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My brain is bursting with ideas.
I recently attended the Blended Conference, which is a local blogging conference here in Phoenix, and came away with a greater focus and purpose for my blog. The conference was a lot of fun, I met some pretty awesome people and I came away with three important lessons and three take-aways which will help improve my blog.
Lessons learned
Practice, practice your elevator speech
Your elevator speech is a short blurb about your blog, designed to tell who you are and to pique interest in your work. I had practiced mine before going, but it ended up feeling too long.
The elevator speeches which really caused me to want to engage more, were the ones that offered value, in addition to explaining what the blog was about.
My elevator speech certainly piqued interest, but moving forward it needs to be more streamlined with a clear emphasis that Cook With a Shoe (CWAS) is a personal, finance blog (and not a cooking blog).
Strike up more conversations and ask about their blog
You never know who you are going to meet and have a chance to talk to, so you need to be prepared and willing to talk to anyone. Right away, I met another blogger, Kim. Kim and I ended up talking to three of the presenters before the opening session, which was super cool to be able to meet them face to face and hear their stories.
However, I did not talk to as many people as I would have liked. A lot of people, either had their group of friends they were hanging out with or seemed to be in their own little world, which made it hard to approach anyone. My guess is we all felt a little nervous.
What am I going to change? I will start being the approachable one and look to engage others in conversation about their blog.
Participate in social media events
Blended Conference shared a list of everyone's twitter handles and had an Instagram contest prior to the event. I really appreciated this as I was able to get to know more people ahead of time and it was easy to walk up to someone to say hi when you recognized them. If your conference has any prior social media events, participate in them and start following other attendees.
There was such a wealth of information that I was furiously writing notes on and for me it was hard to take time off to tweet or Instagram during the conference. Taking pictures was another thing which was difficult for me to do.
In the future, I will have to make a concentrated effort to be more involved in social media during the event.
Take-Aways
I came away with loads of information and pages of notes (make sure you have a good way to take notes), but there were three main points which stood out to me.
- You have a message the world needs to hear and if you don't share your message, there are people who will miss out and won't be able to find a solution for their need. No one else has the same set of skills and life experience you have to share and there are people only you can reach.
- You need to make your brand consistent and think of the larger goal. What is the purpose of your blog and how can you take steps in order to make it happen. Understandably, you will probably be surprised at the reach of your blog and look back with amazement, but you need to have some direction as to where you want to go. Branding is equally important, especially if you want to make a business out of your blog. The earlier you have a consistent brand, the easier it will be as you blog grows.
- If you want to grow your blog into a viable source of income, creating your own products and services are key. Many in attendance had built up enough of a business from their blogs that they were able to quit their jobs to blog full time, which was very inspiring.
Blogging has been a fun hobby where I have spent a lot of time over the last year, however I need to spend more intentional time blogging with the mindset of growing a business.
One idea several people brought up to me was to offer my services in a coaching role, which is something I will have to pursue. Writing an e-book is another viable option that I am seriously considering.
[Tweet "Applying what you learn from a blogging conference is key to improving your craft. "]
I must be intentional about being focused with the time I spend blogging and how to improve my blog and these ABC's of blogging will help focus my efforts and gain more traction.
Accelerate email subscriptions. Brainstorm about where I want my blog to go and how to get there. Create a product to sell before my blogiversary in January.
It is time for me to get busy on intentionally growing my brand and my business.
Would you rather see financial coaching services or an e-book offered on Cook With a Shoe?
Hi! I’m Charissa. I’m on a mission to help hardworking women overcome money struggles and gain financial peace with a Biblical perspective so they can have the freedom to impact their families and communities. Ready to make some changes that will impact your finances in 2020? Click here to get a free worksheet to help you make it happen!
Alexandra @ My Urban Family says
These are great tips! I haven’t been to a blogging conference before but I would love to in the future. There always seems to things to work towards in the blogging world – which I love and sometimes hate ha but always having room to grow is nice 🙂
Charissa says
If you get a chance to go to a conference, I would take it, Alexandra! I learned so much and gained a lot of clarity as well. You are right, there is always so many things to work on and trying to find the time to do all of these great things is the struggle. (For some reason, your comments always go to my spam folder. I love your comments and try to fish them out of spam as often as possible.)
Alexandra says
I wish I knew how to fix that or why it happens! I have a few bloggers who leave comments that always go to spam as well. Let me know if you figure it out!
Debbie says
How cool is that! I wish there were blog events I could attend without having to cross the ocean. Maybe in the UK, but the few things I heard of are exclusively for UK bloggers (or at least, that was the feeling I had).
I’ll make your life harder and say that I’d go for the ebook and the sessions.
There might be people who get the ebook and feel the need of extra coaching. Or people that after coaching, would like to take something with them for “maintenance”.
You are very knowledgeable and I’m sure you can help MANY people.
Charissa says
I had a great time! I just googled ‘local blogging conferences in…’ and found this one. Maybe you can do the same? I would think that there are or will be some blogging conferences soon on your side of the ocean. Wouldn’t it be great if we could someday attend the same conference… dreaming now. Debbie, thank you for your kind words and your encouragement about pursuing both ebook and coaching opportunities, it means a lot!
Jennifer says
A blogging conference is on my wish list right now. Thank you for sharing some of the points that you learned. It is always nice to be able to learn from others without having to go through trial and error yourself. I think an e-book would be great (I love reading). It is always a pleasure co-hosting the Pinterest Game with you.~Jennifer
Charissa says
Thank you Jennifer, I learned so much from the blogging conference (way more than I wrote down) and I would definitely go if you get the chance. I googled local blogging conferences in Phoenix and found this one, maybe you could do the same? Thanks for the interest in the e-book! I will keep you updated on what I do.