SMOjoe.com

It’s finally happening, beauty queens get their own blogs now. On a rainy Friday afternoon in April, Smojoe mentored Katie Starke, the 2008 Miss Teen Canada - World on the fine points of building and branding her online identity. Together we huddled over a computer on the third floor of  of 258 Adelaide St east Toronto, in the center of a busy En Course: Business Development Agency office to start something small that will certainly spiral into something big: Miss Teen Canada’s blog.

Miss Teen Canada - World is a blogger?

Its an exciting time for Katie Starke, this teenager is about to share her life with hundreds of readers. She’s nervous and anxious to make her new posts look as beautiful as her portraits. So when I pointed my trusty Sony sure shot digital camera at her she flinched and shied away. “I didn’t know we were taking pictures today” she protested.

“Katie, professional bloggers take pictures everyday as they chronicle their life experience.” I reminded her, and then mercilessly snapped another horribly amateur image.

Its a blog about the reality of living the fantasy.

All this before we got busy and opened Wordpress. I was quiet as Katie studied the blank canvas.  What should we write about? In this case the quintessential first question was further complicated by the subtleties and enormous potential of the situation. How do we introduce Katie Starke and establish the origins of a ‘personal blog’ while honouring the integrity of the Miss Teen Canada-World title, and not come off as pedantic or cliche?  The answer lies in the minutia of a young girl’s exciting life.

Katie recently flew back from a speaking engagement in Victoria at the British Columbia Miss Teen Canada - World Regionals. She found herself on the same flight as Russell Peters, fresh from hosting the 2008 Juno Awards in Vancouver, and after her people talked to his people they met and had a photo together.  Perfect, I thought.  Let’s write about that, and let’s make the headline read: Miss Teen Canada Meets Russell Peters After 2009 Juno Awards In Vancouver. That way we can really pay it off as linkbait.

Katie Starke is a quick study,

Next we attempted to embed a video of Russell Peters at the Vancouver awards show from some official channel on YouTube. I was running out of time because I really wanted to show Katie how to put videos into her posts, and my process wasn’t working. Videos are important for this blog because so many clips will soon be posted on YouTube.com by fans and proud parents and sponsors, and also there’s certain to be plenty of news media surrounding the actual Miss Teen Canada - World pageant event at the Metro Convention Center this summer. So a good strategy for Katie would be to embed pictures and videos of all interesting social gatherings and celebrities on her blog, and then describe these pieces in detail using her own words. This would give readers a rare and privileged insight into very relevant material, as I suspect that footage of the upcoming Miss Teen Canada - World pageant at the end of July will be extremely well trafficked on YouTube and Flickr for years to come… so anyway I tried to embed this video but it wouldn’t work. I tried everything and I was running out of time. Then Katie suggested that perhaps the computer we were working on didn’t have Flash installed, and I looked at her sharply because I knew at that moment she was right, and she’s going to become a terrific blogger.

Noon Friday March 20th, 2009 Rob Campbell of Smojoe social media enjoyed a working lunch with the Petite Fashionista at her blog workshop at Eglington and Yonge, uptown Toronto.

Petite Fashion Blog Workshop

Speaking to a packed room, Christa Jean highlighted the finer points of blogging and emphasized interactive widgets, video components, and how to obtain helpful analytics to know and better target random readers. She made it personal by talking about her own experiences growing her blog, including her June 22, 2008 charity event where she raffled off dresses from a celebrity designer Hayden Panettiere for her Save The Whales campaign. That one event tripled Petite Fashionista’s traffic and online reputation as it pushed her Google page rank to PR5.

Here’s a shot of me enjoying a cucumber avocado on whole wheat sandwich. I was caught half puckered trying to appear surprised in a not-so-candid photo. It didn’t really work out.

Three bites later I set my sandwich down and snapped a lovely shot of Christa describing the process she uses to shoot, edit and post videos on YouTube.  She’s having lots of fun streaming videos and packing powerful messages into moving images. Check out her video gallery on her Petite Fashionista Ning community website.

Overall I was impressed with Petite Fashionista and her cozy little information exchange. The fun and friendly gathering is another reflection of her charisma and experience. In so many ways Christa is wise beyond her years; she’s an absolute expert at building online communities and growing a dedicated readership.  Some of her web tactics are downright brilliant. She impressed me with her ideas about joining small groups, and how important it is to find and build a core community of genuine friends that read and connect with each others’ blogs everyday.