Christmas Soiree with CT Blogger Babes
I had the honor to have been invited to the Christmas Soiree with the CT Blogger Babes Network.
It was held at the Flora Restaurant and Bar in West Hartford, CT. Flora has a plant based menu and juice bar. It was so beautiful and the food was delicious. I loved that the food choices promoted a healthy diet yet was still so delicious. It is perfect for vegans.
I took the ride down into the city with my fellow Danbury, CT friend, makeup artist Brandy Gomez Duplessis, the creator and founder of Entitled Beauty . We shared a table with Nicole with Nicole in Colour , Ilse with LiveLearnLuxeIt , Christine with Vigor and Vogue and Gabrielle with FoodDrinksLife . It was like we were besties! We had drinks, laughed and of course, took lots of photos. The best thing about hanging out with a group of blogger friends is that they get it. They understand the immense amount of pictures, setting up the perfect flatlay and setting up the scene for a picture OOTN look.
We had a panel of expert bloggers share their tips and best practices on the successes of blogging and ways on making blogging a full-time business. Our panel consisted of fashionista, Rachel Moore with Pinteresting Plans , Kallie Branciforte with But First, Coffee , Sandra Downing with The Rustic Life and Alycia Chrosniak with CT Eats Out . These women were amazing at sharing all their strategies and success stories. They were very open and inspiring.
Here are three major gems I took from the event:
Videos are going to be the biggest thing in 2018.
Brands prefer video content. Social media is becoming instant. People do not want to sit and read a blog when they can just watch a one to two minute video on the same content. So it is time to get in front of the camera and shoot some videos.
Articulate content that works
I know we all want to post content on what we like as opposed to what our readers want, but I learned that for me, since I am still in my brand building phase, I must post content that my audience wants and not so much what I want. I noticed that on Instgram, when I post a lot of photos around my children, I tend to loose followers. I also noticed that when I post style photos, I gain; in looking at my analytics, my Instagram audience are women ranging between 18-24. So that tells me that my Instagram audience does not care about my children but instead follow me for style inspiration. So although I want to post more content involving my kids, my audience wants to see more style posts. When still brand building, you must do what works and not necessarily what you want.
Use the equipment you have
We all look to invest in the best equipment, tools and apps to make our brands work but most of these girls used all free tools to gain their audience. Rachel Moore, with over 100k followers on Instagram, still uses her IPhone to shoot her style photos. And Kallie Branciforte was using IMovie up until recently when she finally had enough money to invest in Final Cut Pro for editing her YouTube videos. It was definitely a shocker to me to hear that Rachel uses her IPhone. I am also a style blogger and invested in an expensive Sony camera because I thought brands wanted high quality photos as oppose to basic IPhone photos. If you look at her Instagram aesthetics, you would never even think she uses an IPhone. She has perfected the use of an IPhone camera and free apps to keep her aesthetic in order.
The Soiree was a lot of fun and I learned a ton from these expert bloggers that I will take into the new year. Time to get to work. See you all next year. Happy 2018.
