Be Funny and Cute
As I’ve mentioned, I’m attending the BlogHer conference in San Diego this weekend. I was a little unsure of whether I thought this was something I would get anything out of, but hey, I figure might as well give it a go since it’s so close to home anyway.
There are a lot of diverse bloggers at this show. This is, in fact, what the organizers promote as one of its key enticements. I met dominatrices and peace activists and mommy bloggers and soul enhancement coaches and lifestyle experts, bloggers and vloggers and Twitterholics and Facebook specialists. Watching them shuffle their cards and tweet conversations in real time while it was still going on, it became apparent that no matter how much I thought I understood about the web and how it works, I was actually totally clueless out here in my furry backwaters.
I was floundering about, feeling rather deflated about my networking naivete. It was around this point that I was adopted by Nicole at By Word of Mouth Musings and Lynn of All Fooked Up, who recognized my bewildered deer-in-headlights stance and took me in for the rest of the evening, thank God. Because other people were bowling by that point, and I really didn’t want to go there.
I spent the next morning at a session with Ree Drummond- you may know her as the Pioneer Woman- and Kathryn Finney from The Budget Fashionista, two incredibly accomplished bloggers with massively successful sites. Ree, much to my disbelief, is just as adorable in real life as she is on her site. She had a smile on her face for four hours straight. Four hours! And this while we were peppering her with questions.
We all got a turn to ask a question of these sage masters. Ree and Kathryn doled out nuggets of wisdom which the group ate up like hungry seagulls. When it came to my turn, I introduced myself, said I wrote a pet blog- which got its usual response of silence- and I think, though I’m not entirely sure, I think I asked how someone with such a defined niche can broaden their appeal to a wider audience. It’s a valid question, I think, considering how many people in that room had already showed me their pet pictures. I might have just choked out “Bestow upon me your beneficence,” though.
Silence. Kathryn’s face went blank and she looked at Ree, who to her credit was not going to let me get out of the room without fulfilling her duty to provide me advice, still smiling, mind you.
“Well…..Do you take pictures?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Of all pets, or just your own?”
“Both,” I said, “but mostly mine.”
“OK,” she said. “Are you funny?”
“Umm….I think I’m funny, but I don’t know if anyone else does,” I mumbled.
Ree mentioned the success of her posts with her bassett Charlie, and agreed that the prevalence of sites like Cute Overload showed that people like looking at cute pets. And then my time was up.
So to answer Ree, I think I have cute stuff.
Lots of pictures.
And if you don’t think a dog in a Bret Michaels costume is funny, well, I just don’t know what to tell you. Because that is hilarious.
We’ll make you laugh, we’ll make you cry, we got it all covered. Come on, that has to be at least as interesting as your average treatise on cloth diapering. So I guess there is nothing more to be done, huh? All righty. We shall carry on, then.
