Emily and I spent an enjoyable evening with the London Blog Club on Tuesday at their very first bloggers’ challenge. Hosted at the Blueposts Pub on Newman Street in London (not THE Bluepost pub unfortunately) this club meets once a month to inspire and discuss all elements of blogging.

Six speakers were challenged to share personal insights with the club within 5 minutes, whilst the audience voted on which of the speakers were the most inspirational, most educational, most creative, the social media all star and if none of these categories fitted, we could make up our own!

I won’t go through the speakers one by one, as Abul Hussain of Adonis Demon rounds it up perfectly in his latest blog post. What I will share with you is some of the top tips from the evening:

• If you want your blog to have good SEO potential, make sure you have your own domain URL and don’t rely on those provided by sites such as WordPress
• Use the hashtag #TWIP to find and tweet great Twitter tips
• Gain free support and advice when starting out from www.3cscommunity.com
• If you’re stuck for creative inspiration or suffering from writer’s block, Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way comes highly recommended
• If motivation to post frequently is lacking, try out the WordPress Daily Challenge, or the weekly one if you’re time-poor
• Use your blog to answer questions; these posts will have longevity and are useful to new and existing readers
• Don’t be afraid to spark a discussion on Twitter – it can lead to a blog post which will invariably entice tweeters to come and debate it further

Thanks be to all the speakers: @proactivepaul, @claireboyles, @cancerIFA, @TheOyeTimes, @JuHasan and @HelenTonetti and of course thanks to @eBuzzingUK for sponsoring the event and for the free drinks! Here’s to next month’s meet up…