As you might already know I am attending Problogger this year. I am very excited to learn new things, network and of course have some nice me time. Currently I am racing around the house packing and trying to make sure that I have thought of everything. I am concerned about not being too hot and also making sure to pack cardigans in case I get a bit cool. However it being the Gold Coast I am hoping that the temperature will remain warm and pleasant not like the current freezing temperatures in the Blue Mountains.
Packing for my trip to Problogger. Think I am nearly finished.
I did want to attend Problogger last year but it was not to be. So this year I am lucky that the moons and stars aligned and that things have worked in my favour. The big thing is that I need someone to mind the kids. My mum was kind enough to be able to come and stay for a few days so that has allowed me to be away.
I know this has been said before but being away on my own for 3 whole days is terribly exciting! No kids to ask me questions, no dinners to cook, no washing to do (well until I get home that is) and I can have the bed to myself and aside from the conference and other things I can do what I wish!
Are you off to Problogger this year? What are you looking forward to learning about this year?
In 2013 I was lucky enough to attend my first Problogger conference and it was amazing. My head was spinning with information, ideas and just the energy of the event made it all worthwhile. I left with ideas for my blog and ways to attack content and keep your creativity flowing.
Read some posts about blogging conferences and ideas below:
After DPCON14 and my detailed summary of the conference, I am now focused on finding my why. How would you do this? What tools and techniques would you use? At first glance I had no idea, but after looking more deeply I have decided to get serious and develop an action plan to find my why.
I mentioned this to hubby, he thinks it is all fluff and silly to be searching for this. However if you have a clear idea of your business and what you are focusing on all the rest will fall into place. If you know what areas you wish to deal in or be connected to that will help out a big deal.
Simon Sinek inspires me to find my why. Picture from Press kit @ startwithwhy.com
Why is it important to find your why?
If you don’t know why you are doing things, you will not be on track and of course not have a purpose. If you know your vision and of course you’re why you will be on track and have more direction. Knowing what you want to do and of course your why, you can then make decisions that are better for you and in turn are more centered. Makes sense really, doesn’t it? Well I think so!
Some believe that if you find out your why you can attract abundance into your life. Well that is a lovely thought, and was not my reason but if it is a result of finding my why I am not going to complain!
Some questions to ask yourself?
What inspires me? What makes me come alive?
What are my strengths? What am I good at?
How do I create value? What can I do that others cannot?
So how do you get to the bottom of what to do?
This is the tough part of finding your why. It would be so much easier if you could just look under a cushion or the bed and magically find your why waiting for you to claim it. Maybe if it was that easy everyone would have billion dollar companies? Having a great story is all about selling your vision, buying the story that sells rather than the products.
Maybe you can take some advice from Hunter S Thompson. He replied to a man named Hume, who lived in New York City. Hume wanted advice on finding his purpose and meaning in life. If you still want to find your why, you might want to continue on your path of own enlightenment or you can get help with this from Simon Sinek via his Why University. Yes there is a university set up to help you figure out your why!
I am very tempted to sign up to the course as Simon and his material is so inspiring. His talk on TED did make me think a different way and see things differently as well. It is helpful having someone that can guide you and has the right way to discuss and engage with finding your why.
Finding Your Why. Image courtesy of artur84 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
DIY Finding your Why
Don’t think you cannot do it yourself. Read books, get inspired and spend some time with just you answering the questions that were posed before. One major part of the Why University course is that for one section you need to have a partner to run things past and bounce things off. They don’t have to be your hubby or wife and has been suggested that it might be better to not have your loved one as your partner for these exercises.
Note: It is best to have someone that will not correct you, or push you in a direction. If your hubby or wife might do this it might be better to pick another person.
I hope this has helped address finding your why and give you some more resources. I am definitely going to be reading Simon’s books and checking out his websites resources, currently there are some free available.
Have you done Simon’s courses at the Why University? Were they great? Did it help you narrow down your why? Has it streamlined your business? Send in your stories.
Note: This post is not affiliated with Simon Sinek or the Why University. I am just interested in finding my why and had to share more resources and ways to do it.
As you might know I went to DPCON14 or otherwise known as the Digital Parents Conference 2014. The conference was last weekend and was on a cruise to boot. Yes conference cruise or should I say a holiday and a conference. Oh well, you get the idea. This is a wordy post as I have so much to share. If in a hurry just look at the dot points.
I was very much looking forward to my first DPCON14, the cruise and of course no kids so it would all be ME TIME! YES how amazing would that be. As you can imagine the me time and time out was wonderful and much needed!
Where I had breakfast. What a view!
We sailed on the Carnival Spirit and I must say that I enjoyed some of the cruise but really loved the conference and got a lot out of it. A couple of quick things about the cruise:
I was under the impression that soft drink was calculated in the ticket cost for the cruise. Not to be. I was not that upset about it but do like a soda/mineral water and that would have been nice to have with lemon/lime. I lived off the water, tea/coffee or a drink that I purchased from the bar
The public toilets for everyone were not kept all working. Some packed it in and others were just closed to get fixed. I did see some notes on toilets saying that “Beautification is in progress” I wonder what it would look like after it got pretty from the beautification process? My brain did think of a show of before and after renovations for this type of thing. I know silly, but with a sign like that you have to wonder.
Food was lovely.
It was great to meet some fellow bloggers and to put a face to a name. It does make a difference to meet people face to face.
Looking out to see the sea was amazing. I am from North Queensland and really miss the beach and the sea. It was a nice way to get my fix
Make sure that you have ample credit available on your credit card. My bill was little when I left the ship ($148), however I still have a hold over my card for nearly $500 that I don’t owe Carnival. I find this the most annoying as I pay bills and live off the card. As hubby gets paid monthly this has put us out this month and it was not what I expected.
One of the many signs in the bathrooms
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So what did I learn from the conference?
Below are some of the talks that made me think differently or learn something new. Why not share my learnings with you and we can all grow and be bigger and better bloggers.
It was amazing to be in the same room with some amazing bloggers and I was excited about them all but as Katrina was on TV and on The Block, that I watch religiously I was keen to pick her brain and learn her tips and tricks.
Katrina had a nice printed blog tip list that she kindly handed out to us all. I hope she does mind me linking to her PDF for it on my blog.
One thing that Katrina mentioned is to gather your database. Yes collect names. This is for news on the blog, updates and for much more. How did she do this, via MailChimp.
Sizes of photos need to be the width of your blog.
Blogs look better with white space (Yes I know mine needs white space or more of it. My new site that I’m working on has plenty so don’t worry)
Get rid of background images
Always rely on Google Analytics Stats. Other statistic programs are good but if you need to quote something Google Analytics is where you need to draw your data from
My notes at DPCON14
Don’t overload your sidebar
For comments it is recommended to move to Disqus Plugin (pronounced “discuss”.) It was revealed that Disqus hosts your comments and if you move from them you might lose the comments. However another blogger, sorry I have forgotten who mentioned that if you use WordPress that the WordPress database hosts it all so all should be good if that is you. The reason for using the Disqus Plugin is that many people like to comment while logged in with Facebook or other social media. Katrina said she has received more comments since switching to this plugin. Might be something to look at.
Your Footer, are you using it? Why not transfer some related posts or further info to this space on your blog. It can free up the sidebar. Just a thought.
Update your blog website every 2 years. Don’t need to do a major overhaul but spruce it up a bit.
Get someone or others to critique your blog and what is working and of course not.
I fell across this site that does free user testing. They are called Peek User Testing and it is brilliant. You submit your site and they email you back with a video of a person going through your site. You can see the screen of this persons computer and they give a description of what they are doing and thinking at the same time. It might be a good thing to see how others use your site.
Deborah was very inspiring and her talk was an insight on how to use Pinterest better and to help grow your readership with this social media tool. Here are some points from Deborah’s talk.
Pinterest gets millions of visitors every day and it is growing!
My view at the conference. Hard day at the office!
Pinterest for Business: If you have a Pinterest account you need to convert your account into a business one. Why would you do this? For a number of reasons:
Y0u get access to stats, Pinterest’s Analytics. See what pins were popular and how many times they have been pinned. How amazing would this be!
You will also be able to get access to rich pins
Info on Promoted Pins
Pin it Button
Widget builder
Sharing allows your posts/stories/products to be shared on someones boards and also with all the other people they connect with.
Start a collaborative board to allow more traffic to come to your Pinterest site and of course Blog.
Vertical pins work better 700 x 1000 pixels.
Cleaning up your boards and adding more attractive images can help draw more interest and traffic.
Post 20% about your content and post 80% on others.
Do you want to see stats and how popular pins are? Then go to this address http://www.pinterest.com/source/ and after the word source type in your url. So it should look like this http://www.pinterest.com/source/yourURL
I did notice the business accounts on Pinterest but did not think that applied to me. Now I know better and I’m working away applying the knowledge to my blog. Thanks Deborah.
I love Katrina’s blog and site The Organised Housewife. I think she has done a brilliant job and I was so pleased to have a one on one with her about my plans and ideas for my blog. Katrina of course gave some great tips and things to think about in her talk.
My pass to the conference
Katrina automates all of her social content and is of course very organised. She has a schedule and that is what I need to orgainse more. Anything on Instagram gets published on Facebook and anything on Facebook can get published to twitter. So must get more automated.
Note to all. Facebook is changing their look of their timelines. I did click on the put me on the list but not sure what the changes will look like until they are here.
Since Facebook is changing image sizes are changing so there will be a new image size guideline soon
Be uniquely YOU!
Make sure that you put a bit of text on pictures to describe what they are about. These pictures get more clicks.
Insights on Facebook help and there is recommended posting times. However they might not be right for your audience. Look at the times that suit your audience. What times do your readers like to see things. What is your popular times. Go to insights, then posts and look at times.
Make your timeline work. Change it to suit what you are promoting or doing at the time.
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The next one is my last one to talk about. So this long post will soon end.
Kelly made me think about things very differently and she was just amazing! So glad that I got to hear her talk. Kelly’s talk was making sure that we knew not lose the core and spirit of our blog or purpose.
Kelly said that farmers don’t use fences but use wells to make sure cattle get home or stay where they should. Wells are a life force and fences take work to fix, install and are expensive to roll out in some areas as the farms are too enormous. The same is for blogs. Why build fences that undermine your options or opportunity why not build wells to allow growth and ideas to generate. If you build wells your readers will return to the life force, otherwise known as your blog or business.
Why wells? According to Kelly it is for the following reasons: Respect for the landscape, Respect for the reader and Respect for the concept
Invest in your concepts
All popular blogs have a story
Find out your WHY. Just like Apple has a story and people buy into the story not the product, the same goes for your blog/business.
Keep developing your WHY which is the heart of your blog
Kelly’s talk reminded me about a TED talk from Simon Sinek that I saw last year at university. See the video below:
I had a great time at the Digital Parents Conference. I am so glad that I went and learnt many things due to being there. I am very grateful that the world worked in my favour to allow me to go. My mum came and looked after the twins to take them to school. I was lucky that she was available to do this. So thanks mum! Now to put all these learnings into action!
Did you go to DPCON14? What was your favourite talk that opened your brain to a new way of thinking or doing? Thanks to all the speakers and organisers for making the conference possible.
