Over 200 bloggers participated in events for the First Annual Blogger Week, hosted by Black Bloggers Connect. Blogger Week is a multicultural festival of bloggers, journalists and social media mavens. It’s the brain child of multicultural communications specialist Jessica Ann Mitchell an alumna of the African American Studies Department and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Blogger Week’s series of events included a Google Glass Preview at the Google DC office, “Blogging For Business” Tele-Conference, and “How To Make Your Blog Go Viral” Google Hangout with popular lifestyle blogger Derrick Jaxn. The headline events were the official Blogger Week Networking Mixer held at the University of the District of Columbia and the Blogger Week UnConference held at the Sheraton Silver Spring Hotel. Bloggers poured in from across the country, including California, New Jersey, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, New York, Virginia, Maryland, and The District of Columbia. Bloggers traveled internationally from Canada, Jamaica, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and more.
Sponsors of Blogger Week were IZEA, the pioneers of Social Sponsorship and Namecheap, the leading ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web hosting company. Blogger Week also partnered with Rolling Out Magazine, Pull Magazine, DC Lady Bloggers, Bloggers Like Me, The Black Public Relations Society of DC and many additional organizations.
During the Blogger Week UnConference, bloggers took to Twitter and Facebook to share their Blogger Week experiences, using #BloggerWeek. According to TweetReach.com 150,000 Twitter accounts were reached through tweets using #BloggerWeek on May 3rd. Instagram was also flooded with collages of selfies and group pics among new found blogger friends. Many bloggers are writing recaps detailing information learned at sessions and panels.
The next Blogger Week is set to take place in the Washington, DC area. Major sponsors are already coming on board for Blogger Week 2015 due to its widespread reach among bloggers, social media aficionados and journalists.
