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Tricia Fandrey, The Night Owl Mama

Congratulations to Tricia Fandrey
The Night Owl Mama
http://www.thenightowlmama.com

Tricia was one of our 5 recipients of the Mom Central Inaugural Grants Program. She received $2,000 to grow her brand, build her platform and ultimately grow her influence!

Read Tricia’s submission!

The vision behind your personal brand:I believe in the brands and products that I purchase use every day. Sharing what I know with my readers through written and video reviews is the best way to help me express my knowledge of the product and to show the consumer more about the product and how it works or can be used so they can make a well informed decision on their purchases. I want to grow more as a video blogger because I feel this is a strong point for me and the best way to share products reviews and personal thoughts. I look forward to learning better editing skills, speaking skills and promotional as well as organization skills for the best way to represent the brand, product, as well as my self. Connecting with my readers more on a personal level is something that I am working toward. I want to share more personal posts and things we do together as a family. I want to share more personal experiences such as our travels, local in neighborhood features, as well as our strong points and weakness as a family. I believe that sharing these things not only helps us grow as people but will help readers to connect with us as an everyday family. I see Night Owl Mama growing and expanding into sharing more professional quality video products reviews and helping others to find the information they need on products for toddlers, preschoolers and preteen girls as well as useful house hold products that make life easier in every day life.

What do you aspire to do next?

I’m currently in the process of writing an ebook on “Blogging for Brands and How to get started.” I’ve made some decisions over the past two years that I’m not happy with, but I’ve learned from them. I’ve also made some really great advances in my blogging career and I want to open up and share what I know with others to help those who wish to learn about what it takes to be a Blogger and to promote brands. Getting started is the easy part, building your brand, blog, followers takes work, but having the right resources can make it easier. Monitize my blog to build an income to help our family get out of debt is my first goal. Next I would love to take my family to Disney. Keeping our family strong by doing things together is important to me. I eventually would like to bring in another blogger and grow The Night Owl Mama. I want to grow my readership and hope to reach a wider audience on several social networking platforms.

The purpose of this grant is to assist you with your vision. How will you use this grant to better your influence and personal platform?

I’m hoping to use this grant to take me and another Blogger, Jeana, to Blogher11. She too has had dreams of attending her first conference, but no means to afford it. Making that dream a reality for her too would be fulfilling. I’d love to network and connect with Brands as well as other Bloggers who I have built up a friendship with on the internet over the last year. Looking over the classes that Blogher offers this year I would like to attend several of them such as “How to Use Pr to Publicize your Blog” and “Going Pro- Making the move to Full Time Blogging/Social Media Work”. These look like two really good classes that will offer me tools to enhance my career. I also look forward to meeting a Few Pr Reps that I have worked with over the last year and hope to meet many others and make a connection and build on relationships. I would also like to register for a few classes offered at our local library, park district and local college. Money providing of course. The library offers a course on digi-scraps and when I saw it I was so excited but right now my husband is laid off so that’s not possible. I would like to invest in some help to get my links figured out. Since my switch to WordPress my old post links are broken and unsearchable through Google and no matter what I try, Google or attempt on my own I can’t seem fix the errors. I know that this has to be effecting my traffic as well as SEO and holding me back.

How long have you been engaged in creating your own personal brand?

1-2 years

What have you already done to achieve your goals for your blog/personal brand?

I’ve been working on building my followers and readers as well as social network outreach. I’ve been providing more video product reviews and written posts with more detail and personal pictures as well as breaking them into to two post to share and spread more information, and brand performance. I’ve made a youtube channel and I’m currently working on building more subscribers. I’ve incorporated more ways of connecting to social media outlets on my posts such as Facebook, twitter, digg, stumpleupon and networked blog connection to share my Blog post automatically on Twitter and Facebook. I recently moved to self hosted WordPress off of Blogspot and now I’m working twice as hard to build a better blog with better navigation and monitization. I’ve improved on my pitches to brands and have learn to better connect and share promotional ideas to promote them. I’m currently working on making things easier to find resources that I offer and share. I’ve recently started a ebook to help other bloggers so they don’t hit the walls like I did starting out. I’m trying to include resources and easy how to instructions that will allow those just starting out a easy path. I’ve only just started this in January but I hope to have it finished by the end of the summer.

What have been your biggest challenges in achieving your goals for your blog and personal brand?

Not having the knowledge of “how to” in today’s technology advancements makes things difficult. I’m pretty clueless about Html and Seo. It’s been almost 20 yrs since I’ve been out of college and I didn’t take classes that would help me with technology of today or online networking. Everything I learned I’ve taught myself over the last two years through searching and hours of nightly reading. I love to return to school or attend classes, but right now we don’t have the financial resources to do that, especially with living expenses, and paying for my sons college tuition. Financially we’ve had struggles. We are a one income family and we have four children. My husband is laid off for 5 moths out of every year, he’s seasonal. My oldest just graduated from college and we owe a lot of money. So having luxury’s like a better camera or video camera, or taking classes is last on the list. I’d like to do more with my video’s reviews. Using video editing software isn’t one of my strong points and I would love to enhance on that, to make my video’s reviews more informative and more professional in appearance. I loaned my Sony Video camera to my oldest son for a college class assignment and he accidentally dropped and broke it. He felt bad enough and we just haven’t replaced it. I am currently working with a Flip and lucky for me their software is pretty user friendly, but there’s not too much you can do with it. I really would like to learn a better way to share what I do and how to market myself better. Sometimes I struggle with finding the right words because I just don’t know what to say or the right term to use. I know what I’d like to say but to sound confident enough and come across like I know what I’m talking about is the hard part. I feel that if I just had some training and classes and/or possibly a mentor I can do so much better. I want my blog to speak for it self but I don’t have teh knowledge of marketing skills to get me there. The market for blogging is expanding every day and I want to stand above the rest and be noticed as well as learn how to make money from my blog.

Why should the public vote for you:

Creativity has always been one of my strong points and I feel I express that best through pictures and video. I like to make my content fun for my readers as well as connect on a personal level, so I try to share personal experience with a product good or bad. We are family with 4 children ages ranging from 2 yrs old to 21 yrs old. We have hopes, dreams, and goals and an found an occasional bump in the road at times. Our life isn’t perfect and if it were then we’d have nothing to laugh about. Attending Blogher11 this year would allow me to grow as a person, as a business women and a Brand. I’ve struggled in the past as a single mom with two kids and finding who I am. I worried about my kids and if they would realize why I worked 12 hours a day, and I’m not home to tuck them in bed at night and read to them. I wondered if they realized why I sacrificed that time to make a good living for us and make their lives better. Now that I am on my second married and have the opportunity to be at home with my children and be here to help with homework, cook and eat meals with them, and help them grow and learn to become productive young adults I want them to still see me as successful and show them that I didn’t give up on myself but I am working at bettering my self, and building an at home career in the process. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it and believe in yourself. Never giving up on yourself and working toward a goal and making new goals for yourself even if that means changing the direction your life is going in as long as you keep at it your bound to do good things. Blogging has given me an opportunity to have a voice and engage my personal experiences with the world, learn things that I had never dreamed possible, and show me a new way to become successful. I hope to share that dream with all of you and gain the knowledge to market myself, as well as brands and products in the best way possible that makes me stand out from the crowd.

Top 3 things you would like to share with those just starting out:

Find what interests you and share it with your readers, build on that. Don’t worry about having a specific focus or niche if you don’t have one just share your ideas and a part of yourself and the rest will come. If you decide to start off on free platform and make the switch to self hosted later it could cost you readers, and your Google Pr. that you’ve worked on. Starting off on a self hosted platform will give you the step up and in the direction your looking for. Don’t worry if things look difficult join a community and ask questions. Bloggers can be some of the most helpful knowledgeable women you’ll ever meet. Stay true to your self be honest and network to make friends. You’ll find your voice and use it to help yourself and others and you’ll go along away. Value your worth.

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First I want to thank you for offering a wonderful opportunity to have the chance to reach my dreams of attending Blogher. Without this opportunity it wouldn’t be possible for me. I’ve worked hard on building my blog and find my biggest obstacle is knowledge and making connections with brands due to competition and stats. I am hoping that with the opportunity to attend a conference, gain the knowledge and take classes that will help me grow as a blogger and a promoter through video reviews that more company’s will reach out to me when they are looking for a blogger to do a video review and a job well done. I take pride on my honesty and hope that shows in my work. I’ve submitted this application over three times and for some reason it has not been going through. I’m sure that each time I put together an applications my answer have changed a little and I just hope that I’ve put together a compelling application to take me through to the last round. This is something that I really know can help me grow as a person, mom, and a business women. It’s important to have goals and finally I can say that I have them. I hope to also help another blogging friend, Jeana, find her dreams to attend Blogher and with the grant money we both can attend blogher, make connections and attend classes to help our Career in blogging. I just want to say that even if I don’t get selected to receive a grant I appreciate all the opportunities that I’ve had working with MomCentral.

Thanks & congratulations, Tricia! We can’t wait to watch your influence grow!