I haven’t been to many blog conferences, in fact prior to the Go Blog Social ‘Content High’ conference last weekend, I had attended Alt Summit in New York City in the summer of 2013 which was frankly a terrifying experience and you can read all about here.

You see I am a wallflower, an introvert, I keep myself to myself which is the complete opposite to what I am supposed to be doing at these conferences.  I am supposed to be networking and handing out all of my business cards which for the GBS event were coloring postcards with my details on the back.

I did make a good decision before I went this time.  I made myself this (above) little pep graphic which was my screen saver on my phone.  My problem is that when anyone asks what my blog is about, I tend to freeze and then when I find my tongue, out spouts a couple of unclear sentences.  This time I looked over my blog to make sure I knew what I was talking about (!) and I came up with a few sentences to explain myself should anyone ask.

Ask they did and I felt much more confident and coherent when I talked about my blog.  I am sure this is mainly because my blog has grown and evolved over the past few years and I have grown with it and become more definite about what I write about.

We all got settled in to the conference to listen and make notes as we paid attention to the speakers, ate lovely grub and drank lots of strong coffee.

My main takeaways from the conference were:

1.Make videos, just jump in and do it.  This is something I have in my brain anyway, making videos of my processes when I make art journal pages, mandalas and any other creative projects. It was good to listen to Bianca Jade of Mizzfit talk about making short videos and encourage us all to start filming.

2. Write as if your article is part of a magazine.  I would like to write and photograph  for magazines, so Julie Blanner‘s advice was spot on for me.

3. Craft your aesthetic. I am working constantly on this, the design of my blog and the content.  Sarah Stallman, the fashion editor at Alive magazine which is based here in St Louis.

4. Read your words out loud to yourself to edit a post. I had a good chat with Julia Ann of Oh Julia Ann blog about creating content then editing it down and having a definitive end to a post.

5. Don’t worry about having to talk to all of the people. This was my best advice to myself. I am not good at imposing myself on strangers and starting impromptu conversations, so I didn’t.  I did chat to a few people I already knew and met a few bloggers, but I didn’t stress about it and it made for a much nicer time.

I didn’t make any new besties, but I did connect with some lovely people and I enjoyed the day. I learnt some stuff, and I felt encouraged to carry on doing what I am doing. More importantly I felt encouraged to go and have a go at some new stuff like videos and improving my blog design.

Of course I snapped a few pictures to share! Here is my Go Blog Social conference experience in photos.

 

Thanks to Go Blog Social and Alive Network for a great conference! I look forward to the next one.

Happy Wednesday x