Well, of course the sponsors rock. They are everywhere with free schwag for us.
If you’ve ever considered attending a blogger conference, we’re happy to give you some insight into the seedy underbelly (just kidding there’s a spa here) of one of the largest ones out there, Blissdom.
I’ve been running this blog for three years (two of which I’ve actually been able to make a living doing so) and have never attended a national blogger conference, and most of the women here do this on a regular basis. I need to get out more, clearly. I mean, chicks are here with babies in strollers. We can do this.
As day one wrapped up yesterday, we’d had our fill of classes and an amazing speaker, Brene Brown who spoke about shame, authenticity, and a host of other uber-cool touchy-feely subjects that us mommy bloggers just freaking eat up. I even bought her book, The Gifts of Imperfection and am now addicted to her blog, OrdinaryCourage.com.
One of my favorite take-aways is her “Free Range Social Media Manifesto” which is a pretty well-packaged way to say what your mama would say to you, if you’re going to play on the internet and blogs, be nice.
Brene Brown's Free Range Social Media Manifesto
My head was about to explode with all the great ideas for Richmondmom.com and some other projects I’m working on, and it was oddly comforting that so many women were interested in my hyper-local site when they run large, national blogs. I’m pretty much a small fish in this big pond of 650+ women and I’m okay with that.
No shocker to us social media nerds that Twitter is a huge topic here and every speaker/sponsor/blogger is identified by Twitter handle, asked to tweet about the conference, win schwag by tweeting, etc.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s not all work. At every corner there are amazing Blissdom sponsors giving us incredible schwag like the groovy black jacket I won from Jockey (not to mention new undies, whoo hoo), gift card from Red Lobster (anyone want that?!), and a beautiful silver necklace. My favorite treat was a visit to the Gain spa (yes every single event has a sponsor: shocker!) where we enjoyed chair massages, manicures and paraffin hand waxing that made my hands feel like buttah.
Thanks, Quaker Oats dude, for breakfast.
It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. I’d better run. It’s time for (the Quaker Oats sponsored) breakfast and learning about how to collaborate and curate through social media alliances. Stay tuned for updates.
