I follow many blogs locally and internationally. One of my favourite is Nicole from Planning with kids. She is an inspiration. She juggles her household with 5 kids and has a successful blogging career. She upgrades herself and motivates readers with her disciplined routine tips. One of the annual event she speaks at is the Australian Problogger Event where experienced international speakers share on their expertise on blogging. Reading about the Problogger event always have me thinking whether we do have one in Singapore that will benefit bloggers like me to learn and be motivated in blogging. So, it was a much unintentional thought that came to mind and before I realized what I was in for, Rachel, one of the SMB founders, asked me to organize one for the SMB (Singapore Mom Bloggers) community where the speakers are our very own SMB mums!
It soon became an honour for me to hold such a highly anticipated event and most likely Singapore’s first Blogger Event for Bloggers!! Rachel offered to be the facilitator for the event. I had enough speakers to volunteer to share their expertise selflessly. Topics were thrown to the discussion thread and it got many mum bloggers excited to come to the event to learn about all things related to blogging and how to improve their own blogs. Not to mention we love the precious networking opportunity among us mums.
Once the location was fixed at my hubby’s workplace which has a family lounge for kids and dads, it was easy. The participation from the SMB community is beyond spontaneous! I have many busy mums coming forward to help me out prior and during the event day. We even have 2 mums who volunteered to prepare the high tea spread for the event too! Mind you, these mums have children to care for and each has her own super busy schedule on a Sunday! All the mums who came had to make arrangement for their kids as most of them preferred to come alone to attend the event without the worry of their kids to take care of. It is amazing how fellow mums who share the same blogging interest come together to make this event a success! SMB rocks!
We covered many topics like Blog elements including finding our voice and purpose, design, content, Google Analytics, PR, technicalities, social media and many more! We also touched on blogging for non-profit causes which is really insightful and useful to those who want to do something good for the community with their blogging influence. The speakers are so knowledgeable and we all went home with many positive takeaways and thoughts about our blogs. If you are curious about who these distinguished speakers are, here are who they are and their blogs: Dominique from Dominique’s Desk, Rachel from Catchfortywinks, Chrystal from Chrystallee, and Sarah from The Playful Parents.
My thoughts and actions after the Blogger Event…
My Blogging Purpose and Voice
One of the things that I did after the blogger event was to seriously think about my blogging purpose and voice. I am happy that I am still having my initial purpose of having a blog. My purpose is to chronicle my kids’ growing up years and share my parenting ways and tips with others, hoping to motivate other parents. I hope that when my kids are parents themselves, they will find my blog useful in guiding them to deal with parenting issues and to read about their growing up events. Knowing my purpose and voice, my blog is ever more meaningful to me. And seeing how my parenting ways shared out on the blog become a motivation to other parents really keeps me going.
My Social Network
Next, I went on to create an Instagram account hoping it will help increase my blog’s reach out there. It is a late start for a blogger but better than never. However, I am not too comfortable in posting many pictures of my children, so it shall be more of motivational quotes, crafts and media events snippets for now.
My Blog Design and stats
I am going to tweak my blog design a little too once I get myself some time to think over how to do it. Mainly it will be the re-categorizing of blog posts to be more relevant to what I am posting now. I started the categories not knowing the future posts that I will be writing on, so I think it is time to relook at them and do some housekeeping.
We covered Google Analytics (GA) in the workshop and for WordPress.com users, we cannot set up GA if you do realize. GA stats is certainly more accurate than WP limited stats with data such as Bounce Rates, average time readers stay on the blog, number of new vs returning visitors, etc. Jacqeline, a fellow mum blogger and my helper in the event, helped me to set up GA via Cloudflare during the event. I could not thank her enough for helping me on this. I had asked her to write a blogpost on a step by step tutorial on setting up GA on WordPress.com blogs. I hope to be able to share her tutorial with all WP.com users very soon.
My Blog Direction
The speakers had me thinking about my blog direction too. I re-read some of my old blogposts. I should say that I am overall pleased with the fact that I still enjoy reading them. Which means that I am writing posts that are worth reading and re-reading and not just writing posts for the sake of publishing on schedule. That is important to me as I certainly would not want my readers to run away because I no longer write interesting and useful content. That explains why I have rejected a number of sponsors and invites that I find are not relevant to my blog. I try to be careful on what goes on my blog. Our blogs represent us and it is just right that we select what products to review on and give our most truthful reviews, and whether the events we go to are worthwhile to share with our readers. Even though I am just a newbie in doing advertorial blog posts, I want to remind myself in case I have more advertorials in future, I should be careful not to let advertorial blog posts take over my blog. I must always remember the initial reasons why I started having a blog.
Readers, I need your help!!
To those who love reading Kids “R” Simple, please give me a shout if that ever happens, i.e. if you ever find yourself less interested to read my blog. And that applies to boring blog posts from me. Ermm, in case I bore you further, I appreciate if you would help me to improve my blog by letting me know your responses to the following survey in the comments below:
1) What do you enjoy reading on Kids “R” Simple?
2) What do you wish to read more on my blog?
3) Any other suggestions to improve? (Can be anything like how the blog page looks and loading time, lots of grammar mistakes, etc, etc)
Ooh.. I am getting nervous as this is going to be like my scorecard published in public. If you have a really long list or comment, you may also email me at christy.krs@gmail.com.
Look forward to your responses! 🙂
I love reading about your adventures and home activities!
Thank you for telling me what you like to read! I like your third world kitchen cooking, and your humorous stories for sure. Keep that coming!
Definitely the more personal stories are the most interesting. Of course, it helps if they’re useful to readers at the same time!
But the adverts you have to be careful with. We’re so used to seeing advertisements all over the internet (and everywhere else) and just tuning them out. I’m glad you’ve chosen to make sure your ads reflect your original purpose – I think that makes a big difference to readers.
Thank you Bronwyn! You are one my most loyal readers who bother to comment and keep up reading my blog posts even though you have 100s to read I am certain of that! I like to read other bloggers’ personal stories too, I read adverts for up-to-date products and new places to bring my kids to. I have got to be careful on this as I have seen many other blogs with lots of advertorials and it could be like what you say, tune readers out.
I like reading your stories too, especially your take on travelling, really useful and you write in humor and that stays on my mind for long. Thank you for letting me know how you feel about my blog, it’s really helpful 🙂
I’m so happy and so very proud of you for stepping up and organizing the SMB event! It couldn’t have been easy with your busy life – but I really love how you got your kids involved! I love reading your blog, it’s been interesting to learn about a totally different lifestyle from mine, and I’ve really enjoyed your adventures! I also have always found you to be very open, and I love that because I don’t have little kids, and some might have found it weird that a mom of a teenager was reading and commenting on a post of a mom that has younger kids. But I’ve really enjoyed the peaceful look of your blog, and your openness and honesty. And, I’m really looking forward to the changes you make as your grow as a blogger! I can’t wait for more tips – maybe I’ll grow as a blogger, too!
Thank you Kate! You know what? You top my most commented reader list and you do not know how much I appreciate your heartfelt comments each time you leave your wise words 🙂 I like reading about how you brought up Mr T to be such a gentleman and your experience is like a future tips for me! Thanks for taking this survey. I love to know about how my blog feels to others and I am glad you like it. I will be improving my blog soon. I am sure your blog is taking up your personality well and that explains your broad reach of readers!
Well done, organising the event – and finding time for it! You are so organised!
I first embraced your attitude, the way you look at things, the way you like spending time with your children. And that you seem to be a sincere, hard working and fun loving person. So a likeable person with a similar perspective on how to be with kids got me hooked.
What I find makes your blog even more interesting is that we live in quite different cultures, and still we seem to share some core values. Interestingly enough many of your tips can also just be adapted into a completely different life. Sometimes you just widen my view on the world (never a bad thing!). And of course, the bilingual issues are always of interest to me!
Thank you for your kind comments! Similarly, I find you a like-minded mum the very first time you found my blog! In fact, your views on many aspects prompt me into thinking how things are crossing cultural differences, especially how things work in your country never fail to intrigue me. Yes, and the bilingual issues. In fact, I think blogging has found me so many like-minded friends, it opens up to me on many positive and negative views that are worth thinking and learning. Oh, your free and often low cost activities are my favourites! 🙂
Thanks for the compliments! It really has been rewarding to see (read) things from other perspectives!
How cute are you guys?! I would love to go to a blogging event. 😀
Thank you Valerie! US sure has many such events. You may like to check them out! They will be of course too far for me to fly to attend, hence, we held a low cost one locally but it was a simply amazing sharing session!
Ok, you are stressing me on the blog post for GA again. Haha. And thanks again for organizing the event.
I like to read about the reviews of the places you and your family visited. As I’m always looking out for place to bring the kids. I also love to read about your parenting tips and of course some personal thought post like that of the stroller and bus.
Thank you Jacqeline for your comments! I am glad you enjoyed the parenting tips. I love to read other people’s personal thoughts on controversial issues too. Give me a diversified view from other’s perspective. For the GA, take your time. When you do share it on your blog, let me know! 🙂 Thanks again for helping me to set it up! It’s really useful stats!
I like reading your personal experiences with your kids, especially since both of us have 3! I’m always amazed and inspired by how you can juggle full time work and 3 kids. My blog is hosted on wp.com too. I’ll be looking forward to your post on GA! I think I need to attend the next SMB event. 🙂
We missed you Hui Ing! I do hope that there will be a next SMB blogger event haha! Thanks for letting me know what you like reading here. I love your sharing of craft posts and school related tips 🙂 I am not the only one juggling full time work and kids. It is tiring most times, but I am too happy to be with the kids once I am home, so it kind of evens out 🙂
The Mums network rocks! You chaps got high-tea too 🙂
I can only remember a few Dad-bloggers gathering over toast and kopi.
Always great to share and learn from peers. If I may offer two tips :
– do not spend too much time on the designtemplatesseo. I got too absorbed at one point (too many things to learn)
– benchmark. You need stats for comparison. benchmark with peers too.
cheers, andy
SengkangBabies
The dad bloggers are really a fun lot! Toast and kopi are just the dad thingy, isn’t it?! Thank you for your 2 tips! I think you are very right about not wasting too much time on design and stuff. And as for benchmarking, eh.. it’s not easy to find out my peers stats, kind of confidential. I would have love to know where I stand though. Thank you for reading and your opinion matters lots! 🙂
You set up a great event for blogging mum, good on you! I think keep on doing what your doing, you have lots of useful information and a good voice. I enjoy seeing what your up to on the other side of the world!
Thank you! I will continue on what I am blogging on right now. Totally enjoy the blogging and community. It brings me much deeper into knowing other side of the world than real travelling does!