When I recently attended the TravelCon travel blogging conference in Austin, I put together a blogging conference survival kit. One of the most important items in my kit was a blank notebook, ready to be filled with all the tips, wisdom and ideas I wanted to remember. Yet I needed a way to organize my blogging conference notebook—and therefore my thoughts—so I could put the conference takeaways into action.

I’m pretty sure you agree that when you attend a blogging conference, you are inspired and excited: You learn so much, and you’re brimming with ideas to improve your blog. But without a way to organize all those thoughts, you won’t make any progress once the conference is over.

Not a great investment of your time, energy, or the cost of attending a blogging conference.

That’s why it’s so crucial to organize your blogging conference notebook. Keeping your ideas, takeaways and action items organized ensures you’ll be able to find all those nuggets of wisdom later—and that you’ll have a clear path forward once you get home.

Don’t risk losing track of all that goodness. Before you head to your next conference or retreat, read this post about how to organize your blogging conference notebook. You’ll finish the conference with a clear path forward—and be ready to turn that action into results!

Turn blogging conference wisdom into action

I’m excited to dive into the ways to organize your blogging conference notebook—but first, we need to cover our bases.

Why go old-school with a paper notebook?

Before TravelCon, folks discussed in the Facebook group whether to take notes on a laptop/tablet or in a notebook. I was surprised that so many of us remain old-school: TK% of people said they’d be writing in a blogging conference notebook instead of electronically.

There are plenty of reasons to keep track of your takeaways in a blogging conference notebook:

1. You’ll remember more. The act of writing something down cements the information in your memory, according to science: Since you write more slowly than you can type, you have to think harder about what’s most important and only write down those points. The mental work it takes to figure out what’s most important to you is like putting a sticky note in your brain to flag what you should remember.
2. It’s easy to format. The way I take notes is slightly more visual than just page after page of text. By starring items, circling notes and using underlines, I can organize notes at a session more easily than on a computer. This helps me quickly find what I need later when I reread my notes.
3. It’s light. Carrying a laptop or even a tablet gets heavy. You guys know I have a neck and shoulder injury (which is why I wear a fanny pack, not a purse), so carrying a few extra pounds all day was out of the question. Even if you don’t have an injury, electronics get heavy!
4. It’s easy to organize. Below, I explain just how I organize my blogging conference notebook to make it easy to put the conference takeaways into action. I’m sure others have a computer-based system that works for them, but the idea of having a million open tabs and documents for each kind of note makes my head spin.
5. Express yourself visually. I’m a visual person, so I often find myself sketching, drawing diagrams or making charts in my notes. I haven’t found a way to quickly do this on a computer, but it’s easy to do in a notebook.

Of course, choosing to take blogging conference notes in a notebook or on a laptop is 100% a personal choice. If you’re more of a tactile person like me, and you choose the paper notebook route, here’s how you can organize your blogging conference notes.

9 ways to organize your blogging conference notebook

1. Record your contact info

First things first: Write your name, blog and contact information inside the front cover of your notebook. If you lose it, whoever finds it can get it back to you.

2. Block out your schedule

Over a spread in your blogging conference notebook, write down your schedule. Include not only the keynotes and breakout sessions, but also meetings, social gatherings, meals and other must-remember notes.

The blogging conference you attend may have an app or a paper copy of the conference schedule, but it won’t include everything. At TravelCon, for example, I had to take a few calls for work, which I recorded in my schedule.

When you have your blogging conference schedule organized in your notebook, you’ll be able to tell at a glance where you need to be and what’s coming next. That way, you don’t miss out on anything!

3. Create a to-do column

As you’re listening and learning at a blogging conference, you’ll come up with dozens of ideas on how to apply those brilliant nuggets to your own blog. But without a way to organize your blogging conference notes, you risk losing track of all those ideas.

So draw a vertical line down the right-hand page, about a third of the width of the page. This is your special to-do list column. Jot down every action item here so you can easily find it when you get home (and you’re ready to grow your blog with all the conference takeaways).

I make a to-do column every few spreads so they’re easy to flip to as I’m taking notes.

4. List blog post ideas

Throughout the blogging conference, you’ll definitely come up with ideas for new blog posts. Don’t let these get lost in all your notes!

Dedicate a page in your blogging conference notebook for blog post ideas. (In fact, I thought up the idea for this post during one of the TravelCon sessions, since I thought it’d help other bloggers to get the most out of a blogging conference.)

This way, you have an easy-to-find list of blog post ideas to write when you finish the conference (or even on the plane home!).

5. Include social media handles

You’ll want to take notes as you listen to keynotes and breakout sessions so you remember all the wisdom from these blogging experts. Most people intuitively organize your blogging conference notebook by session.

That’s a great start but not enough. For each session, you’ll also want to include the speaker’s social media handle. Having it written down right next to your notes from their session makes it easy to make the most out of a blogging conference in three ways:

1. You can DM the speaker after their session to say thank you. Be specific in what you thought was most helpful.
2. You can live tweet the session. I tweeted throughout TravelCon, sharing quotes from each speaker and tagging them in my posts. Having their social media handles at hand saved me time in tweeting so I could focus on what they were saying, not searching for them in a sea of social media.
3. You can reach out with questions. Tag the speaker on social media and ask a question after their session. This is a great way to continue the conversation (especially if you’re too shy to ask it during the Q&A). Bonus: The folks who follow the speaker will see your post and their response, and you may gain new followers who appreciate your thoughtful question.

6. Research hashtags

You’ll want a list of hashtags specific and relevant to the blogging conference you attend. Organize your blogging conference notebook even before you arrive by dedicating a page to hashtags.

By researching and listing these hashtags ahead of time, you’ll have hashtags at your fingertips that will help your social media posts get noticed. Some ideas of hashtags to include:

• The blogging conference hashtag
• Hashtags relevant to the location of the conference
• Niche-specific hashtags
• Hashtags related to learning and blogging tips

7. Brainstorm conversation starters

I’m an introvert whom most people think of as an extrovert. I like talking to people, but sometimes I get super anxious and awkward in my head. What if I have nothing to say? What if I say something dumb?

I’ve read Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards several times, and she talks about conversation sparkers—questions that prompt memorable and interesting conversations. It’s a great book to listen to when you’re on the go and will ensure that you’re well prepared for your conference. You can download the audio version for free using my link to an Audible trial.

It’s easy to fall into a rut of asking the same questions at a blogging conference (what’s your blog about? Where are you from? Is this your first conference?). The trouble with these questions is that everyone else is asking them too, so you end up having the same conversations repeatedly—and you won’t remember them. (Worse, people won’t remember you.)

So to organize your blogging conference notebook, brainstorm a handful of conversation sparkers. They should be relevant to the conference so they feel natural.

When I attended TravelCon, I flipped to this page before mixers and coffee breaks. That way, I never had a need to worry over what I’d talk about—and the questions sparked some great conversations.

8. Star, circle and outline your biggest takeaways

Emphasizing things in your notes helps you twofold: You’ll remember that bit of information more, since you’re signaling your brain that it’s important as you’re writing.

Secondly, it’ll help you after the blogging conference. When you’re at home flipping through your notes, these takeaways will jump out to you and save you time hunting through a sea of grey text.

9. Go beyond the written word

When you write in a notebook vs type on a computer or tablet, your brain is actually working harder to understand the content as you go. So you’re interpreting the information rather than just trying to record it verbatim.

One benefit to doing this in a notebook instead of a computer is you aren’t limited to words. You might draw a diagram, make a chart, sketch a picture—anything! Turns out this ability has benefits to internalizing and learning new information.

“The very nature of handwriting means you have to write and organize as you are thinking, and that kind of organization affects how you are interpreting the information,” explains Dr. Helen Macpherson, who studies how handwriting impacts memory. “It’s the way the hand writing forces you to organize your thoughts that leads to deeper processing.”

So doodle, underline, draw arrows, sketch a herd of unicorns—anything that helps you take notes by hand will help you retain all that juicy new knowledge!

These tips to organize your blogging conference notebook helped me stay on top of everything before, during and after a blogging conference. I felt prepared to soak in all the wisdom during the conference. And afterward, I arrived home with an action plan to actually put those takeaways into practice.

Nothing’s worse than wrapping up an inspiring event with a feeling of overwhelm, right? You don’t want to be adrift; you want to be empowered. That’s why I think you’ll love these tips to organize your blogging conference notebook when you use them next.

Do you have any tips for note-taking or attending blogging conferences? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Also, if you happen to be going to TravelCon 2019 in Boston this June, let me know! I’ll be there too!