1000 Hats – Mom 2.0 Breakout Session

As women, we wear 1000 Hats.  As bloggers, we are told over-and-over-and-over again to find our niche, find our focus, narrow our field.  We are told that by experts in the blogging world because in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world, your chances of being found through an organic search by users of search engines such as Google, are greater if you refine your niche.

Stay with me now; this is really a good story…{grin}

Here are some questions you may be thinking as your head spins around really fast about right now:

1. Why do we need to be found by search engines?  To increase our traffic.
2. Why do we need to increase our traffic?  To generate revenue.
3. Why do we need to generate revenue?  Because our personal goal (both mine and Tiffany’s) is to make this blog our “job” and not a hobby.
4. Why do we want to blog as our job?  Because we love it!  We love it on many levels and if you love your job, what better job in the world to have?

But what happens if you wear 1000 Hats as bloggers, just like you wear a 1000 Hats as women?  And what if you want to share those 1000 Hats with the world?  Here at Toot Sweet 4 Two, we have that problem.  And, because we have that problem, having traffic land on our blog via search engines (such as Google) is problematic.

So, are we a personal blog, a lifestyles blog, a food blog, a mommy blog, a travel blog, a crafts and hobbies blog, an elder care blog, an emergency planning blog, a children’s stories blog, a blog about inventions, innovations, opportunities, reviews?  Well, we are all of these and the only “narrowing of focus” we have done is to set up our categories (on our sidebar) listed below {grin}:

• Sweet Eats – recipes
• Sweet Home – home-related topics
• Sweet Ideas – crafts, hobbies, DIY, parties, tablescapes
• Sweet Life – family, pets, memories
• Sweet Nothings – everything else that doesn’t fit in one of these 9 categories
• Sweet On – innovations, inspirations, inventions, opportunities, reviews
• Sweet Spot – adventures, nature, travel
• Sweet Talk – holiday wishes, in remembrance, motivational and inspirational quotes
• Sweet Things – things we like

And, under each of those broad categories are sub-categories (check out our sidebar and our navigational menu tab), such as:

• Any Way the Wind Blows – the 20-part series about the loss of my home in the 2007 Southern California wildfires
• The Eldercare Diaries – my ongoing series about the challenges of elder care
• The Mommy Diaries – Tiffany’s ongoing series about her life as a Mom
• Channeling Amy – saving, spending less, frugal tips (this sub-category is named after one of my personal heroes, Amy Dacyczyn of  The Complete Tightwad Gazette fame)
• Your Story Matters – inspirational stories about people we know and love or have met along our journey

and many, many more!

Recently, Tiffany and I attended the Mom 2.0 Summit in Laguna Niguel, California.  This 2-day and 3-night conference, billed as “an open conversation between Moms + Marketers + Media” was an opportunity that we didn’t want to miss and man, oh, man (I really should be saying “woman, oh, woman”!) are we ever happy, thankful and appreciative that we didn’t miss it!

The agenda was packed full of choices with multiple morning and afternoons sessions, so we needed to choose our sessions based on the description provided in our conference agenda manual (yes, our “agenda” was actually a 25-page book because it had so many choices!).

So, one of the choices I made was to attend the workshop titled, “1000 Opportunities, 1000 Hats – The Power, Pitfalls and Perks of Being Multipassionate.”  I love that word (is it really a word?  I think they made it up? {grin}):  multipassionate.  In the book, they didn’t hyphenate it to multi-passionate, but I’m doing that for you now to make it easier to read.

Here’s the actual description of this workshop from our agenda:

“Every conference seems to have a talk about finding and honing your one true niche, but not everyone is able to do that.  Some of the most successful people (think Oprah) are multipassionate.  Where’s the roadmap?  What are the tools that multipassionate types can use to sort and organize their passions and make sense of their time?  What to keep, what to lose.  One biz card or ten?  One elevator pitch or more?  Sure you can’t have it all, but do you really have to give up everything to focus on one thing?  We’d love to discuss how juggling multiple roles strengthens you as an individual, provides a diverse network and gives you unique insight & problem solving abilities.”

This description so resonated with me; I had to go!

The speakers at this amazing workshop were:

• Stacey Ferguson – an attorney by trade, Stacey is a writer and a blogger and founder of the Be Blogalicious community.  Here are her links:  Justice Fergie and Be Blogalicious.
• Ciaran Blumenfeld – a “serial entrepreneur”, Ciaran is a writer and founder of Hashtracking.com.  Here are her links:  momfluential and Hashtracking.
• Wendi Aarons – an award-winning humor writer and blogger, Wendi’s work (which is extremely funny) can be found at multiple publications.  Here are her links:  Wendi Aarons and The Mouthy Housewives and the Listen to Your Mother show.
• Julie Washington – Chief Brand Officer at Jamba Juice, Julie has received many accolades (rightfully), with the most recent being  one of “2012 Most Influential Women in Corporate America” and one of “2013 Top Women Executives in Advertising & Marketing.”  Julie doesn’t have a blog, but you can find Jamba Juice’s website here:  Jamba Juice.

Above photo:  1000 Hats panel at Mom 2.0 Summit – from left to right:  Ciaran Blumenfeld, Stacey Ferguson, Julie Washington, Wendi Aarons.

All of these powerful and empowering women are pretty spectacular in their own right and it was an honor to hear them speak.  But, the stand-out speaker for me was Julie Washington.  I cannot stress to you enough that if you EVER get an opportunity to attend a function in which she is speaking, you must go; you will not be disappointed.  She’s warm, articulate, inspiring and just plain ol’ awesome.

So, here are some of the many “take-aways” I got from their fabulous session (I’ve bullet-pointed it because it’s a lot of information; but I think you’ll get value from this bullet-point outline):

• Are you an “archetype” or a “stereotype”?  Archetypes are characters, they are unpredictable but blended.  Stereotypes are caricatures, predictable, static and do not mix.
• You will miss out on opportunities if you pick a niche.
• Have focus “branding” (I think we’ve got that covered with our “Sweet” branding of our 9 categories).
• Blogging isn’t a sprint – it’s a journey, a marathon.
• Identify your motivation (do any or all apply?):
  • Doing what you love
  • Doing what you excel at
  • Doing what makes money
  • Doing what’s expected of you
  • Doing what gets you praise/attention
  • Doing what’s easy
• Are you passively multi-passionate vs actively multi-passionate?
  • Waiting for something to take off vs developing synergistic ventures?
  • Pursuing multiple passions vs the ability to commit (dabblers vs dilettantes)?
  • Holding on to the past vs forging paths to the future?
• Set goals and make up lost ground if you are behind.
• Get out of your own way:
  • Being realistic with your time
  • Being realistic with your energy
  • The concept of “opportunity cost”
  • The curse of hyper creativity
• Get organized – A Few Tools:
  • Mission Statement Builder:  Franklin Covey
  • Hootsuite
  • Trello, Producteev
  • WeDoist
  • Google Docs
  • Asana
  • Orchestra
  • Flow
  • SaneBox
• Allow the person who has the greater gift to run with it.
• Come up with a “filter” question when analyzing opportunities, a lens through which to look and judge:
  • What’s your goal?
  • What’s your focus?
  • Is this going to help my brand?
  • Is the value worth my time?

As if their motivating talk wasn’t enough, they gave us an “activity” to do.  At first, I was intimidated by the activity, but as I worked through it (and they gave us plenty of time to work on it plus their undivided attention for questions and guidance, if needed), I realized I was a “writer” not a “blogger” and instead of “blogger” on my business card, it should be “writer”.  They did not lead me down this path – I came to this conclusion on my own doing the exercise they shared.  So, next time I have new business cards printed, my business card will say “Writer and Blog Content Creator.”  Awesome!

They left us with this final thought:

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.” – Samuel Goldwyn

So, what 1000 Hats do you wear?  Do you want to dump some or are you multi-passionate and want it all?

Tootles,

1000 Hats

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Related Posts:

(other posts about the Mom 2.0 Summit)

• Mommy Diary Monday:  They Missed Me!
• Really? Seriously? Are You Frickin Kidding Me?
• The Red Plate Goes to Julie Washington