90% of life is just “showing up”

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By Margaux Lee

Thanks, Woody Allen. This is what happened when I finally "showed up".

Like many of you, I love the written word. After all, we are communications professionals. Lucky for you and me, with digital communications and social media, our options for creative outlets are endless (thank you for this one, IABC/Toronto).

Naturally, blogs peaked my interest. I have read and followed them for years and on many occasions, I would be inspired to start one myself. I am a young professional with the privilege (and workload to match) of dabbling in social media for my day job. If I could micro-blog on Twitter with 140 characters, how hard could it be?

Harder than I thought. My problem has always been indecisiveness. I was interested in so many things that I could never choose what to write about. As we learned at Tuesday’s session on blogging with Donna Papacosta, blogs that are focused can help you establish yourself as an expert in your selected niche… and are more likely to capture audiences that consist of more than just your mom.

Donna’s presentation had such easy little takeaways and fantastic tips; I almost kicked myself for not knowing to do these things before. One of the points that stuck out to me was about selecting a topic for your blog by finding your passion and writing about it. After all, how do you blog about something that you’re not excited about? Simple, right?

These days, I can sum up my passions a little bit better: local food and wine, travel and weddings (I’m getting married next year). But most of all, I love people. I love to meet new people and learn about them. Social media may be king but there’s still nothing like physically putting a face to the name (or Twitter handle).

So this is my long awaited blogging debut. On Tuesday, I showed up to my first professional development event since becoming an IABC/Toronto member in 2009. I learned something new, met some great new people and got the little push I needed to start blogging and get out there.

Have you ever attended an IABC/Toronto event (professional development, networking, Munch ‘n Mingles, etc)? What was your favourite part of the experience? And if not, how do we get you out to the next one?

For a handy recap on Donna’s presentation, you can also see Sue Horner’s blog post on the event.

Margaux Lee is the Social Media Manager at Delta Hotels and Resorts, connecting the dots between the offline and online Delta guest experience.  She is responsible for customer engagement in the social space, and being a professional Facebooker and resident tweeter for Canada’s leading hotel management company.

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