Support: @TiffanyRom Shares the Secrets to Success

giving back • my world • moms making a difference • moms making a difference

by Mom It Forward on May 18th, 2011 | 12 Comments »

I argue that the blogosphere is a kind of time warp zone, where time speeds up. Bloggers and tweeters seem to move at quicker speeds than the rest of the business world, and the nature and size of sites like Facebook and Google are changing so rapidly that it's hard to predict where they'll be in five or ten years. I'm sure it's realistic to say that some may even imagine a future in which Google, for example, controls the world. In such a fast zone, on such an unpredictable journey, there are passengers and there are drivers, to quote a famous commercial. Drivers influence the pace of time, control somewhat the course. Tiffany Romero is one such driver.

"I feel like I have a new vision of where the blogosphere could go every single week," says this novice-blogger-turned-blog-instructor. She is a mom, wife, business owner, and entrepreneur who began blogging (The R Family Diaries) only a couple of years ago, and has progressed to bloggie trainer and expert super-quickly, in true blogosphere fashion. "When I started, I didn't know what a media kit was. Now I live and die by mine. When I first started, blogs really lived on comments," she says. "But commenting [and connecting] has changed a lot."

And when she first started, her Google search of "mom blogs" provided her with just a short directory, which prompted her to start a site for true connection: TheSitsGirls.com. The site's focus is very strongly on comments. New bloggers and visitors to the site are encouraged to comment on the blogs of other involved bloggers, and vice versa, and the more a blogger comments, the more likely he or she will be featured on TheSitsGirls' home page. The site also offers education for bloggers in the areas of lifestyle, features of "women on the move," and through their forums.

In 2009, Tiffany says she "took her passion for connecting women online one step further and created Bloggy Boot Camp, one day conferences for women in social media." The Camps have become her favorite project because she interacts face-to-face with bloggers and gets to see their "a-ha" moments, provide them with affirmation, and (lol) hear the sound of her own voice on a microphone. She enjoys it for much the same reason that she enjoys motherhood, because she gets to see her son and the new bloggers reach for their true potential.

"My journey has been easy so far because we've been very clear about who our audience was: new, family-oriented bloggers." Indeed, that journey, while fast and easy, has not been without censure, from people who would like the freedom to swear on her site, or from the media. But, she says, "the nature of the blogging world is that it works better when everyone collaborates and shares. Someone's success in social media improves the general reputation of everyone in the blogosphere to those outside of it. Likewise, when someone behaves raucously in it, it affects all of us." And this is a sentiment shared by leaders in other sectors, like Lama-fortune, who emphasizes the importance of maintaining a positive, collaborative community in any space for long-term success. Just as the blogosphere thrives on unity, so does any industry where people come together with shared values.

It is perhaps because of her love of teaching and passion for teamwork that the analogy of Tiffany as a driver might not be most apt. On the journey of social media, she's not driving a race car. She's a drivers' education instructor.

You can find out more about Tiffany at TheSitsGirls.com, on Facebook at SitsGirls, or on Twitter at either @sitsgirls or @TiffanyRom.