to be both functional and beautiful. It must *do* something – for both you and the reader. This presentation will send you home with a checklist of 5 functionality items and 5 design items against which you will be able to critique your own blog design like a pro!

Learn:

• Why great blog design is crucial
• The difference between functional design and beautiful design (and why you need both for a great blog design)
• The 5 functional design items every great blog design needs
• The 5 aesthetic design items every great blog design needs
• Some examples of great blog designs
• Real life critiques of current/existing blog designs

Kelly Exeter
kellyexeter.com.au
Kelly Exeter has been a designer for nearly 15 years and runs Swish Design. In the past six years she has worked with some of Australia’s top bloggers including Styling You, Fox in Flats and Woogsworld. A blogger herself, Kelly‘s approach to blog design goes beyond simply making things look nice. She also works hard to ensure the blogger’s brand is enhanced by their blog design, and that the design is incredibly functional too.
As she and her husband own the web and blog hosting company Swish Online, Kelly is also across the tech side of owning a blog (more than she’d like to be actually!). Swish Online hosts some of Australia’s biggest blogs and as a result, Kelly has seen pretty much every ‘thing’ that can take a blog offline … and knows what to do to ensure these things happen as infrequently as possible.

If you ever wondered how YouTube fits into your blogging and other online activities, this is the session for you. YouTube’s Pritish Agarwal will cover the essentials for growing an audience on this platform, how it can benefit your blogging, and YouTube supports its content creators in Australia and New Zealand. You’ll also have the chance to learn first hand from two of Australia’s most successful creators. Elly from /EllyAwesome has 250k subscribers to her channel and Vanessa from /CakeStyleTV has 450k – between them a wealth of experience to share with you in a Q&A session.

Learn:

• How to grow an audience and create community on YouTube
• How YouTube integrates with your other blogging, content creation and social media activities
• Understand your advantage from the synergies between blogging and vlogging
• Practical tips directly from creators Elly and Vanessa

Pritish Agarwal
YouTube
Pritish is a Partner Manager at YouTube for Australia and New Zealand. He works with thousands of Australian video creators across all content genres. He helps grow their presence and build their Brand on YouTube and across various social platforms. Pritish has been at Google for 4 years, 3 of which have been spent in the YouTube organisation.

Vanessa Anderson
Cake Style
Vanessa Anderson is a YouTuber, blogger and cake decorator whose passion for pretty cakes has taken her from being just a baker who sells sweets at the markets, to one of the most popular food YouTubers in Australia. She has a passion for piping, buttercream flowers, and loves to see students bringing her ideas to life. Her work has been featured in Cosmo Bride, Bride To Be, My Wedding Day, White, Hunter Valley Wedding Planner, and more. She has been a feature writer for many of these, discussing topics such as perfect cake flavours, grooms cakes, and cake trends.

Elly Awesome
‘Elly Awesome’ is a well-known food and lifestyle YouTube channel with almost 250,000 subscribers and a total of 28 million video views. ‘Elly Awesome’ had its origins reviewing popular mobile games and all things tech. But it has since evolved to its current form, a predominately comedic onslaught of light-hearted food reviews, recipes and travel ‘vlogs’ (video blogs). She was chosen by YouTube as a ‘Next Up Vlogger’ in 2013 and in late 2014-2015 Elly was one of the hosts of the show “Technobabble” which aired on TV on CBBC in the UK.

With the right tools bloggers can easily implement SEO on their site. This session will give you practical and usable advice on the best SEO tools and how to use them. Includes Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Google Search Console, majestic, Google Analytics and how to check your rankings properly. You certainly will start using these SEO tips and tools once you see them in action.

Learn:

• How to easily identify and understand issues with your site
• How to monitor changes you make
• The right way to check your rankings
• Where your traffic is coming from

Jim Stewart
stewartmedia.biz
Jim Stewart, CEO of StewArt Media, is a recognised digital marketing expert. Jim is ProBlogger’s SEO subject matter expert and he will be sharing his vast SEO knowledge over the course of the conference, including what are the top SEO tools and why you must be using them and 5 things bloggers do wrong. Jim has worked closely with bloggers successfully doubling traffic and improving site performance. What Jim doesn’t know about SEO and blogging isn’t worth knowing, check out his sessions to take advantage of his wealth of experience.

We all know want to know how to get more email subscribers, sales and traffic. One of the most effective ways to grow your online business is to utilise email marketing. In this presentation I will share the Top 14 ways to build your email list FAST. These are the exact strategies we’ve used to grow the Foundr email list from 0-200,000+ in 16 months.

These are the actionable list building strategies you will take away and want to implement:

• Understanding the power of landing pages
• Understanding the power of social proof
• Understanding of all the different assets at your disposal to build your email list FAST
• How easy it is to build your email list quickly with these GOLD techniques I will be sharing

Nathan Chan
foundrmag.com
Nathan is the Publisher & Editor of Foundr Magazine, a digital magazine for young entrepreneurs on the App Store & Google Play store. Nathan launched Foundr in March 2013 from his bedroom and in a small period of time it has become a top 10 ranked ‘Business & Investing Magazine’ on the app store. As publisher of Foundr Nathan was a finalist for Publisher of the Year for 2014 & 2015 in the Digital Magazine awards. Since the inception of Foundr the platform now reaches over 1 million entrepreneurs worldwide.

Having somebody give you their attention in this day and age is a bit of a miracle when you think about it. You owe it to them to speak directly to their pains, gains and jobs to be done. This session will provide a framework and guidelines to creating blog posts, videos and podcasts that motivates your tribe to take action!

• Understand the groundbreaking Pains/Gains/Jobs To Be Done framework
• The two minute exercise that will eliminate writers block
• Sell with out the sleaze – How to make offers to your tribe they love (No more Pitchforks!)
• Rapid-fire copywriting tips – Understand the key “Hows” of copy (For Blogs, Video and Podcasts!)
• Learn about Cheese and Whiskers – you’ll never sound “Salesy” again

Ed Dale
The Challenge
Ed Dale is a simple country boy from Beechworth, Victoria. He is the founder of the Challenge – Responsible for teaching over 400,000 people to start a business online for free. He partnered with Legendary Copy Writer Gary Halbert and has created promotions and launches responsible for millions of dollars in revenue. He would give all that up for a Western Bulldogs Premiership this year.

Being able to write in a way that has readers begging for more is not as complicated as you might think. At the heart of every successful blog is great content, and in this session you’ll learn writing tips and tricks to help you consistently serve your readers easy-to-digest and engaging posts.

Learn:

• Style and structure tricks to improve the readability of your posts
• How to write engaging content that hits the mark every time
• What makes an irresistible headline
• 7 things that will help you streamline the writing process
• What makes good blog fodder and how to repurpose content
• How to unlock and develop your unique writing style

Bonus for freelance writers: How to boost your chances of having your work published

Emily Toxward
havealaughonme.com
writestyling.com.au

A published writer for nearly 20 years, former journo Emily Toxward cut her teeth on a daily paper in NZ and can turn her hand to any style of writing. She’s a whiz at using words to pack a punch and writes for various online and print publications. With almost 2000 blog posts under her belt Emily’s never without an idea or something to say on her podcast Two Chatty Chicks. The owner of Write Styling is passionate about crafting words and helps businesses create a formidable online presence. When she’s not wrangling her three children, Emily escapes to the beach for inspiration and sanity.

Instagram is a platform being used in a multitude of creative ways – there’s no one blueprint for success. Three savvy Instagram users will each share their top tips on how they have built up their audience, created community, generated leads, developed products and monetised their influence on the platform. A variety of perspectives and business models will give you an array of tactics you can pick and choose from to create your own unique approach on Instagram.

Nathan Chan
foundrmag.com
Nathan is the Publisher & Editor of Foundr Magazine, a digital magazine for young entrepreneurs on the App Store & Google Play store. Nathan launched Foundr in March 2013 from his bedroom and in a small period of time it has become a top 10 ranked ‘Business & Investing Magazine’ on the app store. As publisher of Foundr Nathan was a finalist for Publisher of the Year for 2014 & 2015 in the Digital Magazine awards. Since the inception of Foundr the platform now reaches over 1 million entrepreneurs worldwide.

Alex Paterson
whattheteacherwears.com
Alex Paterson is a part time school teacher and fashion stylist. She gave up her full time teaching career to pursue her blog whatttheteacherwears. Alex has always had a passion for style, grace and elegance in fashion, and wanted to give other ladies ideas and tips about how to put together fashionable (while not ridiculously expensive) work and everyday outfits and ensembles. Since launching whattheteacherwears in August 2014, the site is about to pass the 100,000 visitor mark. Alex has worked with some major Australian companies including Harris Scarfe, Katies, Seed and Betts to name a few.

Melissa Smith
liss.com.au
Melissa (Liss) Smith is a mum to six amazing small people aged 2-13, a hand-lettering artist, social media geek and coffee snob. To fit business around family life, Liss works from home, most often in her pyjamas! She has built a large, active community on Instagram around her unique take on modern calligraphy, with a following of over 200K (up from 2.5K in November 2015). Video has played an enormous part in the growth of her community – since January of this year her videos have been viewed a total of 12.5M times. Earlier this year Liss launched her first online course, as well as an ongoing lettering challenge. Liss has also designed this year’s ProBlogger Event logo and other graphic design elements including Niche Networking icons, which we are very grateful for.

Caro Ryan (moderator)
lotsafreshair.com
A TV Producer/Director/Editor by trade (the ultimate slashie) Caro started lotsafreshair (blog and YouTube channel) to encourage people to get into hiking and the outdoors, by providing inspiring imagery and stories, mixed with practical tips and how-to’s, in a supportive and friendly style.
When not out in the bush, she is owner of Juicy Projects, a production and project consultancy based in Sydney, specialising in shooting in remote and logistically tricky locations such as jungles, volcanoes and on the high seas, as well as creating effective communications projects for her clients. These have included Disney, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, Roads & Traffic Authority, Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank.

Facebook … is it still worthwhile? Can you still make it work for your blog or website without it being a total waste of time or costing you the earth? Sam has a total Facebook following of over 750,000 across 3 separate pages and has built 2 of those communities from scratch and brought back to life a 3rd dormant community of 360,000 after years of limited reach. Come and hear from Sam as she reveals her tips and tricks for getting organic reach on her Facebook pages. Facebook is not dead, in her opinion, it is just beginning.

There are a few key questions I find people are not asking when thinking about Facebook and organic reach. I am going to ask those questions and answers them to give you a full understanding of how this Facebook beast works.

When you leave this session you will understand:

• What Facebook are looking for in a post
• Why each individual post matters
• Why competitions are not dead and how you can use them to do good things
• Why the person sitting next to you may be your best friend
• Why Facebook is still a big deal for your blog
• Hacks, tips and tricks I have learnt along the way

Sam Jockel 
schoolmum.net
Sam Jockel first launched into the digital world in 2010 when she started the Facebook page ALDI Mum which grew from nothing to over 106,000 followers and counting. In 2012 she co-founded Social Media Agency Good Funny Smart. She now runs countless social media pages for a variety of different blogs all boasting great numbers and success including her latest Facebook and blog project School Mum with over 312, 000 followers in 24 months and Suburbly with over 360,000 followers and counting.

Getting seen in the Facebook & Instagram newsfeed is a challenge for already time-poor business owners and bloggers. And Facebook Ads often seem like just another distraction that waste money and produce little results. In this session Angela will show you how you can create simple ad campaigns that don’t blow your budget.

Learn:

• The most important things to get right before creating your first ad campaign
• The differences between Facebook & Instagram ads
• Tips for running Facebook & Instagram ads on a tight budget
• What distinguishes successful from not-so-successful ads

Angela Ponsford
dottimedia.com
Angela Ponsford is one half of Dotti Media and is a self-confessed Facebook Ads nerd. She loves geeking out over clients’ Facebook Ad campaigns and figuring out how to get them the best results. Angela also works with clients doing one-on-one Facebook Ads coaching, runs Facebook & Instagram workshops and is the co-creator of ‘Get InstaSavvy’, an online Instagram course for Aussies. When she’s not on Facebook you can find her on the roller derby track as her alter ego, Slingshot Polkadot. She lives just outside Byron Bay with her husband and twin daughters.

If there’s one theme that pops up in every story of online success, it’s the tale of high quality content delivered on a consistent basis.

Consistency is easy in the beggining, but it quickly transforms into an accelerating treadmill. You may feel you’re running as fast as you can, but failing to outrun your publishing schedule.

In this session we’ll explore the ‘content web’ approach that takes back control. You’ll discover a process that takes the stress out of consistent output, using one content idea to produce proflific amounts of writing, video and audio. Even better, the resulting ‘web of content’, with your favoured medium at the center, will captivate readers. No matter where they’re captivated, the consumer is guided through the web, eventually transforming into your very own fanatical fan.

Learn:

• Why ‘seasons’ can help you reclaim control over your content
• How seasons make content more effective for your consumers
• How the main mediums (text, video & audio) combine to escalate engagement
• How to record & repurpose your content for every medium, every week
• How seasons allow next level repurposing, and expand your web of influence
• How the web of content guides user from first visit to fanatical fan

Colin Gray
thePodcastHost.com
Colin Gray is a podcaster, a writer and a PhD in education. He specialises in engaging through content, with podcasting at it’s core. His company, The Podcast Host helps businesses to grow an audience by combining podcasting, blogging and video to cultivate fanatical fans.

These days, Colin writes regularly on podcasting and content marketing, and he and his team produce more than 10 shows. PodCraft is the flagship, a season-based show which tackles Podcasting topics head-on over a series of shows, looking to create a definitive guide each time.

Change your perspective on what sponsorship is, and you’ll have a better chance of being sponsored. Sponsorship is not ‘the money you get paid to do something’. It’s an investment in an asset (that’s you) with an audience that seeks a return for the sponsor. Laney will show you how to define your value proposition, demonstrate how you can provide a return to your sponsor and how to manage the whole process for a successful partnership.

You’ll learn:

• What can be sponsored and by who?
• The importance of relationships and how to manage them
• How to customise your value proposition for your ideal sponsor
• What you should put in a proposal to increase your chances of success
• How to report back to your sponsor and continue your partnership

Laney Galligan
agentsofinfluence.net

Ngahuia “Laney” Galligan is General Manager of ProBlogger and the founder and director of Agents of Influence, a service focused on bespoke brand partnerships for bloggers beyond the sponsored post. Laney has secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships for bloggers and events, and is a skilled corporate negotiator and sales professional. Her main focus is on long term sponsorships and professionalising how independent influencers work with agencies and brands. When she’s not helping people earning a living from their passion (or on Slack with the PB team), you’ll find her on the roller derby track or spinning a hula hoop.

A sales funnel is one of the most important yet overlooked part of any business. Having one in place can transform your business – from attracting the right visitors, through to your ideal customers and consistent ongoing revenue.

In this session Natalie Sisson will focus on the two key steps within creating a sales funnel that sells:

1. Capturing your Customers Hearts and Minds and then
2. Converting them into Clients and Cash

Learn:

• What the heck a sexy sales funnel is and what it looks like
• How to find out where your traffic comes from and how best to capture it
• What journey you want to take people on to introduce the right people to your offerings
• How to use your sales funnel to crossell, upsell and lead them to buy your big ticket price items
• How to drive consistent sales through your business

Natalie Sisson
suitcaseentrepreneur.com
Natalie Sisson is No #1 bestselling author, podcaster, speaker and adventurer who believes everybody has the right to choose freedom in business and adventure in life. She’s on a mission to ensure 1,000,000+ entrepreneurs do just that by 2020 over at the SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com

Is affiliate marketing part of the monetisation strategy for your blog? Do you make some money from affiliates but aren’t sure how to take it to the next level? Affiliate marketing can be one of the best ways to earn a fabulous, passive income from your blog – but you need a great strategy. Learn how to create an effective affiliate marketing strategy that will work for your blog and audience, including how to find affiliate opportunities, how to best present these links and market your affiliate focused articles. Also learn how to continuously improve on this strategy over time.

Learn:

• How to find the most appropriate affiliate opportunities for the best return on your effort
• How to best present affiliate links to your audience so that they provide maximum return
• How to market your affiliate articles to an audience who will love them
• How to combine this into an affiliate marketing strategy which will be beneficial to you and your audience
• How to improve the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing strategy over time so that your income keeps increasing

Sharon Gourlay
digitalnomadwannabe.com
Sharon is a travel blogger and affiliate marketer who is passionate about working online and the freedom it brings. After convincing herself and her husband that they should set off overseas indefinitely while building an online business at the end of 2014, Sharon not only pulled it off but built a successful travel blog and affiliate sites that have bought a life of freedom for her and her family. When not encouraging others to work online or travel with kids, she is at home in Melbourne or travelling the world with her own three young kids.

Brian Fanzo
isocialfanz.com
Brian Fanzo talks fast and tweets faster. A proud pager wearing millennial, he is a keynote speaker and founder/CEO of iSocialFanz LLC, a social strategy consulting agency. Brian is also one of the founders of Backlamp LLC, the parent company of Summit.Live, the largest live streaming event in the world focused on celebrating creators and storytellers leveraging social live streaming video.
Brian’s #ThinkLikeAFan philosophy has powered first-of-their-kind storytelling campaigns for many Fortune 50 enterprise companies leveraging Periscope, SnapChat and Facebook Live under the username @iSocialFanz.
He was recently awarded the Top 25 Social Business Leaders of 2014 by The Economist Intelligence Unit and has been nominated for the first ever #ShortyAwards Periscoper Of The Year 2016. In 2016, Brian will keynote in 9 countries at more than 40 events highlighting his passion for change, collaboration and community – dubbed the 3 C’s these elements are the foundation of his first book A Millennial Mindset due out Spring 2017.

I took my humble (quite neglected) blog to a business that made well over six-figures in it’s first year. I did this with three children, four and under, at home. I created an eCourse (then two more and a membership site!) and when I started I didn’t even know what a Mailchimp sign-up form was. Hear my story and get inspired to create your own products.

Learn:

• How I turned my passion into content people pay for
• The story of my business and lessons learned along the way
• The easiest way to get started building a tribe of paying customers
• My best tips for doing lots with limited time
• The essential tools for selling online (they might surprise you)

Lisa Corduff
lisacorduff.com
Lisa Corduff has a successful online business helping real people eat more real food, in the real world. She created the innovative Small Steps to Wholefoods program when the youngest of her three children was four months old – the eldest was four years old! Proving that Mums can get shit done – she has gone on to release two more eCourses and a membership program. She’s pumped to have a kid-free weekend at Problogger and share her biz journey!

Stories come to life when you connect the power of language with visuals. The human brain process images 60,000 times faster than words, 93% of all communication is non-verbal and in 2015 Facebook estimated that 70% of all content on their platform will be video by 2020. Join Chantelle Ellem (Fat Mum Slim), Michaela Skoranova (@Mishkusk) and Kristie Galea from Olympus as we explore the topic of visual story telling and creating engagement on your blog and social channels.

Kristie Galea (moderator)
olympus.com.au
A passionate, innovative and collaborative marketer with over 12 years experience in brand and product marketing. Kristie currently leads Olympus’ brand and product strategy as they redefine the camera industry with their OM-D and PEN cameras. Originally landing herself at Samsung as the youngest and only female product manager (way back) in 2004 with the smallest and (most obscure) product category of laser printers. It was here Kristie learnt that to thrive, constant innovation is absolutely mandatory. Developing a core belief that it is not simply enough to strive to overtake the competition but it’s the journey that you take your brand, customers and business on that matters the most.

Chantelle Ellem
fatmumslim.com.au
Chantelle is the blogger behind Fat Mum Slim. She’s been blogging for the past 8 years, has run successful blogging eCourses, created a best-selling photography App, was once voted Most Clickable Woman in Australia and also founded the Photo A Day challenges which has people all over the world sharing photos daily. Of all the things she’s achieved, she’s proudest of her two girls, who light up her world everyday.

Michaela Skovranova
@mishkusk
Michaela Skovranova is Sydney based filmmaker, photographer and director. Michaela is also the creative power house behind her Instagram featured account @Mishkusk, Australian Life 2015 Photography Prize Winner 2015 and is one of Photo Boite’s 30 under 30 Women Photographers 2016. Michaela has produced a diverse range projects applying her distinctive style both above and below the surface. Alongside commissioned projects Michaela continues to explore her vision through her personal work and is also conducting photography and video workshops in Australia and overseas.

Every year we like to highlight how powerful it is to have a platform and influence online and we also like to showcase people who are using their influence to effect social good and change.

This year, in line with PBEVENT’s focus on influence, we challenged you to show us how you have used your “influence to make a difference”. The challenge was for the opportunity to speak on a panel with Daniel and Justine Flynn from Thankyou, to help both inspire and show how ANYONE can do amazing things with the influence they have and the passions that motivate them.

We received some amazing submissions from ProBlogger Event attendees for this panel over the past couple of months. At ProBlogger HQ we were inspired and uplifted to see how people are using their influence for good in many and varied ways. As much as we would love for everyone’s story to be told, it’s just not be possible to fit everyone into the schedule. But we have arrived at our two panellists to feature alongside Daniel and Justine in a discussion moderated by Emma Stirling….

A very big and warm hearted CONGRATULATIONS and props to Sarah Rosborg and Alexx Stuart! Their actions deserve more attention so Daniel has bowed out to create more time for their stories, and Justine will represent Thankyou.

Emma Stirling
scoopnutrition.com
Emma Stirling blogs at The Scoop on Nutrition and is a highly experienced Accredited Practising Dietitian who specialises in nutrition communication. She is a health writer for magazines, speaker and is director of Scoop Nutrition consulting to the food, health and hospitality industries.

Justine Flynn
thankyou.co
Justine Flynn co-founded social enterprise Thankyou when she was just 21 years old, acting on a passion to do something with her career that would positively impact people in need. Justine’s drive for creating positive workplace cultures and implementing cutting-edge marketing has helped build Thankyou into a brand that is disrupting the industries it operates in, engaging Australians to join a movement for change and helping hundreds of thousands of people around the world access basic human rights. In 2014 Justine was named a finalist in the Telstra Women’s Business Awards in recognition of her efforts in building Thankyou.

Sarah Rosborg
rafikimwema.com
Sarah is the hardest working, committed and borderline crazy charity CEO. She lives and breathes helping and caring for others to have a better and safer life. She has a creative and overactive mind which is programmed permanently to raising funds and awareness for Rafiki Mwema. Sarah is a full on mum to her amazing daughter and wife to Jonas who tries to balance her days by reminding her to stop working for a moment! Sarah relaxes by working harder and puts those around her to shame by her energy – if Sarah has a fault it is that she never knows when she has done enough!

Alexx Stuart
lowtoxlife.com
Alexx Stuart is on a mission to share the importance of a low tox life, and to help people transition to this in a positive and empowering way – all guilt and shame is left at the door. Having had a full career spanning the cosmetics and hospitality industries, Alexx’s passion for uncovering the truth behind what goes ‘on’ and ‘in’ us, quickly became her main professional focus after she saw the astounding difference this made on her own personal recovery from chronic illness. She creates articles, recipes, books and courses to help guide people towards better health for them and for our planet, calling on an impressive table of experts from around the world to add value. Alexx’s passion drives positive awareness at the grass roots level, in the hope of handing the world in better repair to the next generation to follow us.

If you’re thinking of starting a podcast, or you’re already podcasting but feel like your sound could be improved, join Karly Nimmo to learn how you can take your audio from average to awesome. Karly has been working with audio for over 20 years (in fact, it goes back to the mid 80s, a double tape deck and a love of the sound of her own voice) and in this workshop, she’ll share with you some very simple tricks and hacks to help your message land in the ears of your audience without the distraction of sh*t sound.

Expect to learn:

• The basics of sound and how it works to aid your understanding of what makes great audio
• The different types of microphone and which will work best for you
• How to create a great recording space whether your budget is  $$$$$’s or just $
• How to get the most out of your microphone

Karly Nimmo
radcasters.com
Karly Nimmo is a born communicator. She’s an ex-radio jock, producer & copywriter, current in-demand Voice Over Artist and has run her successful Voice Over Agency (Killer Kopy) for over a decade. There’s a pretty slim chance you haven’t heard her voice. She’s worked with everyone from Telstra, BHP, eBay, Panasonic, Qantas to Coles-Myer and ANZ. Karly’s also an avid and successful podcaster, with her number one iTunes hit, Karlosophies – Stories Behind Success. And finally, she’s the creator of Radcasters Podcasting S’cool – where she teaches entrepreneurs how to podcast like a pro. Her current mission is to rid the world of shit sounding podcasts.

In this workshop you will learn the essentials of developing, recording, and editing that will ensure your podcast launch is a success. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions of Brooke (undoubtedly of one of Australia’s leading podcasters) and to workshop your own show. Perfect for those who have yet to dive into podcasting or for those who want to continue to improve their shows with a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

Expect to learn:

• How to develop an engaging podcast
• The importance of content, format, publishing schedule and frequency
• How to set up and how to record a variety of different show styles
• The essentials of editing to create professional sounding audio with only a handful of steps
• How to publish your show in iTunes and on other on-demand audio platforms, and maximise your chances of launching with a splash!

Brooke McAlary
slowyourhome.com
Brooke is the founder of Jackrabbit.FM and host of The Slow Home Podcast – named by iTunes as one of the top podcasts of 2015. She also co-hosts #1 Health show Let It Be, and produces four other podcasts each week. She is also a passionate advocate of naps, travel, snowboarding, a good shiraz and even better comedy.

This workshop will give you practical tips on how to turn your blog into a ‘show’ including how to keep your audience entertained using only your voice, preparation and presentation techniques, how to bring energy into your voice when you’re a solo host, how to use your voice to tell a story and the best way to work with co-hosts. You’ll also learn interviewing tips to ensure you get the best out of your guests and editing secrets to fool people into thinking you’re a one-take wonder. This session will take you from doubting to dominating your podcast.

Expect to learn:

• How to turn your blog into a ‘show’
• Voice techniques to entertain and engage your audience and keep them coming back
• How to prepare your material so you sound in control but still conversational
• Editing tips and how to use production audio so you sound like a one take wonder
• Tips for working with co-hosts for a dynamic show
• Interview techniques to get the best out of your guests and make them shine

Rachel Corbett
rachelcorbett.com.au
Rachel Corbett is a writer, radio/TV personality, podcaster and voice over artist who has been creating and presenting content for Australia’s largest media organisations for over 15 years.
Rachel is passionate about using the knowledge she’s gained from this experience to help bloggers, podcasters and people with big ideas create high quality content and bring out their inner presenter.
Rachel has developed and lead courses in radio presenting and podcasting at AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School) and appears regularly on shows like The Today Show, Studio 10 and Paul Murray Live on Sky News. She is also a regular columnist for publications including Mamamia, News.com.au, The Daily Telegraph and Body + Soul.

This session will show you how creating your own products can transform your blog in to a real business, bust all the myths that stop bloggers creating their own products and services — including a framework to identify what opportunities exist in your niche, then finally explore some of the most common questions that arise in creating your own products and services as a blogger.

Shayne Tilley
shaynetilley.com
Shayne loves working at the heart of growing online businesses. From product management and innovation through to monetization techniques, community development, support and social media.

His practical, to-the-point style has garnered lots of fans and his ability to build lasting businesses with proven digital marketing techniques has created a well-deserved reputation.

Shayne has been part of the ProBlogger team as well as running 99designs Tasks and Ready-made logos.

Paul Cunningham
exchangeserverpro.com
Paul Cunningham is a writer, speaker, and trainer living in Brisbane, Australia. Paul has been blogging for over 10 years, and has self-published more than 10 eBooks and training courses since then. After more than 15 years in the industry, he recently left the world of IT consulting to focus on his online business full time, and spend more time with his family. These days you’ll find Paul creating content for the IT professional community, working on the next book, and occasionally jetting off overseas to speak at industry conferences.

As a blogger you’ll already know you need to do more than just build it to get visitors to your door. It’s even more the case when it comes to marketing your products and getting your product off on the right foot, can have a long lasting impact on the success over the long term. This session will take you thought a product launch process including a countdown to launch, what to do on launch day, how to handle a failure, and how to set yourself up for the long tail.

Shayne Tilley
shaynetilley.com
Shayne loves working at the heart of growing online businesses. From product management and innovation through to monetization techniques, community development, support and social media.

His practical, to-the-point style has garnered lots of fans and his ability to build lasting businesses with proven digital marketing techniques has created a well-deserved reputation.

Shayne has been part of the ProBlogger team as well as running 99designs Tasks and Ready-made logos.

Paul Cunningham
exchangeserverpro.com
Paul Cunningham is a writer, speaker, and trainer living in Brisbane, Australia. Paul has been blogging for over 10 years, and has self-published more than 10 eBooks and training courses since then. After more than 15 years in the industry, he recently left the world of IT consulting to focus on his online business full time, and spend more time with his family. These days you’ll find Paul creating content for the IT professional community, working on the next book, and occasionally jetting off overseas to speak at industry conferences.

These days, there are so many ways to collect an incredible amount of data around our online content efforts, but what’s the use if we don’t know what data we’re looking for or what impact it can have on our blogging strategy? In this session I will take you on what a typical “data dive” looks like for me. Which analytics tools I use, what I look for, the insights I derive and how it helps me to improve my content strategy.

Key learnings:

• Understanding the analytics: How to set up your analytics tools to help you to see the most important data
• Understanding your content: what is working well that you could do more of? What isn’t resonating so well and why?
• Understanding your audience: who is it who is engaging with your content the most? How can we better understand them and serve them with content that will add value to their lives?
• Understanding your promotion: which promotional channels are driving the most high quality traffic? Which channels should we invest more time and energy into? How can we optimise promotional efforts?

Kate Cook 
smallpaperthings.com
Kate Cook has been a Digital Marketing Consultant and Social Media Specialist for over 5 years. Starting her career working in agency and later moving to head up the social media marketing for Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, Kate has a breadth of experience across a multitude of industries. Kate shares her digital marketing learnings on her blog Small Paper Things. Small Paper Things Blog has been shared across social media more than 80,000 times and has recently been recognised as one of Australia’s Best Business Blogs for 2016.

Are you familiar with the backend of your blog? Do you know why you should always keep your WordPress version updated? Are you aware of the pitfalls associated with many backup plugins? If not, then I don’t want to alarm you … but your blog is in danger! Mainly from hackers but also from … you

This highly practical session will remove the fear you have of the technical side of your blog and show you the simple and easy things you can do to ensure it:

• Is kept secure from hackers
• Is backed up properly
• Is always running as quickly and optimally as possible.

In short, this session will ensure that should something terrible ever happen to your blog, you will be able to get it back up and running in less than a day.

Kelly Exeter
kellyexeter.com.au
Kelly Exeter has been a designer for nearly 15 years and runs Swish Design. In the past six years she has worked with some of Australia’s top bloggers including Styling You, Fox in Flats and Woogsworld. A blogger herself, Kelly‘s approach to blog design goes beyond simply making things look nice. She also works hard to ensure the blogger’s brand is enhanced by their blog design, and that the design is incredibly functional too.
As she and her husband own the web and blog hosting company Swish Online, Kelly is also across the tech side of owning a blog (more than she’d like to be actually!). Swish Online hosts some of Australia’s biggest blogs and as a result, Kelly has seen pretty much every ‘thing’ that can take a blog offline … and knows what to do to ensure these things happen as infrequently as possible.

Everyone is talking about online courses at the moment. You’ve heard that an online course is a great way to grow your business, and increase your income, but it feels overwhelming… right? Maybe you’re not sure how to pull it all together… or maybe you’re not even sure where to start… Maybe you don’t see how it would work for you…

Course creation doesn’t have to be scary and can work for everyone. In this session Sam will take you through how to turn your passion and knowledge into an online course, to generate warm leads or build leveraged income into your business.

Learn:

• To set clear outcomes that will make course writing easy
• The technique for getting stuff out of your head and onto paper
• To effortlessly create chunks of content that your customers will love
• What content engages and gets results
• A plan for how a course will help you grow your business

Sam Nordberg
samnordberg.com
Sam Nordberg shows people just like you how to take their passion and knowledge and create an online course that sells. With over 10 years’ experience training others, she’s taught a huge range of people including training members of the Australian Defence force, Emergency Services, Government Departments and Surf Lifesaving Foundation. She knows how to make the process quick and easy, so you can leverage your business and have a bigger reach.

Spend an hour with Jim Stewart exploring the top 5 areas where bloggers go wrong with SEO and more importantly how to fix them. This is for bloggers who want more than a basic introduction into SEO. You will learn strategies to structure your content, improve site speed, site map configuration and how to rank quickly and easily. Implementing these strategies in the right order is key to successfully increasing traffic to your website. Jim has done it many times over, just ask him.

Learn: 

• What Google thinks of your site
• How to rank quickly and easily
• How to leverage your content so Google loves it
• How to make your site lightning fast
• How to use Yoast properly

Jim Stewart
stewartmedia.biz
Jim Stewart, CEO of StewArt Media, is a recognised digital marketing expert. Jim is ProBlogger’s SEO subject matter expert and he will be sharing his vast SEO knowledge over the course of the conference, including what are the top SEO tools and why you must be using them and 5 things bloggers do wrong. Jim has worked closely with bloggers successfully doubling traffic and improving site performance. What Jim doesn’t know about SEO and blogging isn’t worth knowing, check out his sessions to take advantage of his wealth of experience.

Influencer marketing is exploding – almost any study will tell you that brands are increasing their budgets for influencer activity and they’re seeing more engagement than on owned or other paid media. If you’re wanting to work with brands, this is good news. The other good news is that we have panel ready to answer your questions. Learn from both the influencer side and the brand side. This Q&A session will start with some key insights from each panellist and then provide ample time for open question format from the audience.

Laney Galligan
agentsofinfluence.net

Ngahuia “Laney” Galligan is General Manager of ProBlogger and the founder and director of Agents of Influence, a service focused on bespoke brand partnerships for bloggers beyond the sponsored post. Laney has secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships for bloggers and events, and is a skilled corporate negotiator and sales professional. Her main focus is on long term sponsorships and professionalising how independent influencers work with agencies and brands. When she’s not helping people earning a living from their passion (or on Slack with the PB team), you’ll find her on the roller derby track or spinning a hula hoop.

Brian Fanzo
isocialfanz.com

Brian Fanzo talks fast and tweets faster. A proud pager wearing millennial, he is a keynote speaker and founder/CEO of iSocialFanz LLC, a social strategy consulting agency. Brian is also one of the founders of Backlamp LLC, the parent company of Summit.Live, the largest live streaming event in the world focused on celebrating creators and storytellers leveraging social live streaming video.
Brian’s #ThinkLikeAFan philosophy has powered first-of-their-kind storytelling campaigns for many Fortune 50 enterprise companies leveraging Periscope, SnapChat and Facebook Live under the username @iSocialFanz.
He was recently awarded the Top 25 Social Business Leaders of 2014 by The Economist Intelligence Unit and has been nominated for the first ever #ShortyAwards Periscoper Of The Year 2016. In 2016, Brian will keynote in 9 countries at more than 40 events highlighting his passion for change, collaboration and community – dubbed the 3 C’s these elements are the foundation of his first book A Millennial Mindset due out Spring 2017.

Kristie Galea
olympus.com.au

A passionate, innovative and collaborative marketer with over 12 years experience in brand and product marketing. Kristie currently leads Olympus’ brand and product strategy as they redefine the camera industry with their OM-D and PEN cameras. Originally landing herself at Samsung as the youngest and only female product manager (way back) in 2004 with the smallest and (most obscure) product category of laser printers. It was here Kristie learnt that to thrive, constant innovation is absolutely mandatory. Developing a core belief that it is not simply enough to strive to overtake the competition but it’s the journey that you take your brand, customers and business on that matters the most.

Nikki Parkinson
stylingyou.com.au

Nikki Parkinson is a former journalist-turned blogger and author. She blogs at award-winning fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog, Styling You. Last year Styling You was the first blog business to win a Telstra Business Award: the 2015 Queensland micro business of the year. Her book, Unlock Your Style, was published by Hachette Australia in 2014. Styling You has a readership of more than 100,000 per month and attracts sponsorship from national brands such as Katies, FRANKiE4 Footwear, Olay and Schwarzkopf. She loves connecting with her online community and helping women find greater confidence through their everyday style.

We are going to use a new workshop format to get invaluable results in a group session.
As a bonus, you’ll be able to use this format when you go home as well – It’s like a workshop magic trick.

It’s also a lot of fun!

Now to make the magic happen I need you to bring two things – A pad of standard post it notes – preferably in the boring standard yellow colour (there is a reason for this!) and a fine point Sharpie.

You’ll be amazed what you can do with these two items and a group of bloggers who want to connect with their audience at a deeper level through the art of copywriting.

It’s no secret why email is a hot topic on every bloggers list. The return is huge for any business using it properly. In this must attend 50 minute workshop Alita is going to reveal the exact autoresponder strategies that have helped bloggers increase revenue by 403% in just 30 days.

What we learnt from Alita at PB in 2015 is that she loves giving practical and actionable content. In this workshop she will take all attendee’s through 4 practical exercises and help you apply them into your business on the day! So get your laptops ready! Alita loves this subject and will give you more than you expect. It’s important to her that you leave with the exact ‘how to’ guide to implement a profitable auto responder strategy into your blog immediately.

Workshop Outcomes:

• Perfectly timed lead nurture funnel to close the gap from Subscriber to First Purchase
• Reactivation Automation – Keeping your list engaged all the time
• How to Never Lose a Sale again with Cart Abandonment Email Automation

Alita Harvey-Rodriguez
milkdigitalstrategy.com.au/blog
Alita Harvey-Rodriguez is known as one of Australia’s leading Digital Marketing Futurist and the brains behind Milk it Academy. A training platform to advance marketers skills into new school digital leadership roles. For over a decade Alita has worked with global brands including SAP, Experian, SEMRush, TS14+, Estee Lauder, Myer & Online Retailer.

In 2015 Alita was appointed to the Board of Advisors for the Australian Technology and Gadget Expo along side Google Earth inventor David Lorenzini. Today Alita works with Retailers and small businesses to help find clarity in digital leadership by leveraging data to reveal hidden profits and build humanized communication strategies that creates raving fans out of consumers who buy again and again. She does this by taking business and customer centric data and use’s it to find more people who behave and identify with your most profitable customers and then implements strategies to reach them effectively.

Alita is a regular contributor to Womens Agenda, SEMRush, internetretailer.com.au, 2015 ORIA Judge (Online Retailer Industry Awards) and the leading lecturer at the Digital Marketing Institute for Email Marketing and Marketing Automation.

The secret to high performing Facebook Ads isn’t just about having the best copy or images; you have to be targeting the right audiences. In this eye-opening session, you’ll learn how you can turn your website traffic and even video viewers into ready made audiences for your Facebook Ads.

Learn:

• How to use Facebook Tracking Pixels to create audiences in your Facebook Ad account
• The difference between cold, warm & hot audiences, and how to craft Facebook ads for each of them
• Why you need to consider Video as part of your social media strategy
• Understand Facebook Ad lingo
• How to use split-testing to get the cheapest clicks (and save you money)

Angela Ponsford
dottimedia.com
Angela Ponsford is one half of Dotti Media and is a self-confessed Facebook Ads nerd. She loves geeking out over clients’ Facebook Ad campaigns and figuring out how to get them the best results. Angela also works with clients doing one-on-one Facebook Ads coaching, runs Facebook & Instagram workshops and is the co-creator of ‘Get InstaSavvy’, an online Instagram course for Aussies. When she’s not on Facebook you can find her on the roller derby track as her alter ego, Slingshot Polkadot. She lives just outside Byron Bay with her husband and twin daughters.

Join Michaela and Olympus for a video workshop aimed at putting you on the path to creating great videos every day. Michaela will take you through the basics you need to know; sound, light, capture, editing and more; enabling you to take your creativity to a new level.
The Olympus team will be on hand to support you on how to use your camera, and will bring loan cameras for those who would like to borrow one for the workshop.

Michaela Skovranova
@mishkusk

Michaela Skovranova is Sydney based filmmaker, photographer and director. Michaela is also the creative power house behind her Instagram featured account @Mishkusk, Australian Life 2015 Photography Prize Winner 2015 and is one of Photo Boite’s 30 under 30 Women Photographers 2016. Michaela has produced a diverse range projects applying her distinctive style both above and below the surface. Alongside commissioned projects Michaela continues to explore her vision through her personal work and is also conducting photography and video workshops in Australia and overseas.

In this session the team from Olympus will take you through the principles of photography, key settings and functions to help you get on your way to mastering your camera.
To participate in this workshop you do not need to have an Olympus camera, however if you do have one our team will be able to answer any specific questions you may have one on one.
If you don’t have a camera, Olympus will lend you one for the session.

Aaron Harivel
olympus.com.au

Aaron joined Olympus nearly 10 years ago, starting off in their service and repairs department and today Aaron runs Olympus’ Retail Development in NSW and QLD, hosting workshops and event with retailers and consumers. Aaron has a deep level of experience in imparting knowledge to photographers of all levels and will help you get more out of your camera every day.

Ready to quickly attract your tribe of true fans and followers and turn them into dedicated email subscribers and dream customers? Go behind the scenes of how Jadah went from broke to book deal and built a hyper-connected, community-driven business reaching millions of brand ambassadors in just a few short years. Learn the essential community building strategies needed to grow your online business with a step-by-step action plan to fuel your passion that makes a difference and makes a profit.

• Learn the four essentials of building an online community that are working right now for bloggers ready to monetize their website.
• You’ll learn list-building strategies to quickly attract your tribe of true fans and followers and turn them into dedicated email subscribers and dream customers.
• You’ll walk away with the #1 question you need to ask your community if you want to create profitable products and services that change lives.
• Learn about the best tips and tools, along with real-life examples on what’s working right now on social media.
• Learn the power of strategic, authentic marketing that get raving fans and dream customers to spread the word about your business through action-based, result-oriented and community-focused challenges and opt-in offers.

Jadah Sellner

Jadah is a world-changing mom and the co-founder of Simple Green Smoothies, which has grown to over 330k Instagram followers, 250k Facebook fans, 20 million website page views, and 300,000+ email subscribers…in just 2 years. Her “healthy obsession” with green smoothies and her community building super power has made her website the #1 online resource for the green smoothie lifestyle and changed the lives of over 1 million people. When she’s not blending spinach, you can catch her having dance parties with her daughter to Beyoncé, reading Shel Silverstein poems at the dinner table, and helping dreamers take over the world at jadahsellner.com.

Pinterest Marketing 101: the three elements of the perfect pin

Pinterest is without a doubt the most powerful platform-building tool that the blog world has ever seen, and it is completely free to use! Learn how to vastly expand your reach and drive viral traffic to your blog even if your current audience is very small. In this session you will learn:

• Why Pinterest is such a powerful tool, especially for women bloggers, and what it can do for your blog.
• The surprising secret to what type of content drives the most traffic and the 3 essential elements of a perfect pin.
• The three most important things you can do to improve your Pinterest page right now.
• How to use collaborative boards to dramatically expand your reach.

Metrics that Matter: Google Analytics for Actionable Insights

Join Benjamin as he show you how to apply Google Analytics without getting overwhelmed by reports. Learn practical techniques you can apply to your own Google Analytics data to improve and optimise your blog. This session will focus on the most important data you can use and is suitable for Google Analytics beginners, through to pros looking for new ideas.

• How you can leverage Google Analytics for your blog
• Understand what’s working and not working on your blog
• Techniques you can apply to improve your blog
• Using data for organic optimisation and content creation
• Additional tools that you can use to compliment Google Analytics

Blogging for beginners bootcamp with Clare Hillier

You’ve built your blog and hit publish on a bunch of posts. Now what? Drawing on six years of blogging hits and misses, Clare will help you step up your blogging game with simple tips and insights that are instantly actionable and that get results.

Learn:
• How to create killer content
• How to build your tribe and create a community
• How to blog like you mean business and lay the foundations for working with brands
• How to get the jump on email marketing
• How to do social media right
• How to work smart so blogging doesn’t become a slog

Blogging for beginners bootcamp (Case Studies)

This second session is case study based with new Aussie bloggers Sonia and Melissa sharing the steps they took to get their blog off the ground and on the path to success. Blogging is not always smooth sailing though, so they will also share the challenges and obstacles they faced and how they overcame them.

Using Email Autoresponders to Grow Your Revenue

It’s no secret why email is a hot topic on every bloggers list. The return is huge for any business using it properly. In this must attend session Alita is going to reveal the exact autoresponder strategies that have helped bloggers increase revenue by 403% in just 30 days. You’ll leave with a deep understanding of the power of autoresponders. Alita loves this subject and will give you more than you expect. It’s important to her that you leave with the exact ‘how to’ guide to implement a profitable auto responder strategy into your blog immediately.

Learn:
– What are they and why you need them
– How to build an engaging auto responder series
– How to leverage specific content to build trust and value
– 7 Ways to use email to increase revenue for bloggers
– Once Implemented, how to identify where you can optimise autoresponder results
– How to split test correctly, most people do it wrong!
– Hot tips and tricks to improving auto responder open & click rates

Aussie Blogger Showcase

One of the things we try to do each year at the ProBlogger event is shine a spotlight on Aussie bloggers. We know there is amazing knowledge in the ProBlogger Community and extraordinary stories of success by bloggers with audiences large and small doing their own thing, in their own way.

In our Aussie blogger showcase, four Aussie bloggers will have the chance to talk for ten minutes to share a secret of their success. Our bloggers are: Kate Toon, Loren Bartley, Caro Ryan and Michelle Thompson-Laing. Click their names to read more about their sessions.

Blogging voice and the art of creating meaningful connections through writing

Whether you are a small business blogger, personal blogger or foodie blogger, ultimately it is your blogging voice that readers will connect with.  Kelly will show you how to find a unique blogging voice no matter what your industry or blogging goals. She will take you through basic writing rules you can follow to make meaningful connections with your audience including:

• The art of storytelling
• Addressing a pain point (applicable to your readers)
• Sticking to one idea/concept per blog post
• Editing ruthlessly
• The importance of honesty and vulnerability

Design 101: How to use design basics to polish up your blog

Join Pamela Wilson as she walks you through how to use basic design elements to make your blog looked polished and professional. This session is for non-designers: no art degree required!

• The subliminal impact of color, and how to use to attract the right readers
• How to choose and use fonts that “speak” for your brand
• Powerful ways to use images to draw attention to your words
• How to “point” your readers’ eyes where you want them to go using visual hierarchy
• Simple design tweaks you can do to make your posts easier to read

From Blog to Business – The Steps You Need to Take to Create a Profitable Business Online

It takes more than a few tools and blog posts to turn your blog into a business. Caz Makepeace will take you through the key steps you will need to take to make blogging a profitable business including:

• how to create a vision that aligns with your purpose, passion and what your readers want
• how to develop a communication strategy that helps you to understand what your readers need and what to create for them (helping you to create raving fans)
• how to create a monetization plan and how to become more comfortable with marketing
• the power of networking and how to use it for long term growth
• how to overcome fear, frustration, rejection and failure

How to create your gangbuster e-product – Nat Kingroudis

I’ve failed and succeeded with e-books, e-courses and online cleanses to come up with the winning formula and I am so keen to share my tried and true methods to help create your e-product that sells.  There have been over 25 thousand copies sold of my first ebook Fertilise Yourself which helped pave the way to e-courses, hard copy published books and other online products. I’m excited to show you how you can turn your vision into a viable reality, with as much ease and fun as possible – because after all it’s all about the ride that comes with the prize – and who doesn’t love making a little pyjama money? We will explore how to create your e-product from the early stages of creation right through to hosting and marketing.  When you get the formula right your product will shine.

• Choosing your topic and work out if your idea will actually work
• How to name your course, select a price point, how to host it.
• Mapping it out – the creative process to mapping out the e-course
• How to build it – what tools to use, how to set it up, what medium to use (e.g. video, audio, text)
• Setting up payment process
• How to market your e-course
• Looking beyond the e-course (into tangible products)

We have all been online long enough to have encountered criticism from people whose faces we will never see. Some of it is constructive, and some if it is awful, anonymous assumptions and slurs that we do our best to ignore. Sometimes our emotions prevent us from making a distinction between that which could be helpful and that which is just plain bullying. I have spent 14 years confronting both—from comments to emails to websites to actual forums dedicated to me and my character—trying to figure out the best way to pick up and move on when I encounter something particularly vicious. Because it isn’t going away. There isn’t a cure for it. It cannot be fixed or stopped. Learning how to deal with both is a factor of life that our children will have to endure on a scale we never did, in ways we probably can’t imagine. I’ve tried and failed many times to react in the best possible way and have finally learned that “reacting” isn’t the answer. The answer is something much more fearless.

Heather Armstrong (Dooce)

Heather B. Armstrong is widely acknowledged to as one of the most popular bloggers in the world. She has more than 1.5 million followers on Twitter and was recently named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 30 most influential women in media, along with Diane Sawyer, Kelly Ripa and Oprah Winfrey. Time Magazine has twice listed her website as one of the 25 best blogs in the world. She has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and she’s appeared as a guest on Oprah, The Today Show and CNN. Most recently named Forbes Magazine’s top 100 websites for women and Time Magazine’s Best Blog of 2011.

In 2014 she was presented the Vanguard Iris Award for her excellence in writing. Additionally, she’s been named the “Queen of the Mommy Bloggers” by the New York Times. In 2011 she joined Christy Turlington and the Every Mother Counts team (dedicated to Maternal Health Issues) where she serves on the Board of Directors.

Armstrong is the author of the 2009 New York Times best selling book, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita. Armstrong lives in Salt Lake City with her daughters Leta and Marlo, and two insane dogs, all who appear as vivid characters in her writing.

Keynote: Creating Business Ideas

Brandon is an ordinary 21 year old with an extraordinary story to tell. At just 12 years of age Brandon was kicked out of school, at 14 he nearly died from drinking too much alcohol, at 16 he created an app development company and by 19 Brandon made 4 top-100 apps. But what happened in between? Let Brandon take you on his journey – be inspired to do what you love no matter how young or old you are.

• Be inspired by an ordinary person that has done extraordinary things
• How failure should be expected, accepted and embraced
• Why persistence is the key to success
• Witness further proof that breaks down the Gen-Y stereotype of laziness and poor work ethic

How to Grow Your Instagram Following

Get tips, tools and tricks that are working right now on one of the fastest growing social media platforms–– Instagram. With over 330,000 Instagram followers, the co-founder of Simple Green Smoothies Jadah Sellner will share the behind-the-scenes secrets and strategies to growing an engaged Instagram following.

How to Grow Your Blog – Actionable Productivity Tips for Busy Bloggers

Struggling to find time to grow your blog and fit it all in to your busy schedule? Carly and Christina are both full-time bloggers who grew their blogs while working full-time at day jobs.  They have practical tips and hacks to share with bloggers who want to grow their blog with limited time each day. They can show you how to schedule, pre-plan and avoid blogger burnout while juggling a hectic schedule.

You can learn to be more organised and productive and find the time to grow your blog to the next level. You’ll learn actionable productivity tips you can implement straight away including:

• How to pinpoint the necessities for your blog/niche to effectively prioritise your time.
• How to avoid blogger burnout and use positive goal setting tools.
• How to plan your editorial and social media calendars and how to generate endless ideas.
• The art of batching and harnessing your most productive hours.
• Scheduling tools and organisational hacks.

Small Business Bootcamp: How to use Your Blog to Supercharge Your Small Business

Dan went from looking for a job to running a million dollar WordPress business in less than 2 years. He grew the business through blogging without spending a cent on advertising. In this session he will present his hits, misses and the actionable pieces you can take out and apply to your own blog.

• Identify the number 1 problem with most small business blogs and fix it
• Apply the 3 key pillars of great blog posts to your own content
• 6 blueprints taken from successful content marketers you can use for your small business
• How to build a funnel that turns blog visitors into customers
• How to scale your blog with a team

Small Business Bootcamp Panel

This year we are featuring a Small Business Bootcamp at ProBlogger Training Event. The bootcamp will run over two sessions, the first session is a presentation from Dan Norris who will show small business owners how they can grow their business through blogging.

The second session will be teaching through the case study of two successful small Aussie businesses. They will share how they have used blogging and social media as effective marketing tools and to build a community around their businesses.

The session will be moderated by Kelly Exeter and she will be joined by Michaela Clarkfrom tradiesva.com.au and Helen Edwards from recycledinteriors.org. We have included plenty of time at the end so you can have the opportunity to ask questions to learn further from their experiences.

While aimed at small business bloggers, this session will be jam packed with useful tips for any blogger who has a product or service they sell from their blog.

Working with Brands

If part of your monetising strategy is to work with brands, you’ve gotta speak their
language, and act like a pro.
Drawing on 13 years leading marketing teams for big multinationals and over four years as a full-time blogger – where her collaborations with brands have been described in Campaign Brief as “…an ideal example of the result of a successful relationship between brand and blogger and how both can be fused together to create content that is beneficial for the consumer.” – Andrea will:

• What marketers are actually looking for, why they work with bloggers, and their hot buttons
• How to get on the radar with the people who manage brands, and how to make deals
• Dealing with enquiries
• Knowing your value, and what to charge for it
• How to create branded content your readers will love
• The two way street – brands listen up! – this is how to roll.

How to Create a Content Event That Builds Your Email List

Content events are time-sensitive events that build excitement (and email list sign ups) like nothing else. Join Pamela Wilson and she shows you how to harness the power of content events, even if you have no experience and feel too “shy” to host anything live.

• How to ignore what everyone else does, and create an event that works for your audience
• How “content events” differ from other content you create
• Promotional strategies to boost the size of your audience
• What to do post-event to maximize conversions

How to Monetise a Personal Blog

Monetising a personal blog can be trickier than monetising a niche blog. Heather Armstrong from Dooce and Mrs Woog from Woogsworld will share their experiences, strategies and tips for sustaining a profitable personal blog. There will also be plenty of question time so come along prepared!

How to Give Your Landing Pages Some Love

You work so hard to find readers to visit your blog, you work even harder to get them to actually read about what you have to offer, whether that be products to sell or services to offer.

Are your landing pages doing all that hard work justice?

In this session you’ll learn how to create high performing sales pages. From the words you use, the layout, to how you build an emotional connection with your readers in the way that most suits your needs.

• Know your value proposition
• Killer headlines
• Sub headlines
• Images and video
• The benefits – persuasive copy
• Structure and layout of the page
• Plugins/tools to create landing pages
• Testimonials and social proof (Trust elements)

This will be a super practical session with lots you can take away and apply to new or existing landing pages.

We’ve all heard of the overnight success stories—those Internet sensations whose blog post or video went viral, bringing instant fame and fortune. As bloggers, we often spend a whole lot of time hoping for that big break, but the truth is that for most, success happens much more methodically. In this inspiring keynote, you’ll discover the five habits that can transform your blog from beginner to extraordinary. You’ll also:

• Uncover the deceptively simple secret to creating awesome content (and why it matters so much)
• Stop doubting your worth and instead learn how to promote your content in a way that gets noticed and shared
• Learn how to fully leverage your platform and optimise your efforts
• Finally begin to embrace your own strengths rather than wishing for someone else’s

Ruth Soukup

Ruth Soukup is the founder of LivingWellSpendingLess.com, one of the most popular personal finance blogs on the web, and the New York Times bestselling author of the book Living Well Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life. She is also the author of the bestselling blogging guide, How to Blog for Profit (Without Selling Your Soul) and the founder of EliteBlogAcademy.com, an advanced blogging course. Her next book, Unstuffed: Decluttering Your Home, Mind & Soul (Harper Collins) will be released in Spring 2016. She lives in Florida with husband and 2 daughters.

Due to the conversational workshop nature of these sessions, there are no audio recordings. Please click through to the ‘Materials’ tabs for the key takeaways from each workshop.