Do you know who else agrees? The Together Counts™ brand team. That’s right, the Together Counts program gets families active together. They inspire others to live an active and healthy life. During the evo Conference, they’ll be hosting a lively, family-friendly Zumba class on Friday morning and teaching the Daycamp kids about energy balance on Saturday.

To get the wheels turning about ways to have fun during the summer with your family, Mom It Forward is hosting a Together Counts Twitter party on Tuesday, May 22 from 9-10 p.m.  ET. During the chat, we’ll be talking about family fun during the summer, as well as the evo Conference. Are you interested in joining in on the fun? If so, head on over to the RSVP post. Also, don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a great prize from the Together Counts team!

The Prizes

This week’s giveaway is all about family fun during the summer. Two lucky winners will receive a $50 gift card and a George Foreman 3 Serving, Classic Plate Grill (ARV $30).

Entry Requirements

For a chance to enter and win, please complete the following requirements and leave a separate comment for each on this post, including links to your original tweets.

1. Follow @TogetherCounts on Twitter.
2. Like the Together Counts Facebook page.
3. Answer the following question in the comment section below: What is your favorite family-friendly activity during the summer?
4. Tweet the following:

• RT @MomItForward Join the @TogetherCounts #gno Twitter party on 5/22 (9-10 ET) about family fun http://bit.ly/Km8Ezf #TogetherCounts #evoconf PLS RT

• RT @MomItForward GIVEAWAY! Enter 2 win a $50 GC & George Foreman Grill (2 Winners) http://bit.ly/L0K2vg #gno #TogetherCounts #evoconf PLS RT

Optional Entries

The following are extra entries that are completely optional and will earn you one extra entry for each completed item. Leave a separate comment on this post for each completed entry.

• Follow @momitforward on Twitter.
• Like Mom It Forward on Facebook: http://facebook.com/momitforward.

Terms and Conditions

Winners will be selected randomly through http://random.org. No purchase necessary to enter. Giveaway ends at 11:59 p.m. ET Wednesday, May 23, 2012. See all terms and conditions here. This giveaway is available to U.S. residents only.

Also, please connect with us on Twitter and share with us on our Flickr group, YouTube channel, and Facebook page.

Links to Blog Posts

Please include your name and a link to blog posts about evo’11 so we can see your fun pics, read about your takeaways, and see any videos you captured.

Sessions

Workshops

Thanks to Jenny Eckton, Amy Harmon, Camille Langston, Kelly Loubet, Jamie Moesser, Jen Price, and Jen Tilley and Microsoft for making evo’11 live blogging possible.

Top 10 Tips and How-To’s

1. Always upgrade WordPress. Click on the upgrade messages at the top of the dashboard. There’re always security patch releases and new functionality. Remember to backup your site before upgrading. To backup your database, use the WordPress plugin WP-DB-Backup. Consider these other options for backup WordPress plugins as well: Snapshot, Dropbox, or the BackupBuddy plugin (note: requires a yearly subscription).
2. Know basic HTML and CSS. Know that HTML controls the content of your site. It is the basic code that it is written in. It’s the stuff that looks like this: <p> text </p>. Every page has a title, a head, and a body beginning and ending tag.
3. Know the different types of HTML tags within those sections that define your content. Always remember to close any tag with a backslash (/) so you don’t get unexpected results on your page. Some commonly used tags are: paragraph (<p>text goes here</p>, image (<img src=”file.ext” />), div tags <div>something<div/>, span tag (<span>usually text here</span>, ordered lists tags and unordered list tags, linebreak tags <br />, italic (emphasis) tags: <em>italicized text</em>.
4. Whenever you do a tag, put the beginning one and the ending one when you start, then go back in between the two and fill in what’s needed.
5. Familiarize yourself with CSS. It is what controls the appearance of your site, customizing your HTML display. It is added via a separate style sheet file (.css), a style element (usually in the HTML head section), or an inline (i.e., right in the html tag) style. When it’s added via a stylesheet or style element, use selectors, and then declarations. Check out these CSS Cheatsheets: http://wpleet.com/guide-to-css-coding-cheat-sheet-css2-css3 or http://www.gosquare.com/liquidcity.
6. Know what PHP is.
7. If you decide to update your theme, update with a child theme first, in Notepad. Don’t create a whole new “parent” theme. Look for a child theme stylesheet. This way you can still reference stuff you had in your original theme, and customize additions and changes to your theme. For more info, check out http://www.codex.wordpress.org.
8. To add the Facebook “like” button to your blog, follow these instructions: Go to Facebook like button page: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like. Specify options as necessary and click to get the block of HTML code you need. To add Facebook comments to your blog, go to http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/
9. To automatically add an author bio to posts, add an HTML block where you want the bio to appear in the content part of your code, using this link from the WordPress 2010 theme
10. To make your WordPress site go faster, follow these tips:
    1. Don’t fill up your site with a ton of plug-ins. Some of them conflict with each other.
    2. Install a cache plug.
    3. Hard code when possible.
    4. Use the smush.it plugin to optimize images.
    5. Turn off post revisions.

From Mariah Humphries of @julastudio, we learned more about widgets, which are like plugins, but designed to provide a simple way to arrange the various elements of your sidebar content without having to change any code. She advised everyone to look up the Jetpack plugin which is an internal url shortener . She gave instructions for adding the Facebook badge to your site, which you can find by going to this link. To enable your visitors to “grab your button” go the Widgets in WordPress, add a text widget, then insert the entire code. WordPress is also working on adding some plug-ins to enable forums on your site. These are some possibilities: http://simple-press.com, http://bbpress.com, or http://forumpress.org. To add the “you might also like these posts…” capability, visit http://www.linkwithin.com or http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/related-posts-thumbnails/

There were many “a-ha’s” and “waa-hoos!” as evo Conference bloggers discovered new capabilities they didn’t know about. You can have some of those moments by visiting Jen’s link here.
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.

1.  Be consistent and true. Known for shoes?  Don’t write about minivans.

2.  Write in confidence. Make the effort to own your subject.  Be the expert, the authority about what your targeted audience wants to read.

3.  What kind of blogger are you going to visit day after day? Be transparent, truthful, and engaged.  Answer their questions in the comments.  Be respectful.

4.  You must have quality content. Strive for sharp, engaging design.  Good photography can mean more attention.  Check for typos, misspellings, and hard-to-read bits.

5.  The golden rule: the audience comes first. Never forget that it’s a relationship.  Treat your reader like you’d want to be treated.  Don’t sell your soul to write about something your audience won’t want to read.

6.  Writing a good headline is key. The headline is the simple most important factor in getting the click and the read.  It’s essential for strong SEO and can get you picked up by others.  It’s a great tool for shaping tight, compelling posts and the secret to quadrupling your traffic.

7.  Get more out of Facebook. Use Facebook to engage and interact with your fans using polls, questions, photos, etc.

8.  Get more out of Twitter. Give love to get love…RT, reply, link, be real.  Align yourself with other influential social media mavens.  Insert yourself into the right conversations using search or a Twitter client.  Be #found using hashtag trends to increase your followers and amplification.  Twitalyzer helps you improve your impact on Twitter.

9.  Syndication. Pick your partner wisely.  Some sites create no follow links.  Ask up front if they will include your URL’s within articles that you write for other sites.  Yahoo Shine is a good place to get good exposure.

10.  Use web data tools. SEOMoz; Google AdWords; Google Trends, News, & Alerts; Facebook Analytics; and Twitalyzer.

We played a fun game to get us thinking in how to write a good headline.  Here are some top tips to write an irresistible headline…

1.  Be clear, not clever.

2.  Keep it short and tight (5-7 words).

3.  Use strong keywords and trending terms.

4.  Force the click.

5.  Use numbers but not too large (not beyond 10).

6.  Ask a question.

7.  Promise something.

Amazing session! Go grow your blog!
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.

Aimee Giese shared these technical tips:

• Practice, practice, practice! Take lots of photos, from all sorts of angles, heights, etc.
• Delete a lot of photos. Learn what works and what doesn’t.
• Learn how to edit.  Try these editing tools: Adobe Photoshop or Elements or Lightroom, etc.
• Know that it’s not about the camera, it’s about the lens. Use whatever camera you have with you.  If you do have an SLR, get rid of the kit lens.
• When cropping:
  • Apply the rule of thirds.  Divide shot in your mind into three sections. You can increase interest by having subject be in right third, left third, etc. of the shot, as opposed to just being in the middle.
  • Get close for emotion or interest.
  • Follow natural body crop lines (i.e., crop at knees, hips, or chest).
  • To amp up interest:
    • Befriend the histogram.
    • When deciding between color or black and white, decide what you want the focus of your picture to be. If person’s expression, for example, have it be black and white.  Extraneous detail drops out.
    • Blurry photos are not necessarily worth nothing. Sharpen when needed, but not always.

Jen Yu of Jenyuphotography.com, shared these tips on nature photography:

• You don’t necessarily have to have a wide angle lens. It can bring in clutter. She recommends using a telephoto lens to compress and focus your subject matter. You don’t have to show the whole forest. And, you don’t have to get close to critters to “get close” to them.
• All the lenses in the world mean nothing if you don’t now how to use them. Know the rules of composition. In nature, you’ll find a lot of patterns. Find and capture them. Also, look for leading lines (e.g., a copse of trees going into the distance provides a leading line which guides the eye and adds depth to the photo).
• Ultimately, the photographer really depends on lighting. Be aware of the different kinds (frontlighting, backlighting, and natural light), their attributes and what they can bring to or take away from a picture.
• When shooting wildlife, focus on an eye and avoid amputations of body parts.

Brooke Schwab of brookeshwabphotography.com shared these tips on capturing people:

• For the most effective portraiture, you need to have your subjects trust you, know you if possible. Go into a photo shoot with the perspective that you are asking people to show you the most precious thing they have…themselves.
• Initiate questions that encourage the subjects to connect with each other and with you.

Lastly, Jenny Cisney, Senior Social Media Manager/Chief Blogger with Kodak, shared these tips on finding photo inspiration:

• Experiment: “toss” your camera, paint with light during low exposure, take pictures of people upside down, take split photos (e.g., father/son or person as a child, then as an adult) and stitch them together, or swap faces of subjects.
• Remember: check out Flickr for some then and now pics.
• Stage: use unique props on the street and capture people as they walk by the props; base a series of photos around something random, like a pothole; or recreate a famous photo in Legos and snap that.
• Display: it’s still important to print your pictures out and display them in unique ways.
• Find inspiration from pro photographers. Visit photo blogs like boston.com/bigpicture/photoblogs, vanityfair.com/photos, how-to sites, online communities, and especially pinterest.com/kodakcb.

All panelists agreed that the most important thing to do if you want to be a great photographer is to not be afraid to get out there, practice, and grow!
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.

Great Snippets

• Bloggers have more influence over purchasing decisions than celebrity endorsements.
• Define who you want to be and what you want to be doing.
• Keep your eyes open for opportunities.
• Showcase your skills and experience.  Success stories are key in reaching out to brands.  Did you help a brand in the past?  What was the result of your helping that brand?  How are you going to help brands move the needle?
• Don’t send PDF’s to brands.  Keep it simple.  Use your blog to showcase your stuff.

Do not work for free under the guise of good exposure.  It is bad exposure.  If you don’t value your own work, neither will anyone else.

• Build relationships.  Form relationships before you need them. Engage on twitter.
• Pitch perfect: don’t bury the lead, be clear, use the appropriate tone, and spell out clear benefits.  Write the email as if you’re writing to your sister’s best friend.
• Think way ahead with agencies and pitch your idea early.
• Think about your prospect.  If you’re not a huge blogger, your best prospect is probably going to be a small local company.
• The most important job of writing the headline for your initial email response…get you to open the email.
• Strong elements of a headline include: names the prospect, names the benefit, uses vivid language, and elicits emotion.
• Don’t beg.  Deliver!  Talk about what you have to offer, not what you don’t have to offer.
• Elements of a persuasive pitch include…me and my problem, how you are going to fix my problem, what it will feel/look like when it’s fixed, your offer, why should I believe you, and call to action.  Great, great stuff!

My biggest takeaway…We’re all like babies—me, me, me. When writing pitches, think about, “How can I help the brand?”  Don’t make it about you.  It needs to be all about how it’s going to benefit the brand.
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.

Why would anyone create a video blog?

Vlogging is the best opportunity to brand yourself. Video is a way to stand out, especially with over 80% of people being visual learners.

Is Vlogging difficult?

People tend to overcomplicate the process. Start where you are, and your audience will appreciate taking the journey with you.

What equipment is needed for vlogging?

Any number of things will help you, some of which you may already have: an iPhone, a point-and-shoot camera, DSLR with HD on a tripod, or a flip cam. If background noise tends to be an issue for your vlog episodes, using a hi-def microphone is key; look into getting a shotgun mic. Using a tripod to avoid shaking cannot be stressed enough.

Where should I get my equipment?

New York-based B&H (bhphotovideo.com) is the standard in where to buy equipment, but be aware: they are closed (even online) for Jewish holidays.

Where should I record my vlog?

You should consider sound (remember: an HD microphone), background (clean, but not plain), and light (natural light is best, but if it’s not available, you can get creative).

How should I best present myself on my vlog?

Think about what you’re wearing: nothing too bright, or all black (‘floating head’). Look pleasant, and look your best. Position the camera at the most flattering angle for you. Look directly into the camera, and while using a script isn’t always the best idea, using bullet points will help you stay on-target with your message.

How long should my vlog be?

While there are, of course, exceptions to the rule, after editing, splicing, adding music, and your own signature tactics (intros, exits, etc.), your vlog should be fewer than three minutes in length.

Can I make money with vlogging?

You could look to get your vlogs sponsored, or look into YouTube ads. Remember, you’re not CNN.com: no one wants to sit through a commercial at the beginning of your vlog. As always, have integrity with your money-making: are you looking to earn fast food money, or mortgage money?

Anything else I should know?

Beware of copyright issues with music (for royalty-free music you can use, see audiojungle.net, and also look up Kevin MacLeod). Be familiar with terms of service for YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, and facebook videos.
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.

1. The big question, of course, is cost, so it helps to remember: “Good work ain’t cheap, and cheap work ain’t good.”
2. Find the right person for the right job (what are you looking for? Production work? Graphic design? Database development? Programming?).
3. Questions they should ask (Goals of your project, timeline, parameters & delivery methods, similar projects that you admire).
4. Questions you should ask (Project management, proofing mechanisms, delivery methods, copyright, payment terms)
5. Take ownership of your ideas: create a mockup, show it to people, find a visual designer.
6. Always be recruiting designers and programmers.
7. Developers program, designers design, and copywriters write. Hire an agency that does it all. Bringing the project manager and the designer into the same room with the client helps.
8. Finalize your design and copy before programming begins.
9. Designers & programmers speak a different language; we really should learn some of this lingo (take a basic html class to see how it’s written).
10. It’s okay to say, “I might have to leave you if you can’t deliver.”

Remember: it’s your project. Don’t let anyone else make your decisions, and don’t leave any gaps in decisions to be made. One way to reduce risk in working with programmers is to start with a very small aspect of the project and see how it goes. The right designers and programmers help bring your ideas to life, so work with them to make that happen!
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.

Menu

• Grilled mini flatbread with littleneck clams, bacon, and baby arugula
• Barbeque Shrimp with dry rub, with asparagus & blue cheese slaw
• NY Steak with honey & chipotle lime marinade
• Spanish Summer Salad with avocado, heirloom tomatoes, and Spanish feta
• Balsamic-rosemary marinated hangar steak, with heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and herb-roasted fingerling potatoes

Dessert

• Strawberry panna cotta with fresh mint

Perhaps it goes without saying: the food was Out-Of-This-World delicious. Our mouths were happy.

Post-lunch, our group was divided into two as we began the hands-on portion, one group concentrating on food photography and the second group learning how to make the food we had just consumed.

The hands-on cooking was lead (in two different groups) by Chef Murcko and Chef Alex, each group preparing different parts of the lunch we enjoyed. From the flatbread with clams (steam the clams to open them; roll out the flatbread dough as thinly as possible and place directly onto the grill), to the steak (slice against the grain) with fingerling potatoes (they come in purple!), we absorbed as much information as we could from the elite chefs of The Canyons.

The food photography group, lead by Helene Dujardin (@SweetTartelette), was helpful to participants in thinking about the light, the composition (“food first, props second”) and style, the settings (ingredients in the background), and the story of the food we photograph. Helene also encouraged us to always shoot at three angles: eye-level, at 3/4 above, and from directly overhead. For more of Helene’s tips, and to see examples of her stunning food photography, look for her book Plate to Pixel (Wiley publishing).
Thanks to Microsoft for providing computers for the evo’11 Blogging team.