let's talk about talkin'

I'm speaking in a few weeks at the Altitude Design Summit on "Growing and Maintaining a Small Blog with Pride", a topic of my own design. I am heading up a roundtable, and I have so much I'd like to talk about. Because there are two really great panels and all the other fabulous roundtables occurring at the same time as mine, I'm not sure I'm going to get a chance to speak with many people at all. So I'd love to share what I'm thinking about here because I have a lot to say, and because I'd love your feedback!

Last June I proposed my topic to Gabrielle Blair, author of the blog Design Mom and one of the founders of the Alt Summit. The gist of it was me wanting to talk to the "smaller" blog writer about how to keep putting it out there and how to keep your head up, even it your readership is nothing near you what think it should be.

My readership is pretty low given all the exposure I've had in the past year. No matter where I've been featured, very few people follow me back here and stay. That used to really befuddle me and get me down. I'd get so high off of the big spikes and then confused when the stats went back down again. Eventually I had to make peace with it, and decide if I wanted to keep going for me and for fun, because I really love writing here, I'd have to start forgetting about the numbers. What helped me to do that was the positive feedback I had received from readers, Facebook and twitter friends, family and fans, and the fact that anyone had bothered to feature me at all. It really matters to me that someone is reading; the question is how many readers matter? I discovered that no, it's okay to not be a big blog, and yes, it's okay to want some exposure and validation!

For my roundtable, there will the practical stuff to talk about, and then a little deeper soul searching. That's the "with pride" part. I'm sure our conversation will expand this scope, but here's where we'll start.


The Practical:
Ways to gain exposure, find friends, and get mirroring and support for your work.

What are ways to find exposure for your original ideas?

• Submitting work to places specifically soliciting ideas.
• Building relationships with writers and editors, who might then mine your blog independently for more of your great, original stuff.
• Linking back to other blogs. I'm sure this is how Martha Stewart Blog found me.
• Selective advertising. 

What are methods to forge authentic relationships online and/or with other creative bloggers in real life?

• Join established blogging communities. My participation in NaBloPoMo at BlogHer for three months was how I found my four best bloggy-type friends, and I will always support them.
• Reach out to people you share commonalities with, like bloggers who use the same medium in their art that you do, or bloggers that live in your area. This doesn't always work, but I do have a few friends in real life that I met online for these reasons, and I'm glad I reached out to them. 
• Workshops and societies. If you're lucky enough to have something like this roll through your town, go!

The Soul Searching:
Defining you goals and what fulfills you.

HOW BIG DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR BLOG TO BE? Really.

This is huge, because I think a lot of people don't really know or think about it at first. I didn't, at the beginning. When I started blogging I was posting how I spent summer vacation with my kids, then I started thinking about what else I could share here, then I wanted EVERYONE to see what I was doing.

That lasted for quite a while, ending up in a shameful mess of self-promotional bad internet etiquette perpetrated by yours truly. Once time I reached out to a very successful food blogger in the Bay Area, telling her how fabulous I was and how much I should be included in her circles, really believing it, because I am creative and I want to be surrounded by creativity. She sent me back a scathing email, and the part that hurt the most when she wrote "It seems like you want more than anything to have a popular website". It stung for weeks, because who wants to look like they just want to have a popular website? Maybe that's what you want, but the last thing you want is to look like you want it, you know? And in my defense, as poorly written as my note to her was, I was really looking for creative companionship first, fame second.

If you're feeling low about your readership or statistics, you have to ask yourself things like:

• What am I doing here that deserves BIG attention?
• What am I doing differently from the next person?
• What are my real intentions?
• Am I looking to become a celebrity?
• How many people need to be interested for that to feel okay to you?
• Where do I go to find them?

If you reflect on what you are looking for, you might find yourself more content with where you are. And in that comfort you might find the stones to help you forge on to even more success. There is something to be said for sitting on your laurels, no matter how small they are.

Now, more than anything else I see my blog as an online gallery of my work, where I curate all of my art and architecture and projects, old and new, and no one tells me what to hang here but me. I am working toward a book which came out of nowhere, and I'm proudly blogging every time I perform burlesque. That is the most awesome part of blogging. You are running this show! I hope you are embracing that.

Finally, has it been done before?

It's totally fine if it has been! I am the one millionth lady to start a mommy blog. You just need to adjust your expectations. If it's been done before, don't expect to get a ton of attention, unless you are doing it YOUR WAY. I believe in the tenets written by Austin Kleon in "Steal Like an Artist". I started this blog based on what I had seen at bleubird vintage, the only blog I read regularly at the time. Since then, it has evolved into a place for my voice and my style, but that took a lot of time, and the template I emulated from bleubird really gave me a jumping off point.

I don't know if you noticed, but there is a sort of inspirational backlash out there in the blogging community of us having to tell each other to be ourselves! There are great posts out there right now on blogging trends that need to disappear, advice about slow blogging, and probably others I haven't read yet. THIS IS YOUR TIME! This is your time to buck trends and be yourself. Make it a cognitive exercise if you need to, but do it! Trust me!

In my opinion, you can bring nothing more valuable to the table or your blog than who you truly are. It really is the best you can do. I know it's my best chance to get my work noticed, and parlay that work into whatever comes next for me. 

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I would LOVE to hear any feedback you have on this topic. Let's talk!


Happy New Year! Best wishes to all of us in 2013!

xoxo,

Tiffanie