Blog Now Live Forever (BNLF) Meet Experience – by IndiBlogger!

Blogging itself is a very monotonous and thankless job, it only becomes interesting when you get the chance to interact with other Bloggers. When it comes about a Blogging Meet, and you get a chance to interact with different Bloggers from different genre – it becomes a lifetime memory. Here are my experiences of attending the second edition of Blog Now Live Forever (BNLF) meet at Dehradun, organized by IndiBlogger.

I was among one of a few lucky Bloggers who got the IndiBlogger Freeze Magnet when this concept of Blog Now and Live Forever (BNLF) came into existence. Unfortunately, I missed the first edition of the BNLF meet which happened in 2015 at Mumbai. That time I felt a bit demotivated, but I was determined enough that I will surely attend the next edition of it; which was supposed to happen at Delhi only.

But unfortunately, it announced to be happening at a neutral venue, Dehradun. Although a nice place to visit, and when the dates announced I was sure enough to visit the place with my wife and daughter as well. But because of my daughter’s exam, this program didn’t come into existence and I had to visit there alone only.

Although I was accompanied by bloggers like Mahendra Singh, who blogs for Rajasthan Blog and whom I call as Mahendra Singh Dhoni and our very own Shwetabh Mathur.

I met Mahendra in Tata Tigor meet organized by IndiBlogger only and he was my roommate that time.

A few months back when the registration for the second edition of BNLF started, I missed registering for the first time, and it gave me huge pain that I won’t be able to attend it again this time too. I saw people from different geographies in the attendee’s list, but I got no chance to register in the first instance.

Then somehow the window opened a few days later and I don’t miss registering for the event. Although, when we reached Dehradun and attended the event, I felt something seriously bad. And it was the low number of attendees, IndiBlogger seriously need to think about after all what happened that so many people were on the attendee’s list, but a fraction of them only turned into reality?

Anyways, it was full of fun over there with lots of Goosebumps. For a food lover guy like me it was a nightmare when I got denied for dinner over there, but then I am thankful to the Core IndiTeam which arranged Pizza and Garlic Bread, along with some Cocktail and Mocktail on the first night and then the proper food coupon on the second night. I was a bit hurt because of the way Valley of Words which was the other event happening there insulted us for the food, we are not that type of people who attend a blogging meet for the purpose of getting free meals.

Introduction Round

The real event for which we went there started in around 11 PM of 18th November night. It was a purely Blogging event and this time IndiBlogger asked the bloggers to talk about themselves and their blog. I was really surprised to see so many talented bloggers over there.

I went through a different phase when my turn to introduce myself came into. It was an emotional time for me when Anoop Johnson from IndiBlogger introduced me as a person who helped different Bloggers at IndiBlogger itself with my blog posts on how to be successful in IndiBlogger.

Blogging – Blogging – Blogging!

The second night’s event was purely on Blogging and nothing else. Except for some small incidences and a few speeches, everything was so inspiring and motivational that you cannot explain it in words. It was really inspiring to hear Sid, Antarik, and Ishieta as the Keynote Speaker and they truly made our day with their inspiring stories. Here are some limelights of the 19th November night:

Free Blogs Vs. Self-Hosted Blogs

This was the first topic of discussion over there and Anoop was so humble enough to select me as the moderator for the topic. As per him, since I know the aspects of both the things, so I should be the moderator of the event and I became the moderator of such debate for the first time in my life.

As we all know that it is a topic on which I can discuss with anyone and for any number of hours, but it was so good to hear different opinions from fellow bloggers. Although my friend Ravish Mani was determined enough to prove that there is no harm in having a free blog like Blogspot blog or WordPress one, and he gave the example that one of the Influencer Blogger selected by IndiBlogger herself has a Blogspot blog.

Different bloggers have different opinions about it, but somehow the consensus was that if you are doing blogging seriously then you should go to self-hosted blogs.

As far as my own opinion is concerned, I always prefer Self-Hosted blogs as it is something which looks professional, though if you are doing the blogging for the first time, then I might suggest you try those two free platforms, but at a later stage you must need to upgrade yourself, otherwise these efforts will be a waste.

As far as my last line was concerned, I asked a simple question to the group and it was “How many times have you seen a Blogspot or WordPress.com link coming into Google search for any competitive keyword?”

The response was clearly written on the wall. Everyone said Never, and that ends the discussion on a note that free platforms are good for experimenting and being a serious blogger you certainly need to jump to the Self-Hosted blog.

Length of a Blog Post

Another discussion was on the length of a blog post, some people are okay with writing less than 500 words post, and some were in the favor of writing more than 500 words post. I was arguing in the favor of having more than 500 words of content in a blog post, I normally write around 1000+ words content in all my blog posts.

It was the time when Manpreet gave a solid point, as per her who amongst us are having the best AI or Artificial Intelligence, and everyone said it is Google, so as Google likes 500+ words content, so there is no point in arguing for it, as we all are targeting for search engine visitors and it can only be achieved after getting the Google Love.

I still remember a few months back I had an argument with a gentleman on the same topic. To my surprise next day that gentleman sent me an email with two blog posts indicating the length of content should be less than 300 words, and to my surprise, he himself got those blog posts from Google only and both of those blog posts themselves contains more than 1000 words. So what is the point in going with such suggestions?

To be very honest, here are some of the proofs in favor of my point:

HubSpot, clearly mentions in a post on the anatomy of a blog post, that ideally, a blog post length should be of around 2100 words, as if you analyze the top 10 Google results, mostly the average comes in a range of 2032 and 2416 words.

Here are some other proofs as well, check 4 statistics every blogger should know about the content word count and you will find that 2416 words are the average length which is being liked by Google, and in fact two more points which you can see in the posts over there are 40.54% times long copy content outperformed the short one and 200 words content pages are something which Google considers as a thin content page. Be aware that Panda is going to dislike your site if they found such pages.

The same points are even mentioned in a Moz Blog as well which is on the perfect blog post length.

You can also check the posts like https://yoast.com/blog-post-length/ and https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ideal-length-of-everything-online-according-to-science which again claims in the favor of my point that the content should always be of 500+ words. But in fact even 500+ words content are not good these days, you should always try to have 2000+ words content.

Comments on Blog

Again this was a topic which was quite near to my heart. It is a unanimous point that comments are essential for blogs, but someway or other short comments are useless for a blog. I argued that when we write comments like “Nice Post” or “Great Work” or “HBD” as described by Gautam, we actually harm the blog only. It is better not to write such comments.

It was the time when I remembered Burhanuddin, whom I met over there only during the coffee break, and he told me that he is following me since years and goes through different blog posts of mine which actually admires him as well, but he never posted a comment on my blog. The reason why he was not posting any comments on my blogs was that he thought there is no point in writing such small comments, and you can either give some value addition or argue something in a comment.

To be very honest he is actually right. Whenever you plan something for comments, think it in a way that it should give some value addition to the blog post.

Conclusion

Apart from these we also discussed on some topics related to blog only. It was the same time when I met many well-known bloggers and I cannot even express the happiness meeting the bloggers like Vikram Kamboj, Manpreet, Mann, Kishor Kumar, Archana, Ambika Gulati, Shalini, Ravish Mani, Ishieta, Arvind, Gautam Sehgal, Tara Nair (especially her Calligraphy was truly awesome), Burhanuddin, Antarik Anweshan, Pallavi, Natasha, Anand Ji, Mahendra Singh, and our very own Shwetabh Mathur and many others whose name I forget to mention over here.

Also, I would like to share some blog posts of mine over here, these are some relevant and demanding posts in blogging fraternity. I am sure you all are going to like them:

How to Develop a Professional Blog in Minutes?

There are many people who ask me this question that how can we develop a professional blog in a quick way or in a few minutes? I wrote this blog in June 2014, though it is still relevant and can guide you for the same.

10 Common Blogging Mistakes!

The first blog which I shared above was for newbies, while this one is for those who are already there in the field of blogging. Not many bloggers are clear about if they are doing blogging in a proper way or not. So this blog post of mine will help them to understand if they are not doing any such mistakes.

BlogSpot vs. WordPress!

When you start a blog post, the first question which can come in front of you is to select Blogger (BlogSpot Blog) or the WordPress one. Then again in WordPress to there are two different options; so it all can confuse you. Don’t worry you are not alone. I was also a bit confused when I first started blogging way back in 2004. So this blog post of mine can help you in determining which platform you should go for.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org or Self-Hosted Blog!

A much-debated topic is which version of WordPress I should choose for my blog? So with the help of this blog post of mine, you might get a clear idea. Though my personal choice is the Self-Hosted Blog.

SEO Tips for Bloggers!

Although SEO is an always changing topic and it is difficult to put all SEO tips in a blog post, though I tried giving maximum points which are essential for the smooth running of a blog in this post. Hope it is useful to you.

Benefits of Blogging!

We are doing blogging, but do we know about the Benefits which we are getting through it? Let us go through this blog post of mine to understand my opinion about the benefits of blogging.

Transferring Blogger Blog to Self-Hosted WordPress!

Initially, you started blogging on Blogspot platform and now you want to move ahead and transfer your blogger blog to self-hosted WordPress one, this blog post of mine can be a handy guide for you. If you are facing any issue while doing it, you can always contact me.

How to Be Successful in IndiBlogger?

Okay, the last but not the least blog post which I want to share with you all is on How to Be Successful in IndiBlogger? This is a blog post which I wrote in June 2014, and then Anoop too posted a similar blog on IndiBlogger, you can also read this blog post of Anoop. I am hopeful that these two posts can help you to get the maximum benefits from IndiBlogger. Please don’t hesitate in sharing your opinion about these posts.

Leaving you all with some memorable clicks of the event: