Blog Podium Inspiration = House Tour Completion

I had SO much fun at Blog Podium this weekend and learned a ton about how to monetize a blog.  Nicole Balch of Making It Lovely (one of the first blogs I ever subscribed to) gave an honest, relaxed, and informative keynote.  The ever-amazing Lindsay (of Aubrey and Lindsay's Little House Blog) and Jen (of Rambling Renovators) blew my mind with the fun, professional, absolutely-perfect event. Seriously - I want to be them when I grow up - FOR REAL! (as my 4-year-old keeps saying).   I went home with a huge to-do list for Wicked & Weird and will probably be tweaking things for months to come, or until my energy runs out.  Today I FINALLY got a chance to pull together some photos and text for my House Tour page that I made the link for months ago.  Hooray!

There are many great recaps of the conference out there, and if you are at all interested in the busine$$ side of blogging, I urge you to take a look:

1. Interior Groupie 
2. September and Sun
3. Bijou and Boheme
4. My Daily Randomness
5. Adding the Finishing Touch
6. Gallery No. 8
7. The 236

Here are some of the lessons that I will be taking to heart:

• Stats aren't everything  I have never considered to be "worthy" of advertising because I am such a small blog.  However, big numbers aren't the only thing the larger brands are looking for.  They also want to find blogs large and small that are a good fit content-wise, writers who are well connected to the 'scene' and are well-informed with a professional-looking blog, and bloggers who are engaged and engaging, with comments, tweets, and conversations.
• Oh Canada!  Brands large and small, international and domestic are looking to target geographically.  Let readers know right off the bat where you are writing from and that you are Canadian.
• Tweet Tweet Twitter Twitter  Be active and consistent on Twitter.  Many brand marketers are short on time and need to be on Twitter anyway for their job.  It makes things much easier if they can find you where they are and can see that you are engaged with the community.  Have a great Twitter List that shows you are connected with people these brands want to reach.
• Do your homework Reach out to brands you want to work with, don't wait for them to find you in a sea of blogs.  Research their products, their projects, and their style so you can prove that you really know them when you make the pitch and aren't just cut and pasting their name into a generic ask.
• Dress for the job you want  I have always tried to dress for the job I wanted and not the job I had.  I may have been Marketing Coordinator, but if people were looking around at all the coordinators in the city for a Marketing Manager, I wanted them to know in a glance that I was professional and prepared and ready to step right up.  So when Nicole said "Looking bigger than you are is the best way to get bigger than you are" I knew exactly what she meant: have a blog that looks established, that has a consistent feel to it, and write honestly and authoritatively.  
• Don't quit your day job  Errr, too late for me! :)  But I have confirmed my suspicion that while I can definitely make a little bit of fun money from the blog ("Canadian Tire money" as Christine said) I won't ever be earning a full-time income from it.  At least, not in Canada, and not now.  Things may change!

So you may notice a few changes here and there, and maybe a few ads popping up on the side.  (If you are interested in some seriously cheap test ads, let me know!)  I would love to hear if there is something about my blog that makes you come back, something you think I should make sure to keep up.  Likewise, if there are posts you just skip through when you see them, let me know that too!  I am crazy curious about what you all think about the stuff that I put out there.  Maybe I should start paying for comments?  Oh wait... that's actually the opposite of the idea... right.  I guess I won't be keynote speaker anywhere any time soon. :)