Our last presenters at #DisneySMMC Portland were the great ladies I sat with at my table, Maya and Cathy Murillo. They are a dynamite mother and daughter who both run their own very successful blogs/social media enterprises! Cathy (mom) is The Crafty Chica and Maya (daughter) is over at Maya in the Moment. Their Talk was about going "Beyond the Blog". A few notes from the two of them:

• Respect your signature style
• Have a book proposal ready to go (based on your blog)!
• Use all kinds of Social Media, not JUST Facebook and Twitter: YouTube, Vine, Snapchat, etc

And a few bits of advice from Crafty Chica Cathy:

• Embrace the New (ask your kids about the sites they are using to connect!)
• Make readers laugh, cry or gasp-whatever it is, find the magic!
• Know your 5 year destination-where will you be in this endeavor 5 years down the road?
• Know the top search terms for your site (and buy the url if available)
• Involve your kids!

Also, some tips from the younger generation, Maya in the Moment:

• Bring your own personality
• Have your hater blockers on!
• Variety! Use a lot of variety!
• Let yourself have FUN!

I'll leave  you with their last piece of advice:

Dreams=Goals! 

Have a plan of action!

Better Late than never, right?! 
As a reminder, on June 6, I got to attend the Disney Social Media Mom Conference "On the Road" in Portland. It was amazing, and I learned so much that I wanted to share! I still have a couple more posts to share with you. 
Of all the speakers, this one was the one that really stuck with me and I have really thought about and tried to use. I am so excited to share this with you all! 
My favorite speaker at the Disney Social Media Mom Conference in Portland was Marianne Richmond, Author and Artist (and self made success story). Her talk was "Building your Brand while following your Passion."
She is the author of "If I could Keep You Little" (which she gave to all of us and read aloud-LOVED that!!) as well as quite a few other books:
She accomplished many other amazing business and personal ventures by following her passion as well. You should go to her website here to read all about her.
Here are the highlights of her talk:

• Know your Why
• What's your Goal?
• Embrace your Design
• Find your Brave!
• Dream and envision your Next level

And a few of my notes on each highlight:

Know Your Why

• Know your why-connect to your true passion and understand why it matters in the world!
• To find you why, finish the sentence "I am passionate about..."
• Once you know your why, it can give you focus and help you better evaluate opportunities.

What's Your Goal?

• What is your end game?
• What are my absolutes?
• What am I willing to do to accomplish goal?
• What am I not willing to do to accomplish my goal?

Embrace Your Design

• Be you!
• You have a unique voice! 
• What was I doing in 2nd grade that I still love?

Find Your Brave!

***Notes/Thoughts from Beckee: This struck a chord with me! When we are blogging or starting a brand or business, it is easy to get so caught in what the audience wants or how to built the audience that we forget the whys and the goals and start to cater to the audience. However, if we find our own brave, take our unique-ness and go ahead and bravely share what we have to offer, THAT is the real success. At least that is what I took from this amazing speech!!!***

• Root yourself in what you have to offer
• Create a mantra that emboldens your bravery
• Try something out of the box
• De-Personalize (business related) decisions
• Create your Courage team (Another Beckee note-I love the idea of a courage team-these are the people that will buoy you up when you are in doubt, because you will be in doubt sometimes as you grow and build anything! I love my "courage team" which consists of some close family and friends!!!)

Dream and Envision your next level

• Have an idea of where you are headed! 

And her last thought is well worth sharing-"Remember, we are all in this Together."  (I love that this last quote she said is also a quote from Disney's High School Musical!) 

Sorry to leave you waiting for more from the Disney Social Media Mom Celebration in Portland. I had to run a fundraiser for girls camp at my church on Saturday and it kept me very busy! 
BUT now, let's talk about the next speakers at #DisneySMMC Portland. Our next speakers were editors at Babble.com,  Andrea Roxas and Megan Sayers.
Andrea and Megan spoke about building relationships with other bloggers and with our audiences (that's you, guys!) using different social media platforms. I loved that they gave excellent tips about the top 4 big  platforms: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. (There are obviously lots of other platforms out there, but these are the big 4 they covered).
Here are the tips for each platform:
Facebook

• Use short, clear, engaging copy
• Experiment and analyze
• Post more than just links - try shareables and other native upload

Pinterest

• Vertical Image
• Text Overlay, for context
• Descriptive copy that tells a story
• Use Guided Search to find out which keywords are most valuable to layer in to your pin description.

Twitter

• There's no such thing as "too many tweets."
• Tag, tag, tag!
• Tweet on trending topics, but through the lens of your brand

Instagram

• Photo quality is key
• Keep your look consistent
• Share your photos on other social platforms to drive engagement

When using social media make sure to identify your strengths and spend the most time on the platform that will benefit you.

Building relationships with other bloggers is all about forming meaningful connections. Here are some ways to do so:

• Don't be afraid to cold email
• Suggest mutually beneficial ways to connect ( like social swap, crowd-sourced content, guest posts)
• Approach it as a relationship, not a favor or business transaction

Probably my favorite part of their talk was about building your audience. They told us to find our people! (Beckee's note-you are my people and thank you!!!) Some ways to "find your people" when you are blogging include:

• joining communities
• scoping social media
• going to blogger events
• Look for similar blogs, not necessarily the biggest blogs. Look for quality over quantity.

One last bit of advice from Babble was to Branch Out! Do so by pitching to larger sites (find a direct contact, and tailor your pitch to that site).

Other platforms they think are up and coming and will be focusing on more at Babble are You Tube, Periscope, and Snapchat (for younger audiences).

At the Disney Media Mom Celebration in Portland I was super excited to hear first thing from Tyler Slater, who does "Disney Destinations PR and Social Media" He was one of my two favorite speakers. I loved, loved, LOVED hearing all about the great stuff happening in the world of Disney Destinations. Plus I am pretty sure that is Tyler and I got to hang out at all, we'd totally be BFF's. He seriously has the best job ever and he is a super nice guy that obviously realized how awesome his job is. 
So, a few exciting things going on that you may or may not know about:

• The campaign to "Show your #DisneySide" (If you have an iphone, please tell me you are using the Disney Side App)
• Disneyland Diamond Celebration (Looks ridiculously awesome-more on that in a minute)
• The Coolest Summer ever at Walt Disney World
• Downtown Disney at Walt Disney World transforming into Disney Springs
• Tons of Awesome Adventures by Disney
• Aulani Resort on Oahu (Including the mention of Painted Sky-the TEEN spa)
• New and exciting things on the Disney Cruise Line (more on that in a minute!) 

I have to tell you a little more about a couple of these exciting events, the first of which is the Disneyland Diamond Celebration.  In case you haven't heard, Disneyland is celebrating it's 60th anniversary this year! There are some absolutely amazing things they have done to celebrate! Besides tons of new merchandise, there is a lot of new and improved entertainment! There is a super upgraded firework celebration with state of the art projection mapping, a new Paint the Night lights parade, and a new World of Color show celebrating Walt Disney and hosted by Neil Patrick Harris. Check out more on all of that here.  The second event I have to share more about is the amazing new show coming to the Disney Cruise Line: Tangled: The Musical. I cannot even express how amazing it looks, so I will just share with you the Behind the Scenes video Tyler shared with us. Watch it then thank me later for sharing it! :)
I was literally trying to plan my next Disney adventure before Tyler was even done talking. I just love Disney and love knowing all the amazing adventures out there to experience with them! But the best thing I took from Tyler's speech was this quote by Walt Disney: (In case you can't read the picture, it says "When you believe a thing, believe it all over-implicitly and unquestioningly." --Walt Disney) The second speaker at the #DisneySMMC in Portland was Erin Glover, Director of Social Media for Disneyland Resort. 

Erin spoke a lot about what goes into running the Disney Parks Blog. The main point from her speech that struck me was the idea that that to be successful at this, you have to figure out what is unique to you! Ask yourself the following questions: What is unique to me? What do I have access to that no one else does? What can only I say?  
She spoke about using your unique gifts and access to find your voice. She made the point that they realized early on with the Disney blogs that what they had that was unique and what they had access to was backstage and after hours at Disney, access to imagineers, and other cast members. So, what is it that I have access to, what is uniquely mine?
Erin showed us a recent video about the Box Hat Ghost's reappearance at the Haunted Mansion after 46 years. (See her article about that here. It includes the video!) I'll share more about the fantastic speakers at #DisneySMMC tomorrow! 

On Tuesday June 9, I got the opportunity to attend the Disney Social Media Mom Celebration on the road in Portland. There is so much to share about it that I will put it in several posts. But I wanted to give you an overview of the amazing conference. My drive into Portland which should have taken about 2 hours 20 minutes ended up taking just over 3.5 hours. So.Much.Traffic. Luckily I had planned to arrive an hour early so I could socialize. I missed the socializing, but made it (a bit frazzled) right as they were about to begin. Luckily, the Disney magic greeted me immediately and I was no longer stressing the hassle of getting there!  The room was beautiful! Every detail was given the Disney treatment! I quickly grabbed some breakfast and found an available seat with some really nice ladies (who ended up being presenters!)  The first video pulled me in and made me feel like I should rush to the  Disney parks immediately. The first speakers were Disney cast members and they just added to my excitement! In case I haven't mentioned this before, I am a huge, HUGE Disney fan. My family has had Disneyland passes for 3 of the last 4 years, and we will be renewing them again this month! :) We have been to Disneyland several times, but none of them have been since the Diamond Celebration began. Now I cannot wait to go again!  Tyler Slater, Who does "Disney Destinations PR and Social Media" spoke first. Followed by Erin Glover, Director of Social Media for Disneyland Resort. These two have dream jobs-they are living my dream! Tyler gave us a lot of info about different Disney locations. Erin talked a lot about what it takes to do the Disney Parks blog and gave us some great advice for our own blogs. Next up was Victoria Lim, former journalist, current managing editor for Walt Disney World Public Relations. She gave us some excellent advice on making and using videos. I learned a lot from her and cannot wait to try all I learned. After Victoria, we heard from Andrea Roxas and Megan Sayers, editors at Babble.com. They had a ton of excellent tips for how to interact on different social media platforms.  Our next speaker was author, Marianne Richmond. She talked a lot about finding out own voice and knowing our why! She was excellent. My favorite part was when she spoke about finding your Brave and creating a courage team! More detail on this in a later blog post. Our last speakers were my breakfast buddies, Kathy Cano-Murillo, the Crafty Chica, and her daughter, Maya Murillo of Maya in the Moment. I loved listening to them talk about the family aspect of all this. It was inspiring to me and has me thinking of ways to include my kids more in what I do. Our last guest didn't say much but he made huge impact and I just love him! Here's a picture of him with me:  All in all I am so grateful I was able to attend! I loved it and hope to attend again. I will be using what I learned and reclaiming my blog as my own. I have been looking for my voice for a while now, and I think it is becoming more clear for me. More coming soon!!!

If you know me "in real life" or even on line, you may be aware that I LOVE Disney. All things Disney. In fact, my family has had Disneyland annual passes for a number of years because we love Disneyland so much.

Well, one of my dreams as a blogger has always been to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. What is that you ask? Well, It is an annual conference held by Disney at Disney World (Once it was at Disneyland). This is not a conference you can apply for or register to attend, it is one where a small number of select bloggers are send invitations to travel with their families to Disney where they will have the opportunity to  learn, network, and get more involved in the Disney social media.

On top of the annual conference at Disney World (or Disneyland), Disney has begun to have Disney Social Media Moms Celebrations "On the Road". For the past few years I have been applying for these On the Road day long conferences. This year I had not planned to apply, but a blogging friend pointed out that the first stop this year is Portland (and I live a few short hours drive from Portland).

So, quite some time ago, I applied and promptly forgot. Then something magical appeared in my email while I was in Hawaii:

The email started with "Congratulations!" I was invited to the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration on the road!

So, After much schedule rearranging, I will be spending next Tuesday, June 9th at the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration! I cannot wait to take you blog readers on the journey with me! I plan to post as I can and to tell you all about it!

Until then though, I'll just have to find other ways to show my #DisneySide! Here are (way too many) pictures of the "Beckeesdeals" clan showing our Disney Side:

























Hope you have fun showing your #DisneySide!!!