This year has all been about developing my life as a working mummy, so CyberMummy 11 for me was the perfect opportunity for me to not only network and meet other like-minded mums but to learn more about how to utilise blogging with my new business ventures…
Now I have been blogging about my personal life since 2008, however this was mainly an online diary for my friends and family all around the UK and the world to keep up to date with what was going on in my life… At the time I had no knowledge or interest in SEO’s or marketing my blog, as I only gave the address out to those I wished to read it…
At the time I was working for a Dorset based art & craft distributor as an Illustrator and creative designer and was asked by my brand manager to set up a blog for the brand I used to illustrate and design for… this is where my interest into blogging became more business minded, however to be honest I didn’t really have the time to do more than the occasion post… Both my work blog and personal blog actually caused more trouble than they were worth! After a change in some of the management within the company, they used this blog against me whilst I was on maternity leave and accused me of breaching copyright and IP of the brand I used to illustrate and design together with some personal work I had done designing my sister’s wedding invitations and a collection of monsters for my son’s first birthday.
After some long consideration and as a single mum I decided to no longer return to work and instead used the time as a full time mum to develop a creative portfolio all of my own which had no association with the company I used to work with! This is where my blogging completely changed… I firstly removed the blogs which caused the trouble and amended my personal one accordingly to focus on my life as a mummy with an insight to my creative world of art and design!
Two previous work colleagues of mine, which are also my lovely friends Emma Collins and Louise Jolley, mentioned they were going to CyberMummy and would I like to join them, after a look at their website I thought this was a perfect opportunity we booked onto the conference in the early part of this year… In the mean time I have been busy working away trying to develop my new business ventures when a ‘Business for Blogging’ workshop popped up with Joanne Dewberry herself, this workshop for me was great and gave me all the basic tools to get started with my new website and how to integrate it with blogging! Since then I have learnt so much and I now want to learn so much more…
CyberMummy was an interesting affair, and although I was there with two of my friends it was still very daunting walking into a room of 400+ (most of which seemed very strong minded) women…
Not that I am a shy person at all, however it was a little overwhelming! After the initial welcome speeches I decided to go to the first workshop on my own all about ‘Marketing your blog’.
Fred Montagnon –the chief marketing officer and co-founder of Wikio started the workshop off and for me these were his key points…
- you need to present the personality behind the blog
- publish often
- create conversation
This all seems so easy yet putting this into practice may be a different matter!
Check back tommorow for the second part of my cybermummy experience.
Personal Blog: ‘My Precious Little World’ www.ericamartyn.co.uk
My Business: www.oddsandsoxlets.co.uk
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/ericamartyn.oddsandsoxlets /
Twitter: @ericamartyn
