7 Lessons I Learned To Grow My Brand

After a whirlwind weekend, I am sharing 7 lessons I learned to grow my brand and I feel that these tips may be helpful for you too!

Have you ever had an experience that you feel made a huge impact on your life? You know, a kind of experience that was literally life changing? Well, I had one of those experiences this past week and if I were to sum it up into one word it would be – AWESOME.

I recently just spent 5 days in Atlanta, Georgia attending the Haven Conference. Just in case you may not know, Haven is an annual conference intended for bloggers and influencers to come and learn ALL OF THE THINGS! At Haven I had the opportunity to attend general sessions, attend mentor meet-ups, have time with the brands that were sponsoring the event, learn in various workshops, and I got to spend a whole lot of networking time with other people in the home decor community. Haven just celebrated its 10th year in existence – but this was my very first time coming – and boy was it worth it! I met some awesome people, I sat in on some awesome classes and I walked away with some awesome knowledge. Today I want to share 7 lessons that I learned to grow my brand at Haven that I feel will you may enjoy learning about too!

You Own Your Own Blog Or Website

I have heard for a very long time that we do not own our Instagram or Facebook or Pinterest. The creators and operators of these platforms basically have the ultimate control over your account. And – these platforms can technically disappear or be deleted tomorrow. You are not in complete control over those accounts. There is always that chance that you could lose all of the followers that you have worked so hard to gain! That was the main reason that I decided to start the blog about this time last year.

Over the course of this past year I have learned that search engine optimization (SEO) is the most important tool that you can use to grow your blog. My biggest takeaway from this conference is that I need to continue researching even more ways to better use SEO to bring new eyes to my blog. I am up for the challenge!

Engagement Over Follower Count

This was eye opening for me. Did you know that brands look for engagement over follower count. I KNOW right … It is shocking. You can use this formula below to determine your engagement rate (on Instagram) in case you were interested in finding out where you land!

You can calculate your social media engagement rate using the following formula: the number of public interactions with a post divided by the number of account followers and multiplied by 100. For an Instagram post, for example, the number of public interactions is the number of likes and comments.(Source: Google)

I also heard in multiple classes that the more followers you have the lower the engagement rate you will have! I was totally unaware of this and I felt this little nugget of information was so interesting. In fact, I heard many times that some of the larger accounts out there feel pressure to maintain that high engagement rate. I know first hand, it does take work!

You Need A Tribe

I heard this quote at the closing ceremonies of Haven and it stuck with me:

“If you want to go Fast, go alone. If you want to go Far, go together.”

Just let that sink in a bit. No matter what you do in life, you need good people to help you along the way. Yes, in life, we are busy carving our own paths, but you need a supportive group that you can check in on and bounce ideas off of. Find your tribe and pour into them. I promise, you won’t regret it.

Pinterest

Hello! DUH….. I learned that we all need Pinterest in our lives. Pinterest has now become more of a visual search engine and I need to be utilizing that opportunity to be discovered. I read somewhere that Pinterest is like another Google – but with prettier pictures. Sure, you can go online and do a quick google search on how to best utilize the platform – but for me, hearing what to do in person was a huge help. I learned that I need to:

• Create idea pins
• Use my analytics to help guide me
• Implement tailwind
• Be strategic with SEO
• Use keywords strategically
• Research Pinterest Trends
• Create Interesting Pin designs using a program such as Canva

FOLLOW ME HERE ON PINTEREST (I ain’t too proud to beg!)

Basically this class taught me that I have a LONG way to go in my Pinterest game. I knew that Pinterest was one of the biggest ways to draw traffic to your blog – but I didn’t realize HOW important it was until now. Another big takeaway from Haven is to NOT underestimate the power of this platform.

Brands Want To Hear From You

I had no idea that approaching brands was a thing until just recently! At Haven, there was an area that was full of sponsors. You know, brand reps that set up little booths for you to visit in between classes. This is where I decided to spend the majority of my time in between the sessions because I wanted to get to know all of the brands that were there. And I promise you guys, it is NOT scary at all.

I learned that no matter how small your blog (or socials) may be, there are brands out there that are interested in talking to you. They want to see what you have to offer them. At Haven I even learned that there are companies out there that are ONLY interested in working with smaller accounts. I love that! Sure, you may end up not being a perfect match, but I learned that brands do want to connect and are truly interested in what you may have to offer them! Most importantly, I learned to NOT be intimidated by the process. It can be scary to talk to companies like “THE HOME DEPOT” but honestly I learned that behind the big scary brands there are very friendly people – just like you and me. These people are kind and helpful and sweet and they want to hear what you have to say!

I Learned That I Need To Be More Organized

I am usually the kind of gal that just goes with the flow – but I realized at Haven that I need to be more efficient with my time if I want to be able to do all of the things. The first big move in this area is to create some sort of system for organizing by blog posts – ummmm – I think that is called an editorial calendar. I have a dear friend who has been asking me to implement one for months now… but I didn’t understand the way to go about creating one. At Haven a really smart lady explained her method and it clicked for me when she shared a picture of her editorial calendar. So, I will be doing that for sure. It will take some time for me to decide how I can best make that work for me – but stay tuned because I will share my process eventually for sure.

If I Ever Decide To Sell On-Line

You guys, I took the very best class from my good friend Beth and she shared all the details of how to successfully own and operate a business (as well as a brand)! She knows her stuff and shared how she goes about running a shop – efficiently. It was so valuable and I learned so much that could apply to any sort of ‘selling’ that I may plan to do in the future. She touched on all sorts of areas such as utilizing Facebook (it is not dead y’all) and Instagram that I knew about already … but that were great reminders! Did you know that there was a program out there called “Comment Sold?” I didn’t! Look it up y’all. We also discussed the benefits of Shopify verses Etsy! Did you know that you could sell product on Pinterest too – you can!

What Now To Do With These 7 Lessons I Learned To Grow My Brand?

Now that the conference is behind me and now that I have had a little bit of time with my family, it is time to get to work! I learned so very much from this conference and I have my work cut out for me you guys! I need to:

• Go through all of my notes and rewrite and elaborate on topics while they are still fresh in my mind
• Begin implementing all of the things that I learned
• Follow up with brands
• Continue to feed into the relationships and friendships that I made

Wrap Up

I feel that if you are interested in building your brand and learning how to scale your blog and your socials then this would be a really great investment for you. Tickets for Haven 2022 will go on sale sometime around early March of next year so be sure to be on the lookout for that. I hope to see you there. I hope that these 7 lessons I learned to grow my brand inspired you to invest in your very own!