Blog Brûlée Recap

The ideas are still spinning in my head and I’m still smiling from the awesome weekend I had at Blog Brûlée. I talked a bit about BlogBrûlée in my Banana Oatmeal Brûlée post, but I can’t wait to tell you even more about it today. If you follow me on Instagram, then you probably already saw some of these photos, but let’s get down to the nitty gritty, shall we?

Blog Brûlée is a weekend long gathering of healthy food bloggers (many of whom are also Registered Dietitians) who are looking to build their blog and meet like-minded people. The weekend started on Friday Sep. 11th in beautiful Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont with a welcome dinner and our first session. The sessions during the weekend were:

• Food Photography Basics and iPhone Photography Tips by Regan Jones of Healthy Aperture and Deanna Segrave-Daly of Teaspoon of Spice
• Food Styling and Post-Production by Katie of Healthy Seasonal Recipes
• The Art of Online Storytelling by Lisa D’Agrosa from Eating Well Magazine
• Defining and Delivering SEO by Katy of katywidrick.com
• Building Your Virtual Community with Lindsay of The Lean Green Bean, Kylie of ImmaEatThat and Sally of Real Mom Nutrition
• Monetizing Your Brand by Anne of fANNEtastic Food

Marisa and I attempting to make skyr during our hands-on session with Siggi’s. Thanks for the photo, Lisa!

Of course, we also ate until we dropped. Our suites were stocked with breakfast and snack foods and there was food around every corner. From a yogurt parfait bar, to the perfect outdoor barbecue complete with s’mores, and lots in between! We were able to try some of the products from our sponsors too, and I’m now even more obsessed with Siggi’s yogurt than before. The other sponsors included: California Almonds, SafeEggs, California Ripe Olives and Smuggler’s Notch.

Just a few of the tips and lessons I learned during the weekend:

• When someone tells you to “find your voice” in your writing, think of how you might talk to a friend. I struggle with this because I can be pretty sarcastic in real life and I don’t think this comes across in my blog writing…yet.
• Pick your favorite social media platform(s) and build it. You don’t have to do it all! I’m talkin’ to you YouTube, Periscope, and Snapchat.
• Don’t be afraid to reach out to brands for partnership opportunities and ask for the amount of money you’re worth. If you’re wondering how much that is, here is a handy sponsored blog rate calculator you can use. Hallelujah!
• Create a mission for your blog and a target audience (or individual) and create great content for her/him. You can’t please everyone!
• The Camera+ app on your phone has soo many more tools than I ever knew about and I’m ready to take my iPhone food photography to a new level.
• I had been completely neglecting back-lit food photos and was getting a little too comfortable with side-lighting, but now I’m going to go back to experimenting a bit more, especially since I have my new camera lens.
• Increase your search traffic with the Yoast plugin and make sure to add a focus keyword, title, and meta description.

I learned a ton during this weekend, but most of all, I am excited to be leaving Blog Brûlée with a network of bloggers who I can reach out to with any questions or for advice…or when I just want to vent. I can finally say that I have some real life food blogger friends. Yay!

Maybe I should try opening my eyes a bit more though, eh?

My attendance at the Blog Brûlée was partially funded by Sponsors of the Blog Brûlée, and I received a discounted registration to the event in exchange for writing this post. Opinions expressed are my own. I was not compensated for my time.