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As a small business owner, you don’t have a lot of money to throw around on marketing.

What if you could take a little trip and be surrounded by hundreds or thousands of reporters, potential clients and great connections? You know that exposure is a vital piece of your marketing puzzle, and that the more you can get your business in the press and in front of potential alliances, colleagues and clients, the better off you’ll be.

If that’s what you’re looking for, a blog conference is the way to go. Most small business owners don’t pay enough attention to the blogging community in their public relations attempts, and they end up leaving money on the table.

Perhaps they think that blogging is small-time, if they think about it at all. What they don’t realize is that many blogs have literally thousands of loyal readers. That’s thousands of people reading what bloggers have to say about you.

So, how can a conference help your small business? Blogging is exploding, and blog conferences are popping up everywhere.

Here are some blog conference tips:

• Hit the right conference. Some blog conferences are specifically about small business blogging, while others focus exclusively on technology. If you’re a big technology company about to launch a product, the latter is the place to be. If you’re a small technology company in the same situation, you could – and probably should – attend both.
• Have a story. Blog conferences are full of people getting together to meet, chat, and most importantly, learn. If you’re providing something valuable, bloggers will want to hear your story so they can write about it. Perfect a great elevator speech before you go.
• Treat bloggers like the press. When you speak to a journalist, you’re not selling to the journalist – you’re selling to their readers. The same is true for blog conferences. Bloggers get pitched more than most people realize, and they can smell a hard sell from a mile away.

Remember that they’re not at the conference to go shopping, and don’t sell too hard. Focus on being nice and telling a good story, and they’ll do the selling for you.

Here are some blogging conferences we have attended and recommend:

• IZEA Fest
• Blog World Expo