Finding Direction for My Blog

May 26, 2016

A year and a half ago I embarked on my first adventure of a lifetime: moving to Buenos Aires, Argentina for a six month study abroad program. As it seems every traveler does, I started a blog in order to capture my experiences for myself, as well as for friends and family back home. Little did I know that I had discovered a new burning passion where I was able to combine my love of photography, sharing experiences and a previously unknown urge to write.

Today, my blog is my love child – evolving from a simple collection of my favorite memories to an organized website filled with photos and advice. However it still needs work, and always will. I’m a newbie to the online lingo of SEO, WordPress, alt text, gigabyte, domain, etc etc… all concepts that you might just understand if you stared at a computer screen for five hours while pulling out your hair. When Pink Pangea’s co-founder Jaclyn Mishal offered an online workshop called ‘Amp Up Your Blog and Website’, I jumped at the chance to participate.

The 75-minute workshop began with a series of questions aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the participants’ personal goals for our websites and blogs. Jaclyn gave us prompts that helped us tune into our long-term vision, fears that were holding us back and immediate steps we could take.

Jaclyn stressed that the only way to fail is to not try. Hearing this was sobering – I needed to pull myself together and start actually trying!

During the second half of the seminar, things started to really heat up and I was presented with two previously terrifying concepts: collaboration and SEO (search engine optimization). These are both important concepts for creating a successful website, and I was forced to face the fact that I have been shying away from them. Collaboration has always seemed risky to me because of the chance of failure, and I always considered SEO too intimidating and too complicated.

Listening to Jaclyn talk about her personal hesitations, failures and successes with collaborations through Pink Pangea was incredibly motivating. She gave advice and different techniques for how to approach opportunities and–most importantly—stressed that the only way to fail is to not try. Hearing this was sobering – I needed to pull myself together and to actually start trying!

As for SEO, Jaclyn started by blatantly stating that she had avoided SEO like the plague when starting Pink Pangea (hmmm, this sounds familiar). She then broke it down, explained its importance and gave specific advice on how to approach SEO with our blogs. After the workshop, I received an email with all of the numbers and information. I immediately flagged that email, starred it and put it in a special folder!

After finishing the workshop, I felt a sense of purpose and drive, as I knew the immediate steps I had to take to make my blog successful. A week later, that feeling has not faded in the slightest.