Getting social with Handpicked Media

On Monday, I went to Handpicked Media Gets Social - a blogger event held at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Quite an impressive building, don’t you think?

Source: David Thompson - Flickr

I was very excited about going along (if also slightly scared about looking like a minger amongst beautiful fashion/beauty bloggers) to learn new things about blogging, meet fellow bloggers and, generally, the experience as I’d never been to a blogger event before. This was all made even better by the fact I won my ticket through a draw on the Handpicked Media website.

The event didn’t disappoint. On arrival, we were each given a generous goody bag before grabbing some breakfast, meeting other bloggers and PR staff and sitting down to hear the sessions.

Source: Handpicked Media (scribbling away in this one)

The sessions that stuck in my head the most were those by Garry Davis of Why Communicate and Sháá Wasmund of Smarta and Cosmopolitan Business Woman of the Year. Garry gave us lots of useful techy information about things like SEO, which I tried to pay full attention to having shied away from the topic in the past given how complicated it seems. He definitely made it seem less daunting.

Sháá came on and really inspired us to “Stop Talking Start Doing” – the title of her recently published book that we were each kindly given a copy of and that made good reading material for my journey home. She highlighted the importance of people working together to achieve results and not being afraid of asking others for help, or being afraid of failure. A lot of what she said made sense for blogs, businesses and life in general. I recommend you check out her book, particularly if you are someone who needs a little kick to put an idea in motion. I don’t normally go for all the motivational stuff but I was really taken by what she said because she was so honest and genuine during her session. No cheesy lines here, all just a good dose of healthy optimism. You can download a chapter for free from Shaa’s website.

There were so many people at Monday’s event that it was impossible to meet them all (plus my networking skills leave a lot to be desired – if only Olga could have come too!). However, I hope to go along to the next one (with Olga of course) because it was great to see the faces behind different blogs and twitter accounts and meet some lovely people. There’s a lot I’ve not covered here through fear of boring our readers but hopefully I’ve given you a gist of the brilliance that was Handpicked Media Gets Social.

Have you ever heard of Sháá Wasmund? Are you good at motivating yourself or do you find it easier when someone gives you a kick up the bum? Were you at the HPM Social too? It would be lovely to hear from you and hear your thoughts on the day.

Carla