Last year, I left BlogHer ’13 feeling like a loser.

In fact, I wrote a blog post about it. But I must admit that after that post was featured on BlogHer.com and was one of the site’s most popular posts, I certainly felt I was #winning.

In a couple weeks I’m heading to San Jose for BlogHer ’14. I’m determined to leave this year’s conference feeling on top of the world.  To make that happen I must do some things differently and I think any BlogHer newbies should consider following my lead.

Don’t compare yourself to others. I left BlogHer ’13 feeling like a loser because I was surrounded by women bloggers who had landed major sponsorships and book deals through their blogs and women who complained about having "a paltry 5,000 Twitter followers."  I spent my 48 hours at BlogHer comparing myself to these women instead of focusing on my own mission, plans, and goals.

Check out the Writeous Babe logo I designed for my new business cards. 

Don’t forget your business cards. Last year I ordered new business cards just for the conference and I left all 50 of them sitting right on my nightstand. So if you are heading to BlogHer ’14, go put your business cards in your suitcase right now. They will especially come in handy during Friday morning’s BlogHer Style Speed Dating.

Don’t forget to party. Last year I didn’t wholeheartedly participate in conference activities. I was in Chicago not only for BlogHer but also to visit a friend. I often skipped the parties so that I could head back to my friend's place. While I don’t regret this because my friend and I had a blast, this year I’m staying in one of the official hotels and I plan to hit every party.  Sure, this conference is about advancing my writing career, but it’s also about having fun!

Don’t arrive without a plan.  Before heading to the Silicon Valley, figure out what you want to get out of this conference and use this to determine what sessions you will attend. Knowing your overall objective for the conference can also keep you from getting caught up in the comparison game. With a solid conference plan, you will know your path and you can stay in your lane.  My goal is to figure out what’s the next step for my blog and who I want to be in the blogosphere.

Don’t leave without a plan, either. I am a teacher and I am a nerd so when I attend a conference I leave with pages and pages of notes. Then I come home, put my journal on my bookshelf and leave it there to collect dust. Not this year. In addition to taking notes, I plan to draft an action plan, too. I will compile a list of steps I will take based on what I learn on each session and give myself deadlines by which to complete them. 

Kavitha and I reunited two months ago in Birmingham!

Don’t be shy. Whether you’re going to BlogHer alone, with your best friend, or with a group of blogging buddies from your hometown, be sure to use this conference as a chance to meet someone new. This is the one thing I did right last year. I met the wonderful woman behind the blog Kavi360 and we still keep in touch today. At BlogHer don’t look at the women around you simply as potential followers, see them as potential friends.

What are your tips for making the most of a blogging conference?

I think I need to go to conference rehab.

Today starts the fourth week of my summer break and I've already been to four conferences.

I need help.

On Friday, I had the chance to attend Y'all Connect, a blogging and social media conference held in Birmingham and directed by local communications consultant Wade Kwon.

I had a wonderful time hanging out with some of the ladies of See Jane Write who attended the conference and Wade was kind enough to allow me to make an announcement to the crowd about See Jane Write's upcoming Bloganista Mini-Con, a partial-day conference for fashion, fitness, and lifestyle bloggers. (Get more info and tickets here.)

a few lovely ladies of See Jane Write

And, of course, I came home with pages and pages of notes. Here are a few things I learned at the conference.

1. Free can really pay big.

In his morning keynote Syed Balkhi discussed how entrepreneurs can wisely use free as part of their business model. Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. "Going the extra mile to offer free help allows you to win big," Balkhi said. Case in point, one day several years ago Balkhi noticed that a guy named Michael Hyatt was having some website trouble. Balkhi was a teenager at the time but he knew a solution to Hyatt's problem. What did not know was who Hyatt was. But he helped him anyway. Then he found out that Hyatt was (at the time) chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Because he was grateful for Balkhi's help, Hyatt hired Balkhi to help him some other problems and paid Balkhi quite handsomely for his work. Helping someone for free today can pay off big tomorrow.

2. Bloggers, just like business owners, must know who they are and the people they serve.

Whether you like it or not, you are a brand. In her presentation "How to Be Really, Really Attractvie on Social Media," Birmingham entrepreneur Jen Barnett asserted that knowing your brand -- knowing who you are and what you're trying to accomplish -- is the first step to developing good content. If you're having trouble defining your brand, brainstorm some adjectives that describe who and what you want to be. Identify your values and your key stakeholders. And speaking of stakeholders, to be attractive on social media you must know your audience. Through research and trial and error determine what they like and don't like and figure out which social media channels they use most.

3. I'm on to something with the Pomodoro technique.

I've blogged before about how I often tackle daunting to-do lists using the Pomodoro technique. Developed by Francesco Cirillo, the Pomodoro Technique is simple, yet brilliant. You break down your work in 25-minute intervals, taking five-minute breaks after each one. After four work periods you take a longer break of about 20 minutes. Working in very focused time blocks was Balkhi's top tip in his afternoon talk "Time Management for Bloggers." Balkhi also recommended getting up earlier instead of staying up late to get more done. He suggested setting deadlines and recommended that we bloggers reward ourselves when we meet a deadline but also penalize ourselves when we don't. So if I don't update my blog three times this week I won't allow myself to watch my favorite TV shows this weekend (which is great motivation because True Blood returns this Sunday). 

4. If social media is like a cocktail party, visual content is your little black dress.

Whitney Breaux and Kim Garst both gave great tips on how to better use social media.  Breaux is an accomplished communications, marketing, and sales strategist who founded the Baton Rouge Social Media Association and helped with the start of the Alabama Social Media Association. Garst is the co-founder and CEO of Boom! Social, a corporate branding and social media consulting firm. Forbes named her as one of the Top 50 Social Media Influencers in 2012. In other words, these women know their stuff!

Garst reminded conference attendees that social media is like a cocktail party. Just as you wouldn't make a sales pitch as soon as you started talking to someone at a party, you shouldn't do that on social media either. Add value to your followers. Share useful and interesting information. Ask questions. Remember that social media is a two-way conversation, both Breaux and Garst said. Don't treat social media like a billboard.

In her talk, Garst spoke a lot about the value of visual content. Articles with photos get 94 percent more views, she said. She believes every brand should develop a visual content plan. Garst has even written an e-book to help you do that. You can download 17 Quick and Easy Ways to Create Visual Content here. Listening her talk I realized that if social media is like a cocktail party, visual content is your little black dress. It makes you look good and gets people's attention. And once you have it you can show that you're beauty and brains.

I left BlogHer '13 feeling like a loser. This was not the fault of the hardworking women who organized and led the event. BlogHer is the world's largest blogging conference for women and I felt quite privileged to have had the opportunity to travel to Chicago for this year's event, which was held July 25-27. The breakout sessions were informative and to call the keynote speakers inspiring would be an understatement. I was in awe of the confidence of Ree Drummond (better known as the Pioneer Woman) and can't count how many times she made me laugh out loud.

The highlight of the conference for me, though, was the Saturday morning interview with Sheryl Sandberg. Her powerful and unabashedly feminist words were so uplifting I had chills through most of her talk.

Nonetheless, I spent most of my time at my first BlogHer feeling very much out of my league as I was surrounded by women who'd garnered book deals and started thriving businesses thanks to their blogs, and women who said things like "I only have a paltry 5,000 Twitter followers."

In my hometown of Birmingham, Ala., I'm considered a blogging star to some, but not because The Writeous Babe Project gets thousands upon thousands of pageviews each day. (It doesn't. And I only have a paltry 1,000+ Twitter followers.) Folks see me as a blogging guru because I have successfully built a community of women bloggers -- both online and off -- through See Jane Write, an organization for women writers that I started in 2011. And on July 1 I took those efforts a step further with the launch of SeeJaneWriteMagazine.com, an online lifestyle publication for women who love writing, blogging, and social networking.

While at BlogHer, however, I began to wonder if See Jane Write is preventing me from pursuing my personal writing and blogging goals. And how can I be at the helm of See Jane Write if I'm not leading by example with a successful writing and blogging career of my own?

I am a teacher by day and I freelance for a few local and national publications for extra cash because a teacher's salary doesn't afford me the Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle I covet. See Jane Write takes up nearly all of my free time as I spend dozens of hours each week planning panel discussions, workshops, and networking events. All this leaves few hours to devote to pitching article ideas to my favorite websites and magazines and little time for promoting my personal blog.

The women I met at BlogHer built their personal platforms first and then moved on to bigger projects. My process was backwards. I'd done it all wrong.

My sweet husband, who's also a writer and blogger, tried to cheer me up as I sent him text messages declaring that "I suck!"

He said: "You need your own path. Clearly you're doing something right."

But I just tucked my phone back in my purse, sighed, and thought, "He doesn't get it."

Being the Southern church-going gal that I am, I did the only thing I knew to do -- I asked God. The problem with that, though, is that God doesn't text or email and these days won't even set bushes afire to give a girl some direction.

However, a few days later God decided to give me an answer through a video stream. I was watching a sermon I'd missed when I skipped church one Sunday (sorry, God) and one of our associate pastors spoke on "The Most Excellent Way" to change the world. That way, he said simply, is love.

When you do things to help people improve themselves and their lives, you earn the privilege to influence them. When you invest in other people your value goes up. People don't care what you know until they know that you care.

As he spoke I thought about BlogHer itself. I thought about all the hard work co-founders Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins must have put into BlogHer long before it became what it is today. And I thought about all the women whose lives would have never been touched by BlogHer if Lisa, Elisa, and Jory had given up to focus on personal projects.  

Don't get me wrong, See Jane Write is no BlogHer and may never be anywhere nearly as successful. But my little group that could is inspiring women every day -- they tell me so. And that's better than any blogging award or book deal. It's even better than seeing my byline in my favorite magazine.

My husband was right: I am on my own path and it's the right path for me.

Perhaps God does send text messages after all.

I feel like a blah-ger, not a blogger.

Last week this blog was mentioned on two of my favorite websites -- Clutch Magazine and xoJane.com.  The Writeous Babe Project was included in an article by Evette Dionne called Black Girl Everything: 5 Underrated Blogs You Should Read.

Though I was honored and excited to be included, I was also embarrassed.

I felt my blog didn't deserve to be on that list because lately I haven't given this site the care it deserves.

At the end of last month I devised a new editorial calendar that called for me to post new content here daily. My hope was that this would prevent me from neglecting this blog in the wake of the launch of See Jane Write Magazine. But not only did I fail to keep up with the schedule, but I often would post things just to fill space. I committed a cardinal sin of blogging and put quantity over quality.

New readers who came to my blog should have found insightful posts like Why I'm Reluctant to Write About Not Wanting Kids or Feminism Is For Lovers. But instead they just found filler.

Also, I constantly preach about the importance of bloggers having a mission statement, but I've lost sight of that too. With the launch of See Jane Write Magazine I'm no longer sure of the purpose of The Writeous Babe Project. I can't decide if I want this to be a feminist blog, a blog about writing, or both.

I spent all day yesterday at blogging and social media conference called Y'all Connect. (Head over to the See Jane Write blog to find out how the conference made me a Taylor Swift fan.) And today I'm hitting the road to head to Chicago for BlogHer '13. My hope is that by the time I return to my Sweet Home Alabama I'll have the direction I need.


What struggles are you having with your blog right now?

When a blogger attends a conference, whether it's one on better blogging or one related to her niche, I believe it's important to set goals in order to really get the most out of the event. Why? Because no conference is perfect and if you're not intentional in your approach you could get caught up the flaws of the event and lose focus on why you came in the first place. 


Last weekend I attended the Fro Fashion Week conference, which is a natural hair and fashion event held twice a year in Atlanta by Naturally Me! Media. I raised by a mother who preached punctuality, so I was a bit annoyed when the morning sessions of the conference didn't start on time neither Saturday nor Sunday. But overall I believe the conference was a good investment for me as a blogger. Here's why:
  
1. Kim Coles.

Most conferences will have at least one celebrity guest. The skirt! Creative Conference I attended this summer didn't have any movie or TV stars but did feature best-selling authors Claire Cook and Emily Giffin, who are certainly celebrities in the world of publishing. Fro Fashion Week's celebrity guest and keynote speaker was actress and natural hair beauty Kim Coles. One of my goals for the weekend was to get a picture with her for my blog GeorgiaMae.com. Not only did I get a picture, but also an inspiring post to go with it, since Coles gave one of the most uplifting talks I've ever heard at a conference. Read all about it here. 


2.  Bloggers, Brands, and Brunch. The conference featured a lunch designed specifically for natural hair bloggers, which is a large part of what I do at Georgia Mae. The lunch was quite informative and I left with tips on how to boost traffic and comments and how to work with brands for giveaways and events. I was especially happy to meet Jess McGuinty of Jessicurl. 

3. Networking. The best bloggers read other blogs. This conference was a great way to meet other bloggers and discover new blogs like Knaps, which has quickly become one of my favorite sites. 

4. Post ideas. I left the conference with long, long list of post ideas. Here's a post on fall accessory trends I published today, one that I wouldn't have thought to do had I not attended this conference. 


5. Free products. 

Who doesn't like free stuff? One reason Fro Fashion Week is a great conference for natural hair bloggers is all the gift bags of free product samples you receive. And if you're lucky (like me) you might even win a prize pack of products from a company like Darcy's Botanicals. Check out my review. 


So if you're a natural hair or fashion blogger, visit the Fro Fashion Week website to learn more about the conference and to decide if you'll be on the scene come spring 2012.