This weekend I spent on my own as my wife and baby girl went up to Vermont for a Girls Weekend. I spent the whole time doing all the guy things that I've wanted to do on a free weekend like watch movies, eat food bad for me but oh so tasty and play video games to all hours. I'm married with a kid now and so weekends are full of family things these days. I wouldn't trade that for the world because, in addition to loving my wife and child dearly, if I was still young and single I'd probably not survive these weekends when I overdo things.

Some of you might already know that I went and saw Iron Man because I mistakenly sent a post through Utterz to all of my blog connections, including this one. I had forgotten that I set up a connection to the Postie blog through Utterz for a previous Guest Post. So there was an accidental review of Iron Man that got automatically posted here. Thanks to the anonymous "postie power" for the heads up, I fixed my Utterz account so that won't happen again.

I attended two community events during the weekend that inadvertently helped me get out and work on becoming a better blogger and photographer. I followed my own advice from another guest post and took it offline. On Saturday I got out there and met people. I gave many people, that I met, my blogger business card. If you don't have your own blogger business card by now there really is no excuse. There are many avenues for you to obtain cards, even free ones. There are even some opps every so often for free business cards. I suggest you order some for your blog and keep them on hand when you go out.

The first community event that I went to was called Strut Your Mutt. It was a fund raising event for the local animal shelter. I brought my camera and a stack of blog business cards with me to hand out as I took photos of the different pets. I noticed something, it is much easier to ask someone if you can photograph their dog than it is to ask for a photo of the person themselves. However, I would ask if I could take a photo of a person's dog and then say, "Would you like to be in the photo with your dog?" This would open a nice dialog with the owner of the pet. After I took the photo I handed them my card and told them that the images would be available on my Flickr account and they could download them for free.

Just by going out and talking to people and giving them my card I was able to make some great connections in the local community. From that one event I may get a couple of photography gigs. I also got an inspiration about something I could do to help our local animal shelter. I met a beautiful dog named General at the event and I really want to help the shelter get him placed in a new home.

I had given the shelter my card and they contacted me to tell me that they liked my photos. I pitched my idea of photographing one of the animals each week as a Weekly Adoption Spotlight post on my blog. While we can't adopt all those animals ourselves maybe I can point someone to the shelter to adopt them. I think in the back of my mind I had been a bit inspired by Skeet's most recent Guest post about Posties Doing Good.

The other part of my handing out cards to people in the local area was to try and expand my reader base. Right now my readers are primarily other bloggers, online photographers and my family. I've been writing sponsored posts for a while now about people and places far from me. I think I could use that knowledge and my blog to connect with people in my own back yard as well. To do so I need to get out there and spend some time in the community.

The second event was a fundraiser for our local YMCA. It was called the Wing Off and it was all about which local restaurant had the best Buffalo Wings. I went from station to station photographing each team and their wings. I gave them my business cards and talked to each person for a little while. From this I might get some additional readers and photo gigs. I also got an idea for a series of posts where I go to each restaurant to rate the wings in the local area.

Between these two events I got inspiration for future posts, possible visitors, great photos and tons of tasty, tasty buffalo wings. More and more when I take the virtual blinders off and step outside both my home and my comfort zone I find inspiration that I can use to become a better blogger.

Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.

Posted by BenSpark at 01:33 PM in Posties | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)