Blogging Elevated

The Blog Elevated conference is coming up. It seems like I'm always hearing about the next big blogging conference, and it can get a little overwhelming figuring out which would be most worth my time, effort, and $$$. Every conference seems to have a ton of things pushing it to the top. I hadn't heard a whole lot about Blog Elevated until recently, but I absolutely love the motto.

"Be Inspired, Be Professional, Be You"

Isn't that just great advice for life in general? I think so.

If you're like my husband, you might be wondering why someone would want to go to a blogging conference in the first place. For me, it's pretty simple -- networking, inspiration, and education. I feel like there is so much out there for me to learn still that I have no grasp of what there is for me to learn. I just know I have learned so much just from blogging at this little space of mine, there's got to be more out there.

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this here before, but I used to be a hair stylist. Professionally. Don't even bother judging my skill on how my own hair looks - I know it's a mess and I blame it on my kids. Most of the time. Anyway, my point was this: the women I worked with in the industry who believed there was nothing left for them to learn were the women who would have gained the most from attending continuing education classes and trade shows. Their work (generally) was tired and uninspired. In other words, they did a lot of perms and shampoo sets, if you know what I mean. For me, tracking what I've learned and how I've grown only opens the possibilities of what more I could take in. There's always something more, right?



Here are the top three lessons I've learned from blogging:

1. Strength in numbers is real. There is a real community to be found for every niche, and every non-niche (just shhhhh - I know you're dying to say that's not a real thing). If you're feeling alone in whatever you're going through - good or terrible - someone out there will empathize and sympathize and lift you up. Sometimes it's not enough for our loved ones to hold our hands and rub our feet. Sometimes we just need to know we're not alone in what we're experiencing - that someone else has suffered the same path and survived to tell us the tale.

2. Organizing a blog post is the tangible equivocation of organizing my mind. Sometimes, my thoughts are just so overloaded and overbearing I have no idea how I actually feel about things until I write it all out. Okay, so I could accomplish this just as easily with a personal journal, and a lot of it is kept personal, but sometimes it's just... well, refer to #1.

3. I'm never satisfied. Once I reach a goal, I just want more. Like with running, where I am perpetually increasing my goal distances and times. I am perpetually hoping to achieve more with this blog. Remember back when I thought having 100 GFC followers would be huge? Okay, it still is, but once I hit that number, I set my sights higher. But it's not about the numbers, it's about creating content and a space that warrants the bigger numbers. 

So maybe if I can get myself to an awesome conference like Blog Elevated, I can figure out some long term goals and the tools and strategies for reaching them. I'm hoping to develop some skills in organizing and creating content that YOU want to come back here for, and I want to learn more about the technical side of things for building and promoting that awesome content I'll hopefully be pouring out to the internet. I'm not trying to get rich here (not that I'd turn down the money, right?). I just like blogging, and if I could improve myself in that regard - that'd be fantastic. That, or if I could be Jenny Lawson's online personal assistant. I'll be happy either way.

This was not a sponsored post, but it was written as part of the application process for the Be a Better Blogger scholarship to the Blog Elevated conference.