Tag: blog talk

Way to Represent!

A discussion I have been having a lot lately is about the different ways that bloggers work with brands.

There are so many ways to work with brands these days, but I think the most perfect brand partnerships are born out of a mutual love between the blogger and the brand.

Since Arkansas Women Bloggers has partnerships with some amazing Arkansas brands, I thought it would be fun to share a few ways I think bloggers do well at representing brands.

So here they are: 3 Great Ways Bloggers Represent Brands

1. Tell great social media stories.

This can be hard to do, and I don’t always succeed. But when I am working on a story or a project, I really love to be able to take the time to create anticipation before an event, to provide social media at the event and then to wrap the story up afterwards.

Of course, in my field (travel), this is easier to do than in others, but with a little creativity and planning, you can tell a story about anything and tie it all together with a little hashtag love.

Here’s an example of how it can be done for a recipe on Twitter:

Monday at the store: “Throwing some brown rice from @RicelandFoods in my shopping cart today. Looking for a new healthy recipe. #ChinosEatHappy”

Wednesday afternoon: “Think I’ll go ahead and chop all the veggies for my new @RicelandFoods brown rice paella. #ChinosEatHappy”

Wednesday at dinner: Tweet a gorgeous photo of your dinner, of course.

Wednesday after dinner: It was a hit! Kids loved the @RicelandFoods dish! #ChinosEatHappy

Friday morning: Blogging that new recipe today. Watch for it! #ChinosEatHappy

Friday afternoon: Here’s the link to my new recipe using @RicelandFoods brown rice. #ChinosEatHappy

This is just a made up example, but I think it illustrates that it is more interesting to create a story than it is to just tweet the same link four or five times, and I think it gives the brand more to work with. They can choose to turn it into a conversation, and your followers can engage with the process.

Obviously, Twitter is not the only channel you can use for this. Some people do a great job on Pinterest!

2. Create content for brands that they can use on their own website or social media channels.

Photos, videos, blog posts.

Most brands need all of these things for their website. In fact, for some brands I end up doing more content for their site than I do for my own. That can be a fun way to represent a brand without tiring out your own blog readership with talking about one particular brand too much.

This is also a great way to use or re-use content that you’ve already spent the time creating.

3. Write a blog post for a brand that tells a story only you can tell.

I love it when brands understand the value of the individual story. One of my favorite brands to work with in the last year has been a company called GowithOh. They are a vacation apartment rental company and they have provided apartments for a few of my family’s city breaks around Europe.

Per our arrangement beforehand, I have included links to and photos of the apartments I have stayed in, but my blog posts for them have been about our family’s adventures in the various cities. They are stories that are specific to our family and that only we can tell. I have so appreciated the freedom to create the kind of content that is a natural fit for my blog while still representing the brand.

I think this one is especially important when ten or fifteen bloggers are representing the same event or product. When I go on a tour and write about it for a brand, I don’t want my blog post to read like the tour description. I try to enter situations looking for a smaller story or a little detail that maybe not everyone would notice. This takes me back to those three small rules of writing any story:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

– Mary Oliver

Ok, over to you.

What are some ways you think bloggers do a great job representin’?

PS. The photo for this post is from a recipe for Petit Jean Meats hot dogs that I put together a few years ago for my Mama’s birthday. It’s one of my favorites!

Baby Steps To Becoming A Vlogger

Alison Chino

So you think you want to become a vlogger? @alisonchino tells us how. #ARWB #techtuesday

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Confession: Over two years ago, when I first heard that we were all going to have to add video to our blogs in order to stay on the “cutting edge” of the blogging scene, I thought,

Nope. No way. Not doing it. Not. Ever. Gonna. Happen.

Famous last words.

But do you feel me?

I mean, don’t we all already have enough to do?

As bloggers, we promote our posts and tweet our hearts out and we’ve learned photography and hashtags and some of us have even attempted a little web design.

Plus somehow, we find time to actually write our blog posts.

Who has time for video?

That’s like a whole other level.

And then last year I was negotiating contracts with two different companies and they both included video on the list of media coverage that would be required of me in the deal.

And so, not for the first time in my blogging career, I committed to do something I was not entirely sure how I would pull off.

I thought:

How hard can it be? I’ll figure it out somehow.

They just said I had to provide video. They didn’t say it had to be good.

My first attempt into the world of online video was to sign up for a Vine account. I know it seems counter-intuitive to start a new social media platform with zero followers but I did not want to start badgering my Instagram and Facebook followers with my first attempts at video.

I started playing with Vine around my house, taking videos of rooms. A Vine is six seconds long, so it was so easy! It takes me longer to edit a photo for Instagram than it does to shoot six seconds of video.

I started taking Vines of hotel rooms when I traveled or even when I went for a walk. It was actually kind of fun to have a new platform to experiment with where I was not worried about the audience. Because there wasn’t one.

But if I really wanted to share a certain Vine, I could push it to another platform. (In fact, Twitter owns Vine, so if you share a Vine with your Twitter followers, the video comes up in your feed. Fancy!) I could also embed a Vine into my blog post, and voila! Mini vlogging!

My next foray into the world on online video was to start shooting Hyperlapse videos for a travel company’s Instagram feed. Here’s how that came about:

Company Rep: Hi Alison, do you think you could use the new Hyperlapse app to post videos of your next walk on our Instagram feed.

Me: Of course. I would love to do that! (Googles “Hyperlapse app.” Googles “How to use Hyperlapse app.”)

I actually found this app super easy to use and I had lots of fun thinking up things that would be more fun when sped up. (Sheep and cartwheels come to mind)

Then, when I went on my long walk with my friend Diane, my Grand Adventure of 2014, the company said they really enjoyed the video footage of the scenery but could I do a little more where I actually narrate. Maybe even talk in front of the camera.

Me: I’m sorry. Did you say in front of the camera?

Company Rep: Yes. We’d love for you to add your voice to the video.

Me: Well, we’ll see.

And so with that small request in my brain, on day 2 of the Coast to Coast Walk, I launched my YouTube channel with 40 seconds of sheer ridiculousness.

I believe that it was about ninety percent delirium that contributed to the posting of the daily videos that followed on the rest of our walk, but Diane and I had loads of fun with making our video updates, and as the walk went on, we found that folks loved the daily updates.

I stumbled upon something that I later heard described as “the power of live.”

There is something urgent about consuming content that is happening right now.

There’s a reason my son HAS to be online at 8pm for the moment something is going live:

MOM! It’s only streaming from 8-10pm and after that you can’t see it anymore. Ever.

The power of live is the reason Snapchat is the fastest growing social media platform.

But that’s a topic for another blog post.

Besides, who over the age of fifteen is getting Snapchat?

Not me. No way. Not. Ever. Gonna…

Oh wait. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah. I have to stop saying that. (Of course I already have Snapchat.)

Now over to you, are you using online video? Did you fall into it like me or did you set out to learn it intentionally? I’m so curious to hear more stories of forays into vlogging?

When to NOT Write on Your Blog

By Alison Chino

Do you ever get excited about writing something and then realize that it is not really a great fit for your blog?

Maybe you write a fashion blog, but you were inspired this month to do a piece on MLK Day?

Or maybe you write a blog about church, but you went to a restaurant you really loved and want the world to know about.

Maybe you have a food blog, but today you needed to record a story that came to you while you were walking the dog.

In the age of “branding” or trying to fit a “niche” in blogging, we sometimes limit ourselves to what we have determined our audience will appreciate.

But as writers, I think it’s important to allow ourselves time to write the stories that touch our hearts.

So I hope you hear me saying (shouting) out this word of permission (also for myself):

Allow yourself to give in to whatever muse strikes your fancy.

It’s invigorating.

And here are a few suggestions for what to do with a piece that doesn’t really fit on your blog.

Publish it on someone else’s blog.

Guest posting is a great way to introduce your blog to a new audience. So find a blog that your piece would be a great fit for and reach out to see if another blogger would be willing to publish it with a little bio and link back to your site.

Publish it on a news blog.

Would your post fit in a local or national new setting? Little Rock Family, Arkansas Outside, Babble or The Huffington Post? Find the contact pages on these sites and send a request to guest post. I find that people are more excited about accepting a guest blogger when the piece is already written.

Publish it on Medium.

If you don’t already have a Medium profile, well, you probably should go ahead and set one up. You can use your Twitter handle. Medium is a cross between a social media network and a blogging platform. Its simple format makes it a joy to compose on, and there are lots of users hanging out and reading over there that might not otherwise find your blog. I especially like to use Medium for long form writing. Medium readers are not scared off by a post being over 800 words.

Publish it on Arkansas Women Bloggers.

One of the reasons I started this monthly contribution to the AWB site is that I really enjoy writing about blogging. I was doing tons of research and reading about blogging, but I did not have a place to share what I had learned. This community is great place for sharing your writing about many different topics and Julie is always looking to fill up the editorial calendar, so give her a shout.

Publish it on your blog anyway.

Maybe you just can’t bear to let this piece of work go somewhere besides your own site. That’s ok. Sometimes your readers will surprise you and be enthusiastic about seeing a different side of your writing life. Last year in the middle of all my outdoorsy posts, I wrote a story about my sister that I just wanted to share for her birthday. It turned out to be one of my most read posts of the year.

Don’t publish it at all.

Sometimes I write something that I know I just need to sit on for a while. Usually this happens when I have written something I feel very passionate about. Or sometimes I find that I have recorded a memory that I just need to hold to myself. At least for the time being. Maybe a day will come later that I should release it to the world. Or maybe not. Either way, I think I will still be glad I took the time to write it down.

Sometimes I forget that the reason I started my blog is that I love to write.

And in order to keep blogging with joy, I have to keep being inspired to write.

I’m so curious!

What have you written about lately that has nothing to do with your blog?

Where else would you add to this list of places for publishing your work?

Blog Dreaming for 2015

Happy Crazy-Almost-the-Middle-of-December!

I know what you’re thinking.

Who can think about blogging in 2015 right now?

It’s the craziest time of the year!

But really, I have a little gift for you.

Or a gift you can give yourself.

Here it is:

Grab yourself a cup of coffee and a piece of paper. If you have only ten minutes, you can still set yourself up for a successful new year of blogging!

Remember how for the last three months I have been unpacking my talk on Story Living for Story Telling? Well, now you get to dream about what stories you want to live and tell in 2015!

Come on, it will be fun, I promise!

Blog Dreaming

If you have 10 MINUTES:

Write this down:

In 2015,

I want to blog _______ (number of times) per ______ (week/month).

Be reasonable. But writing it down helps you make it happen!

My favorite blog posts to write are about ______________________ (food/my kids/travel/running).

This will help you remember to write about what you love, and more importantly, to DO what you love.

If you have 20 MINUTES:

Also (in addition to the above) write this down:

One thing I can do to make blogging fun this year is ____________ (go rock climbing for the first time, meet up with other bloggers, buy a new camera, bake a new kind of cupcake every week).

You might want to make a list of several things that come to mind, but then circle the ONE that you really want to make happen.

The steps towards making this happen are __________ (call rock climbing companies, create a Facebook group, ask my family for a camera for Christmas, buy a cupcake cookbook)

Get practical.

If you have 30 MINUTES:

(In addition to the above) write this down:

One way that I can be a better blogger this year is _____________ (use Twitter or Facebook more, comment on other blogs more, always blog/write on Thursday afternoons, find a sponsor to help me accomplish a goal)

One thing I can let go of that will help me to enjoy blogging more is ________________ (use Twitter or Facebook less, stop reading blogs that make me jealous, letting go of a sponsorship I don’t really believe in)

As you can see from the examples, what might make you a better blogger could be the thing that is holding me back. (Hello YouTube.)

I loved this quote from Alli Worthington at AWBU this year:

What you say NO to determines what you can say YES to.

It’s so true. So give yourself a minute to determine what you need to let go of.

Ok, now whether you spent 10 minutes or 30 minutes, take your piece of paper and tape it up somewhere where you will see it when January rolls around.

Now go and enjoy your Christmas season! I’ll see you back here in January to talk more about blogging in 2015!

Alison

Living and Telling Great Stories: AWBU {Part 3}

Back in September at AWBU I talked about Living and Telling Great Stories.

I keep talking about storytelling because I really believe it is the best way to build a following around your blog.

People LOVE a good story.

So I already shared about two kinds of stories you can live and tell on your blogs, The Sacred Everyday and The Noteworthy Days.

But then there’s a third kind of story to live, and it’s what I like to call:

The Grand Adventure

A grand adventure is an epic you can climb inside of. It’s a story that takes some dreaming and some planning.

It’s a story that makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning. It’s something that heightens your senses. It makes you alive to life. It’s a story that makes you want to keep blogging.

It can take a lot of different shapes but it has to be something that is uniquely you.

By that I mean that you can’t compare your grand adventure to someone else’s. Or you get in trouble.

My current grand adventure is called #48walks, and it’s part of my attempt to embrace where I live and the fact that for the most part, we walk everywhere. All the walks I’ve done this year have been leading up to longer walks, and specifically, a long walk across England that I did in September.

The Coast to Coast Trail in England is 191 miles. It sounded pretty impressive to me. I was actually kind of scared I wouldn’t be able to finish.

To me, it sounded like a Grand Adventure.

But as soon as I said that my Grand Adventure was going to be walking from the west coast of England to the east, I found out that 10000 people walk it every year. Someone actually ran it in five days. In 1991, someone ran the entire route in just under 40 hours.

I know of someone else who is going to run across the entire USA. Another blogger is currently walking across the whole world.

So if I start comparing my adventure to others, pretty soon I feel like it is no big deal that I walked across England, and I start thinking that maybe I should find something more original.

That’s when I have to stop and remember:

This is my Grand Adventure. For me it’s a story worth living and a story worth telling.

Your Grand Adventure is going to be something that makes YOUR heart beat faster. Because we’re all different.

Maybe your Grand Adventure is…

eating only food you cook for a year.

giving away all your possessions.

having coffee once a week with someone new.

filming heirloom recipes internationally.

raising a significant amount of money for a worthy cause.

a trip around the world.

running a marathon.

For me, it was going for a long walk.

Even though all grand adventures are not the same, all Grand Adventures seem to have some of the same elements.

So besides the fact that it EXCITES YOU, here’s how you know you’re setting out on a Grand Adventure:

A Grand Adventure involves RISK, even the risk of FAILURE.

So your adventure should have some elements that stretch you. That push you to the limit of your strength or your skill set or your mental prowess.

It is going to stretch you and there will be hard work involved.

And there could be failure. And that’s OK.

In fact it’s best to acknowledge up front that you could completely fail at your Grand Adventure.

But that doesn’t mean the adventure wasn’t worth taking.

Your grand adventure is your story arc. It’s this beautiful design that shapes your life for a season. But the point of the arc is to give us something to live through. Not necessarily attain something.

It’s the journey not the destination.

We’ve all heard that before, but when you step back and look at someone’s story it’s all this bit in the middle of the story arc that is interesting, that keeps you engaged.

And living through the journey is what changes us. Molds us. Shapes us.

You cannot ever fully prepare for A Grand Adventure.

There are unpredictable elements for which there is no preparing.

No matter how much you prepare, you never feel ready to take it on. At some point, you just go for it. This is where a blog comes in really handy in living a big story, because at some point you put it out there that this is what you are going to do, and then there’s more pressure to actually do it.

I find that it helps if you have to commit to something. Again, put things on the calendar. Meetings. Tickets. Commitments.

So you have to start.

And then in the middle of the journey all kinds of things happen that you didn’t plan. Here are some quotes from Donald Miller that I used at AWBU this year about the harder bits of a Grand Adventure:

The negative turns in a story is what makes it interesting. Don’t be discouraged by negative turns. If you understand that this is what makes it interesting, then you don’t give up when you encounter a setback. Plus the pain makes the ending more beautiful.

Here’s the truth about telling great stories with your life. It’s going to sound like a great idea and you are going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you’re not going to want to do it. It’s like that with writing books, and it’s like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.

Have you ever been in the middle of something hard and thought this: “I hate this moment but I’m going to love this memory.”

Donald Miller from A Million Miles

That last quote from Donald Miller perfectly describes so many events of my life. Even amazing events like being in Paris on Bastille Day often have a backstory of events that also made the day difficult.

All Grand Adventures are like this. They are made up of moments you hate and moments you love. In fact, it is the mixture of the memories of both are what make the story brilliant.

So there you have it. Three Ways to Live and Tell Great Stories on your blog: The Sacred Everyday, Noteworthy Days and The Grand Adventure.

So friends, go live the story that you want to write about. Then come back and tell me all about it.

If you plan a Grand Adventure in 2015, I would LOVE to know about it. Leave me a link in the comments! Or tell me on Twitter.

Living and Telling Great Stories: #AWBU #Recap {Part 2}

Last month I shared that one of the great stories we can be telling on our blogs is the story of the Sacred Everyday.

This month I want to talk about another kind of story we can be creating and telling on our blogs: Noteworthy Days.

Sometimes, one of my kids gets invited to a birthday party. Now birthday parties are torture to me but they are so fun to little kids. So they bring home the invitation and put it on the fridge and the party is like two weeks away but they know that next Thursday is a party after school. My youngest, Simon, will count the days until the party. When the next week rolls around, he will be thinking about his week and he’ll be like, “Ok, on Monday I have swimming and then there is Beavers the next day (that’s the UK version of scouts) and then just two more days until Jonathan’s party!” The morning of the party, he will come in for breakfast and say, “Today’s the party!” You can tell that he’s going to look forward to it all day.

It’s a special day.

It’s a noteworthy day. It’s worthy of noting. (Or blogging)

Here’s the thing about living a great story.

We don’t have to wait around for an invitation to a birthday party to have a noteworthy day.

We can create them for ourselves.

You can create your own noteworthy days. @alisonchino tells us how. #ARWB

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I think we can get caught in the trap of waiting for something extraordinary to happen.

We don’t have to do that.

We just need a little bit of dreaming and a willingness to be intentional.

In his book on finding a great story, Donald Miller has this friend Bob, who is living an incredible story and so he asks him what his secret is. This is what he says:

Embrace whimsy.

Then he defines whimsy as that nagging feeling that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.

When you look back on your life, what days stand out to you?

For me a lot of the days that stand out are ones from my teenage days.

Sometimes I think in order to embrace whimsy we need to get in touch with our teenage selves, or our college selves.

Do you remember how you would sit around with your friends and invent crazy things to do? If there was a free weekend, we filled it up.

We would go fishing or camping, or we would figure out how to build a fort in the woods. We wasted a lot of time, but we wasted it well.

I remember this one time my roommate and I were walking across campus. We were coming from dinner to our dorm room and from a distance we could see that there was a bunch of furniture in the courtyard. We got closer and we realized it was our furniture. As a practical joke, someone had moved our entire dorm room outside.

Now at the age of forty, I’m like, “Who has time for that kind of thing? That was ridiculous.”

But back then, we thought it was hilarious.

We decided that instead of moving all our furniture back in, we would just use our room outside. We stayed outside for the rest of the evening, doing homework and talking to people who went by. Then we even slept outside. It made everyone who walked by smile to see us out in the courtyard, in our room.

It was just a small silly event, but I remember it.

We remember the crazy things we do in life. We remember the ridiculous things we do in life.

Here are a couple examples of bloggers who are intentionally creating noteworthy days:

A UK adventurer/blogger called Alistair Humphreys has coined the term, Microadventures, and has a book by the same title, and it’s all about how you don’t have to have a lot of time or even resources to have an adventure. It’s interesting because he does these huge crazy trips all over the globe, but then he wrote a book about how in order to have an adventure, all you need is an afternoon. One day. Maybe a weekend.

And it’s true.

Sarah Von Bargen of Yes and Yes makes a new list of things she wants to do every year on her birthday. She keeps the list in her sidebar, so you can follow along when she checks something off. One of my recent favorites of hers was to Take a trapeze lesson.

So, make a list of 30 things you want to do this year. Just brainstorm. It’s ok if you don’t finish them all. You can throw your list away in a year and make a new one!

Put something on the list that you’re a little bit afraid of. Then put it on the calendar.

And then embrace whimsy when it comes your way.

Embrace your whimsy. So, make a list of 30 things you want to do this year and say Yes to…

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The week before I was leaving for AWBU, a gal texted me and said that because it was sunny, she was going to the beach to have coffee if I wanted to go. She said no worries, she had two books with her if I was busy. I had so much to do to get ready to leave town and it was one of those texts that I totally could have ignored or just said, sorry, can’t today. Or whatever. But I didn’t. I thought, she’s right. The sun is shining in Aberdeen. So I went. And it turned out to be the most glorious day. We sat outside at this little café that I have never been to before. The old man that served us our coffee treated us like queens. She told me a story about her life that made me happy cry. Then we walked on the beach and through the amusement park. It was a noteworthy day. I’m so glad I didn’t miss it.

So go ahead and put in a bit of effort to make a day stand out here and there. Of course we still have to get the laundry done and make the work deadlines and have normal days, but that does not mean we can’t have NOTEWORTHY DAYS.

If you blog about or make a new goal to create a noteworthy day, I would SO love to hear about it. Leave me a link in the comments or tell me on Twitter! And stay tuned because next month I have one more category from my talk about living and telling great stories from AWBU!

Living and Telling Great Stories: AWBU

AWBU, Alison Chino, Stephanie McCratic — Me + Stephanie Mc. my conference sponsor.

I’m flying home from Arkansas, completely filled up to the brim with all kinds of wonderful from a fabulous weekend in Rogers for AWBU! What a great conference with a wonderful group of folks!

As usual, I learned a ton and got to connect lots of names with faces.

I also had the opportunity to share a little bit from my own blogging journey.

These days, my favorite thing about blogging is the storytelling, so at the conference I shared three ways I think we can find those great stories for our blog.

First we talked about what compels you to subscribe to someone’s site?

I’ll tell you what it is for me.

They make me laugh.

They inspire me.

Or they take me outside of myself, my day, my world for a magical moment.

And the blogs I keep reading over and over for years and years do all three.

They tell great stories.

But in order to tell a great story, you need to live one.

What kind of storyteller will you become? @alisonchino can help with that. #AWBU

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Three Kinds of Stories To Live and To Tell

The Sacred Everyday

Noteworthy Days

The Grand Adventures

The Sacred Everyday is an easy story to get started in telling because it is the one you are already living. Maybe you think you can’t tell a good story because your real life is boring. And it is. Sort of. Every day we wake up. We do dishes. We do laundry. We take care of kids and pets and lunches and work. We get takeout. We go to bed. Then we wake up and do it again.

Recently I saw this movie, called About Time about a man who could time travel. His father could also time travel and at some point he told his son that his secret to having a happy life was to go back and live each day again. Only the second time around, since he already knew how the day was going to go, he could pay closer attention. Appreciate all the little details of life, people’s expressions. Celebrate the mundane.

So the man started to do that and he found that he appreciated life more. And pretty soon, he stopped needing to go back and live the day again, because he started living the day that way from the start. From the moment he got up, he was awake to life. To people. To miracles.

Donald Miller says this about life in his book about story, A Million Miles in A Thousand Years:

The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn’t that big of a deal, that life isn’t staggering. What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We are like spoiled children, no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given. It’s just another sunset. Just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

He says that maybe we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. If we think life isn’t remarkable, the we can be “unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.”

The small details of life are miraculous if we are paying attention, if we are willing to be struck by the fact that life is staggering.

The small details of life are miraculous if we are paying attention, if we are willing to be struck…

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I’m going to stop there and share the other two ways we can live + tell great stories on another day.

For now, I would love for you to do one of the following:

a) Share a small miracle in the comments, preferably one you noticed in the last 24 hours. A Sacred Everyday moment that could be a story or blog post.

b) Share a link to a blog post where you are focusing on telling a Sacred Everyday kind of story.

c) Write a Sacred Everyday kind of story on your blog and link back to this post or tweet it at me so I can read it.

Bonus: A few blogs I love who do this Sacred Everyday story well:

Kyran Pittman at Planting Dandelions

Jerusalem Greer

Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience

I LOVED getting to visit with so many of you at AWBU! I’m already looking forward to next year.

Alison

Help! AWBU is My First Conference and I’m So Nervous!

Help! My First Blogging Conference and I’m So Nervous!

AWBU is just a few short weeks away.

You’ve got your ticket. Maybe you’re a planner and you’ve even started packing. Maybe you know one or two other people going to the conference. Maybe not. Maybe you’ve been blogging for a long time, but you are just now beginning to network. Or maybe you’re brand new to blogging and networking.

Wherever you find yourself in the big wide world of blogging, let me just put your mind at ease by telling you that you have chosen a great conference to attend. In my opinion, Arkansas Women Bloggers is the kindest, most gracious group of women bloggers on the planet. If you walk up to one of them and say, “Help! I’m new!” you can be fairly certain that you are going to be taken care of. This is not the high school lunchroom folks. Arkansas Women Bloggers is a happy place and whether you’re looking for tech advice or just someone to sit by at dinner, you are in the right place.

If this is your first conference and you are looking for a little advice before you go, here are a few tips for your first AWBU.

Make some goals.

[Tweet “What are your goals for #AWBU2014? We want to know. See you soon.” @alisonchino]

Are you hoping to meet more bloggers that live near you? Do you want to improve your Pinterest boards? Are you looking to gain new inspiration in your writing?

Writing down what you want to get out of your conference experience will help you make the most of your weekend.

Of course, you might end up having completely different takeaways from AWBU than you planned, but it’s helpful to have a few goals in your head. It will also help you decide which sessions to attend.

If there are four or five specific people you really want to meet, tell them ahead of time on Twitter or Facebook. Then you’ll be more likely to make it happen.

What to pack.

[Tweet “Oh my goodness. Are you already packed? That’s impressive. #AWBU2014 #ARWB” @alisonchino]

Clothes: Everything goes as far as clothes at AWBU. There are lots of blogging conferences where what to wear is a really big deal (Alt Summit comes to mind) but Arkansas Women Bloggers come from all walks of life and every possible blog genre is represented. For certain, there will be some gals who are looking their best, and if getting dressed up is fun to you, then go right ahead. But if clothes are not your thing and you feel more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, no one is going to look down their nose at you.

Business Cards: I find it helpful to have a stack of business cards at a conference. If you don’t have any yet, you can order them for fairly reasonable at MOO and they will arrive quickly. Don’t forget to include your social media handles and current email address.

Other things: Also, I always bring a notebook and a pen for scribbling down ideas. Some people use their IPads or phones for this. Bring an extra battery and charger because your phone will wear down faster with all that tweeting and IG-ing. If you throw in a power strip, other gals will thank you for not using up all the outlets.

Be open. Be kind. Be generous.

Plan to make new friends but keep the old @ #AWBY2014. #ARWB @alisonchino

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Remember what I said about Arkansas Women Bloggers being kind and gracious. Well, you have the power to add to or to take away from that truth. Because you ARE an Arkansas Woman Blogger. You are part of what makes this community wonderful, even if you have not yet met anyone.

So come with an open heart. This might sound cheesy, but if you are super nervous and you walk in a room where you don’t know anyone, look for the person who is standing or sitting by themselves. Go introduce yourself. If no one is by themselves, just walk up to a group even if they are mid-conversation and join in.

And when you meet people, really listen to them. Ask questions. Pull out your phone and follow them on Twitter. Use your social media for generosity.

“@deltamoxie is looking PRESH today! #AWBU”

“I love @bethanystephens’ energy! #AWBU”

is so much more fun than

“I’m drinking all the wine at #AWBU 2014! #SorryBoutCha”

“I’m having more fun than anyone else here! #NaNaNa #AWBU”

I’m totally kidding but you get the general idea.

We all have the opportunity to add to the richness of this community. Of course you want to network and we each have goals for where we’re going with our blogs and our businesses, but I want to leave the conference feeling like I have blessed and encouraged others as much as being blessed and encouraged myself.

Now I’ve got to go get packing!

See you there!

Shameless Plug: If reading this post made you excited about connecting with other bloggers, I would love for you to come to my session Breathe Deep: Practices for Your Heart, Soul and Mind on Saturday at AWBU, where we will do just that. I will pair you with another blogger and give you both a chance to listen, to dream and to help each other! Also, there will be chocolate.

I’m attending #AWBU2014 in #VisitRogersAR @embassysuitesNWA! Looking forward to seeing all….

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5 Lessons from A Blogging Festival

Last weekend I slept in field full of tents with lots of other bloggers at an event called BlogStock, the world’s first blogging festival. Bloggers from all different genres gathered in Aldenham Country Park, which is north of London, England. Travel bloggers, mommy and daddy-bloggers, fashion bloggers and lifestyle bloggers were all in attendance. In fact, you would be amazed at how well a group of fashion bloggers can dress for camping and still be functional in rain! There is always plenty of rain in the UK, and we had our share of showers at the festival, but the sun came out on Saturday for us, so most of the sessions were in open air tents.

My family stopped at the festival on our way home from a road trip around Europe because I had agreed to do a morning session on Saturday in a tipi. Full disclosure: Only three people attended my session and two of them were my children. Still, it was a wonderful learning opportunity for me and a chance to run my material on a few guinea pigs who were happy to give me feedback for the next go around, which will be at AWBU in just a few short weeks!

I always come away from events like these with an overwhelming amount of new knowledge, so I thought it might be helpful + fun to share a few of my biggest takeaways from the festival! That way you can benefit from my willingness to camp out in the rain!

BlogStock Takeaways!

1. “Be funny and honest, but never mean.” Niamh Shields from Eat Like A Girl

I went to Niamh’s session on Food Blogging, but this little gem of advice applies to everything we write about on our blogs. She reminded us that it takes more time and creativity to craft an honest, but playful review (be it of a restaurant, a product or an experience) than it does to just be mean. And since I really agree that there is no place for meanness in blogging, I loved her advice.

She also ended her talk with the reminder that envy is destructive but joy is infectious. Both. So. True.

2. Aperture Priority is My Friend Jeanne Horak-Druiff from Cook Sister

I have had a new camera for over six months now that I have trouble working. For the first time, someone explained Aperture, ISO and White Balance in a way that did not make me want to run screaming from the room. Jeanne used pictures to explain taking pictures and I was so relieved to come away with a basic understanding of how to use my camera. This is probably old news for those of you with nice cameras but it is a new takeaway for me that setting my camera to aperture priority is a step between shooting in automatic mode and the overwhelming + daunting RAW option.

3. Motivate the Elephant not the Rider Karen Sargent from Global Help Swap

Karen used this simple, yet wonderful analogy of an elephant and its rider to describe why we get stuck in our writing (and in life). The rider represents our brain and all our knowledge about blogging. Things like learning methods or how to do SEO, new techniques, and even reading blog posts like this one fill our minds with all kinds of knowledge about things we could/should do to make our blogs better. But the elephant is our emotional energy. And it doesn’t matter how much knowledge we have, if our heart isn’t motivated, we are not going anywhere. I loved this analogy, because I often think I need to learn to do something new in order to make my blog better, but actually, I just need to be motivated to put into practice the things I’ve already learned. Karen’s suggestion was to dig for the reason we wanted to write a blog in the first place. To connect with why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s the why not the what that makes the elephant move forward.

4. Set Your Rates High Julie Falconer from A Lady in London

Whatever the service is that you’re offering, set your rates at what you think your time is worth and not at what you think “they will give you.” I’ve heard it a million times before, but for some reason, I can’t get it into my head that it’s better to have a few high paying clients and less work than tons of small, low paying jobs. As a freelancer, I have a long way to go to get to a “sustainable living” but if I would be brave enough to heed this advice, I think I would get there sooner.

5. Be a Part of a Blog Collective from The Future of Blogging Panel

This one made me smile A LOT because I am already a part of an AMAZING Blog Collective! Arkansas Women Bloggers!!

I listened to a panel of different industry experts talk and answer questions on the future of blogging, and this came up a lot. Companies don’t want to have to hunt down individual bloggers themselves, but they want to find the right bloggers for the jobs. Enter blog collectives, which do the work of finding the right blogger among them for the task. Also, they can combine to have a larger voice among multiple communities. Being an active member of a blog community is a great way to be on the forefront of whatever innovations are coming in blogging.

That is just one more reason I’m super excited about Arkansas Women Bloggers University! I can’t wait to see my Arkansas friends and meet new ones, and to get new ideas from each other! I hope to see you there!

Are you coming? What are you hoping to learn? Tell me in the comments or on Twitter!

Alison

Plugin Love

by ARWB Gal Alison Chino

Ok y’all! This might officially be the nerdiest blog post I have ever written, but how much do you LOVE it when you are trying to make a change to your blog and you find the EXACT right plugin to make the magic happen?

When I find the right plugin for the job, for just a second, I feel like a computer GENIUS!

Until the next time.

Conversely, it can be super frustrating to search for hours and hours for a plugin for your blog and come up empty.

So I thought it would be fun to share my favorite plugins and why I love them, and hopefully, this is just a start to a conversation. I want you to share your own favorites in the comments and maybe together we will create a great resource of go to plugins for Arkansas Women Bloggers!

I am a WordPress user, so all my plugins will be for WordPress (self-hosted) but often they are available on multiple platforms, but if you use Blogger or another platform, be sure to mention that in the comments as well.

My Five Favorite Plugins

Jetpack, of course. Because. Everything.

Jetpack gives your self-hosted blog the features from WordPress.com. The analytics, the comments, the social sharing and many other things you don’t even see. My personal favorite feature is that if your theme is not mobile friendly, Jetpack can make it so, which is so important since almost everyone reads from their mobiles these days.

I know lots of people use other plugins for comments and for social sharing besides Jetpack, but I find that most of those options (specifically Disqus) are not mobile friendly.

Yoast SEO for helping your blog be found by Google.

This plugin makes it SUPER easy to optimize your blog posts for SEO, by pointing out what you still need. And there is a little light by the plugin that changes color as you optimize your post. When the light turns green, you’re golden! It’s like a little game for me to get it to turn green.

Easy Instagram for a sidebar full of your Insta-Life.

If you know me, you know that I LOVE Instagram. So of course I want to share that love on my blog. This plugin drags your latest IG images (you choose how many) into your sidebar. If Instagram is not your thing, there is a similar one available for Pinterest, so you can show off your latest Pins!

Picasa Express for dragging in your Google+ photos.

I’ve already talked at length about how much I love using Google+ photo albums and this plugin makes it so easy to pull the images to my blog. And because they are hosted on Google, the page load time is faster.

Engageya for Related Posts.

I always hope that when someone finishes reading a post on my blog, they will want to read more. This plugin makes suggestions based on the last post someone finished. There are lots of plugins out there that do this, but I like this one because it specifically suggests posts that are similar to the one just read instead of just pulling four random posts off my blog. There is also a feature available to add content from other sites, which means content from your site can be listed elsewhere as well.

Honorable Mentions: A plugin that chooses your giveaway winner, one that gives you access to pretty social media icons, one that replaces your 404 error page with a link to sponsor a child at Compassion and one that gives an option to subscribe to comment responses.

I know that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is available via plugins, so share away! What are your favorites and why?