Last year I went to my first blogging conference and it was an awesomely full-on day with inspiring sessions choc full of valuable information. I came away from that day desperate to emulate the success of the awesome speakers and panellists and eager to implement all their brilliant advice. I wrote summary posts of all the sessions I attended and read every single thing fellow bloggers wrote about the day. Then about a week later a huge feeling of overwhelm and despair hit me.
The overwhelm came from the sheer amount of stuff that ‘successful’ bloggers had to do to make an income from their blogging (because at the time for me, income = success). The despair was because for a long time I considered my blogs to be a ticket to freedom – ‘freedom’ being the utopia of passive income. Now it was clear that there was no such thing as passive income. All the people making money from their blogs were working really hard over a variety of networks: engaging with their readers, creating amazing content (and giving it away for free), developing information products and most of all building a brand around themselves. It became abundantly clear that there was nothing passive about achieving blogging success.
Ever since I experienced that first instance of post-conference blues (PCB) I have observed it in many of my peers too. PCB can take make different forms:
- Overwhelm from too much information and not knowing where to start with it all.
- Feelings of inadequacy because you’re not doing the things that all the ‘top’ bloggers are doing (I can’t believe I don’t have my own YouTube channel yet!)
- Despair because you just don’t have time to do all the things the top bloggers are doing.
- Dejection because from everything you learned it’s clear you’re doing it all wrong.
- Despondency because you have no idea what you are even trying to achieve from your blog anymore.
I felt all these things after my first conference and it took some wise words of advice from a friend to get my blogging mojo back. Her advice was this:
- Figure out what YOU want your blog to do for you. Don’t define success by what you see other bloggers achieving, decide what success means for YOU.
- Once you know what success looks like, then you can filter all the information you receive on the day appropriately, taking note of the things that will get you to your goals and discarding the things that won’t.
- Finally, remember that this blogging gig is meant to be fun – if you can’t achieve your blogging goals without having some fun, then you need to find different goals.
All these things were front of mind when I attended my second blogging conference earlier this year. I focused more energy on meeting my online friends and attended the information sessions that best fitted with my personal blogging goals. This meant what I took home with me were the things most relevant to ME. And I am happy to report that no blues followed this second conference – only excitement about the new friends I had made and a few, easily actionable ideas for making my blog a more fun place for me and my readers to be.
Have you ever experienced post-conference blues? How did you cope with them?!
About Kelly Exeter
Wise words of advice! Yesterday’s Blogopolis was my first blogging conference. I can see how people could get PCB. I think the thing that is protecting me from PCB is that for most of 2012 I have already been thinking about doing blogging my way, “organically”, posting as often or not as I wanted or could. It feels a bit odd, that it’s not the norm, but the fact is I got in too deep last year with my time commitment and knew I had to realign my priorities in 2012. I suppose you could say I learnt those lessons you mention above 6 months ago. What I am feeling a bit sorry about is that I didn’t get to meet enough of the bloggers I wanted to meet. There just wasn’t enough time!
Veronica @ Mixed Gems recently posted..The imprint of culture on a child
See that is EXACTLY how I felt after DPCON this year. I had sorted what I wanted to achieve with my blog so avoided the overwhelm of information … so my only regret was not getting around and talking to everyone I wanted to. There’s never enough time at these things but I am hoping with Problogger being over 2 days in October that there will be more time for chatting with bloggy buddies!
This is a great and timely acrticle. I am feeling the blues starting to creep in already and I was so pumped up yesterday. Well, it’s the blues or a very mild hangover
Rachel x
Rachel from Redcliffe Style recently posted..Passing the baton..
I wrote it specially for the NNB2012-ers because I remember the feeling so well! I hope yours is just the mild hangover and not the blues