Emma [Wandering Around]—anyone who regularly reads lifestyle and travel blogs, or keeps up with what’s happening online, has probably come across this blog and heard of Emma.
I’m also a regular reader of Emma [Wandering Around]. She writes about travel, food, everyday products, and even blogging tutorials… That may sound like what plenty of other people write about, right?Exactly! There’s really nothing extraordinary about Emma—she can “only” make every little thing in life sound fascinating.That’s all.」。And that’s not all.More importantly, she is incredibly prolific. Just how prolific? Over five years on Wretch, she accumulated nearly3,000 posts. Sometimes she would publish five or six posts in a single day, yet every one of them was packed with beautiful photos and plenty of text—never sloppily done. Her perseverance in blogging every single day is truly something worth learning from.
Now you get the picture! Forget the tens of thousands of daily page views—no further explanation is needed to understand why, as soon as I saw Emma’s new post at the time:[Announcement] Emma’s Blogging and Writing Workshop, I immediately logged in and left a comment to sign up, even though I normally read blogs while logged out. Are you kidding me? Emma was generously holding a completely free session to share her blogging and writing techniques. How could I possibly pass up that opportunity?
So at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, 2009/1/18, I headed to the workshop venue in Taipei’s East District—Guozi Café—to attend the session. (Calling it a lecture would actually make it sound far too serious, since the atmosphere was lively and cheerful from beginning to end.)
As soon as I enteredGuozi Café, I found the tiny shop packed with people, and the atmosphere was already buzzing! It hadn’t even started yet. I had originally thought 30 spots were far too few since they filled up instantly, but now I suddenly realized that limiting it to 30 had been remarkably farsighted. Otherwise, the workshop definitely would have turned into a full-blown party.
It was my first time attending one of Emma’s events, and I came alone. I honestly felt a little lost when I first arrived, but “a smile and a hello are all it takes to become friends,” so I was soon chatting with the people at my table. I could also feel the enthusiasm of all eight people at our table. Everyone was wonderful, easy to talk to, and easy to get along with. During the prize draw and giveaway later, our table got really hyped and everyone helped one another. Although we had only gathered for three short hours and were all meeting for the first time, it was still an especially happy occasion. In the end, we all exchanged blog details so we could stay in touch.
(Emma wanted to maintain an air of mystery, so I can only post photos without her in them. Otherwise, I actually took loads of shots of the workshop in progress… all distant and blurry.)
During those three hours, Emma shared a huge number of her own blogging and writing techniques, points to emphasize when working with text, photos, and video, and ways to use different software together. Although Emma provided her PowerPoint slides, I still took plenty of notes andpicked out the highlights of the highlightsto share some of Emma’s blogging techniques with everyone!
| ◆ Don’t sound too literary or formal: Writing the way you normally speak is easiest for readers to connect with. They’ll feel as though you’re talking directly to them. ◆ Make the layout comfortable to read. ◆ Black backgrounds look terrible: Use black text on a white background, break up your lines, and consider other people’s screen resolutions. ◆ Use an appropriate font size, line spacing, and letter spacing. ◆ Arrange photos and text properly: Alternate between them instead of cramming everything together. ◆ Plan before writing a blog post. ◆ When taking photos, think of them as a continuous story. Plan before you shoot. ◆ Your camera matters! So does your computer! The camera doesn’t have to be a DSLR or expensive—the most important thing is that it suits you.◆ Photos on your blog should be an appropriate size:400or500, with the length or width around500. Too small: Readers can’t see the best details. Too large: Images load slowly and can also break the page layout. ◆ Post categories: First understand what kinds of posts you’ll write, then set up the structure. Start with broad categories and keep refining them. ◆ To help yourself write different and better posts: Keep looking at new things, talking to people, and searching. ◆ How to make a post good: Know how to tell a story and have your own point of view. Everyone has a different background and different memories, so add more of yourself to make your post stand out from everyone else’s. ◆ Further reading links are very useful. Put links to older posts beneath every article to increase their visibility. Or, if you have a series of posts, list the whole series for readers. |
During the break, we could go and get the food prepared byGuozi Café. But a bloggers’ gathering is a bloggers’ gathering—hahaha! Just look: nobody touched the food. Photos first, eating later. It was such a rare and amusing sight, though I was obviously one of the amusing people myself.
Everything was self-service, so we could eat as much as we wanted, and drinks were included too. Such a rich and varied spread cost only NT$250 that day! (And the key point: Emma’s workshop was included.)
The muffins in the photo are (left) plain almond, (front) chocolate, and (back) matcha. I actually didn’t try any of them, and now that I’m looking at the photo, I regret it so much~
(Front) Donggang sakura shrimp chocolate. It was a very unusual treat and apparently quite expensive, but it was dusted with wasabi powder, which was far too hot and pungent for me (pfft). Otherwise, it really did have a great texture and taste delicious.
(Middle) Chocolate cake roll (Back) Matcha and red bean cake roll
Here was another equally unusual product—Hua Zhen peanut crisps. They weren’t cheap either. Made with a distinctive Taiwanese agricultural product, they had a wonderfully fragrant peanut flavor.
Why were there so many unusual foods? Because the venue for this workshop,Guozi Café, specializes in marketing distinctive, high-quality Taiwanese agricultural products. ThroughGuozi Café’s official blog, it recruits people for product tastings and sells the products in the shop, helping these Taiwanese agricultural goods gain more attention.
This is the owner ofGuozi Café. He is truly dedicated. I really admire his commitment to marketing Taiwanese agricultural products, and the products genuinely are excellent. Everyone can sign up for tastings or buy them; they would also make very suitable gift boxes.
Important Information
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Guozi Café |
Another extremely unusual dessert, which has even been featured in the news, wasLe bonheur 樂邦幸福 French Crème Brûlée. This was quite literally an egg pudding—just imagining it tells you how difficult it must be to make! The owner said orders had surged recently after it was featured in the media, but the eggs also had to be carefully selected by size. Production was therefore limited, and customers even had to queue to buy them. Yet he specially sponsored this writing workshop and evenpersonallydelivered them to the venue. That was incredibly thoughtful!
Besides all the delicious food at the venue, every one of us somehow went home with a huuuge pile of freebies
including:
(Front right) My prize-draw win:SilanoJasmine SPA Travel Set, worth NT$550 per set. It smelled so, so lovely—even holding the outer packaging left a faint jasmine fragrance on my hands.)
(Back right) Two bottles of Taidao tea (That stack of flyers) IncludedApivitaAmita Facial SOS Calming and Soothing Mask, sponsored byiBeauty.
(Front left) The two boxes at the very bottom:Kui Kui Handmade Cookies & Nougat Mini Gift Boxesand, above the Hua Zhen crisps,SensatiATomato Lime Handmade Soap
(Back left) The Chinatrust Hotel’s Chinatrust Baby Bear
(After I brought everything home, the gifts were dispersed between our homes in Taipei and Zhongli before I had another chance to take more detailed photos of them. So everyone can have fun spotting the various sponsors’ products!)
Emma really is popular. One workshop attracted sponsorship from so many companies, leaving us full of knowledge, full of food, and with our hands full of goodies. It was tremendously satisfying and an absolute bargain.
Emma actually had many more techniques she didn’t have time to share at this workshop. She promised to hold Emma [Wandering Around] Writing Workshop Part 2 and give us priority registration. All I can say is… I’m really, really looking forward to it!
Further reading:
[Record] Murphy’s Law and the Broken Computer: Blogging and Writing Workshop—Emma [Wandering Around]
