Blogging

When people find out I work from home, they frequently ask how I manage it all. Incredulous responses vary from "I’d never want to be isolated, I need the office interaction!" to "How on earth do you keep the kids from interrupting?"

You may have noticed that we spend a lot of time on Instagram. I’d say it’s because we’re epic storytellers through visual medium and people are lining up to showcase our photographs in the Smithsonian…but mostly it’s because we’re lazy. Want to know a secret? Telling an epic story with a picture is a WHOLE lot easier than laying it all out in text.

People keep asking me to write about blogging. I have friends still starting blogs left and right and they want to know what their day-to-day should look like in order to succeed. I DO want to be helpful. I want every parent to have the chance to work from home and every family to enjoy the stability that can come with this job.

Our site has gotten more visual over the years, relying heavily on family pictures and photo shoots of crafts and food (glorious, scrumptious, delicious food!). However, it can be extremely tedious and time-consuming to photograph, transfer, edit and upload blog photos. For us, the process was a big stumbling block for a long time. We eventually figured out a streamlined process that works well both at home and on-the-go. I’ve had so many people ask how we upload quality photos to Instagram and how we have the time to blog photos every single day, so I figured it would be helpful to share our process with all of you!

My littlest baby is one. Can you guys believe that? It feels like just yesterday we delivered him without anyone’s help. Time flies. In honor of my sweet Minion’s big day, I’m sharing my biggest tips for capturing memories of your family!

I spend a lot of time editing photos (hazards of the job) and I’ve noticed an odd trend recently.As much as our pictures focus on the activities of our family, ninety percent of my shots are lacking something pretty critical. Me. It’s like a Where’s Waldo hunt going on in my computer memory.

Before I had kids, I entertained visions of scrapbooking my days away. Printed photos were to be laid out chronologically with hand-written reflections on our days together. But this was all before our media world got split into numerous channels through point-and-shoots, camera phones, Instagram, Facebook and more. This was before anyone gave thought to how to aggregate photos in the cloud. This was all before "the cloud" even existed.

I get asked this question at least five times weekly. "How do you get your pictures long and skinny for Pinterest?" Pinterest is one of the biggest sources of new visitors to Someday I’ll Learn, so I’ve worked hard to ensure that my content is optimized to display well over there. I now try to include at least one image in every post that is tall and thin since Pinterest resizes mainly based on width, not height, so my photos have a greater chance of being seen in the stream if they are skyscraper-esque.

Oh, here we go again. This happens every year: budgets start afresh in a new quarter, and agencies are swamped. They want to come up with ways to work with bloggers, but their clients are in the "go get em" spirit and want ACTION! Right now! With no formal plan or budget, bloggers are on the receiving end of an onslaught of bad pitches. Our inboxes get flooded with requests for coverage in exchange for samples or exposure or nothing at all. I’ve written about the PR-blogger conundrum a number of times, as have several friends of mine.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a brutally honest post about my experience at the BlogHer 2012 blog conference and why I don’t plan to attend next year. I tried to keep it balanced, discussing the pros and cons of a big blog conference and my own (admittedly high) expectations. I was astounded at the response I got, with hundreds of messages from fellow bloggers providing their own blog conference insights and looking for advice. One question came at me time and time again: "Which blog conferences SHOULD I attend?"

I just got back from a whole week in New York City! I went for BlogHer 2012, one of the biggest blogging conferences that gathers bloggers and marketers from around the entire world. Since my best friend Jen lives in New York, I was able to stay at her place and bring her along to a lot of the conference happenings.

Oh, hello there. Fancy seeing you here. You might be wondering about our big blog redesign.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump lately. I had the wedding and then the honeymoon, and in recent weeks I’ve been totally swamped with moving and family stuff. I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging but not actually doing much of it. In an effort to get my head back in the game, I’ve attended more blogging conferences, meetings and seminars in the last month than ever before. All it’s done for me is send me into a tailspin of analysis paralysis. When I do sit down to write a post, I’m caught up with concerns like "Is this what my readers want to read?" and "I need to write from my heart, but that won’t drive people to my site."