Eat.Drink.Blog 2015 was truly amazing – you can read all about my five favourite parts of the event here. But today I am going to talk about the five things that I took away from the conference. Because let’s face it, as bloggers we often come away from the conference with a head full of ideas only to get completely overwhelmed in the following weeks and not actually action anything. So I am making a commitment right here on this blog to the five things that I took away from Eat.Drink.Blog that I will be actioning in the coming days/weeks/months.

1. I need to get better at SEO.

I’m taking away lots of useful information from Todd’s Talk {Todd is from Three Sides Marketing here in Canberra} about SEO. For example, I’m going to choose 10 – 15 terms that I want to rank on in Google Keywords and I am going to focus my content on those keywords. When I create content I am going to do so with my 10 – 15 keywords in mind. This doesn’t mean that I will be posting repetitive content – more that you will get exactly what you are looking for when you come to my site.

I recently updated my ‘About Me’ page when I moved to WordPress and I am really going to focus on these terms when creating new content.

GoodFoodWeek is a blog full of posts about:

• food {one-pot-wonders, recipes inspired by seasonal produce, super salads, winter warming recipes, toddler friendly snack ideas, and the odd bit of gluten free}
• motherhood {birth stories, momentous moments, crazy outbursts, crying, laughing, dinosaurs – lots of dinosaurs}.
• kid’s stuff {because I am a mum and kid’s stuff is part of my life now}
• general observations {because sometimes I just want to share a story with someone who is over the age of 2}.

2. I need to look at my ability to create video content – both in terms of time and skill.

I really enjoyed Alice’s presentation because the content which she presented looked like something I could work on achieving. Everything she does is done with her iphone – which is awesome when you don’t have the time to shoot with a big camera {and edit your images on the computer} because you have little ones who don’t care if you have scheduled time to blog or not. I want to have a play around with some of the apps that Alice mentioned to see if I can put some video content together, but also assess how long it takes and if I’m actually any good at it.

3. I need to define ‘what success looks like to me’.

This comment from Smaggle really stood out to me. I think that most bloggers can come away from a conference feeling a little overwhelmed – where should I start, what should I focus my attention on, should I continue when others are achieving so much more?

It is easy to look at someone else and say ‘I wish that I could have an expensive camera and have time to play around with lighting and styling’. But the fact of the matter is that the meal I cook and grab a snap shot of, is often the meal that I am about the place on the dinner table for my family that very night. And if I don’t get said meal on the table in the next 5 minutes, my ‘happy’ family meal time could come crashing down around me. Toddlers are temperamental like that.

What someone else might do can be lovely, but I can look at it now and say ‘that’s not me and that’s okay.’

I don’t have to have 1 million page views and a steady stream of advertisers to be successful {although that would be nice}. I just want to share my story and for it to resinate with others. If I can help out someone with a quick and easy dinner recipe, or make someone feel better about their motherhood journey, or engage with my online community or make myself smile when I look back on how my babies have grown – then I have succeed.

4. I need to grow my Instagram account following.

I think Instagram is by far my favourite social media channel. I love creating content for Instagram and I also love interacting with my little community on Instagram. I have decided that this is the social media channel that I am going to focus my attention on until the end of the year {I’d previously been working on my Facebook page, but I feel like Facebook is making it really hard for you to actually see any of the content which I publish}.

5. I need to show some more ‘link love’.

The term ‘link love’ also came from Todd at Three Sides Marketing. Basically, it is about providing more links for you to follow.

Did you attend Eat.Drink.Blog ? What were some of the things that you took away from the conference? If you did attend Eat.Drink.Blog, maybe you have attended another conference this year, like ProBlogger – what are some of the things that you took away from that? Come back tomorrow to find check out ‘five blogs that I would like to share some ‘link love’ with.