This is the final week of the St. Paul Travel By Month project. It has been an incredible experience to expose myself to things I was completely unaware of.  St. Paul was overlooked by the majority of my friends, it was viewed as mostly a place we drive through to get to our destination. Experiencing the true qualities of classy St. Paul, Minnesota has been fantastic.

- Project Results -​
Throughout the month, I posted daily content that contained pictures, restaurant reviews, videos, and blog posts. I have created a
 Travel By Month project page and blog page on my website, keeping updated on every post and activity I participated in. My Instagram has also been heavily involved in broadcasting the project. Through instagram, I was able to get noticed by La Grolla, one of the restaurants I reviewed. I have almost finished the email drip campaign and plan on incorporating it in Travel By Month soon.

- Project Workflow -
It seemed like during the beginning of my project I was in St. Paul about every other day. Thankfully, I improved my speed and efficiency of gathering content, making a list of what I needed (i.e. videos and restaurant reviews) and getting them prepped for posting ahead of time. With my improved efficiency, I was able to work more on the content quality, and less on the time gathering the content itself. 

- What I Have Learned - 
I learned so much about how I work best. If I prep myself ahead of time, I end up improving the quality of my work. Unless I'm looking for a sporadic tilt, my content development obviously reflects this. If you look at my content during the beginning of the month, it is so clear that I was creating it in more of a day-to-day format. 

- Future Development -
Travel By Month has taught me so much about thinking ahead. 
As I move forward, I plan on continuing with this project. I will continue with different cities and develop a separate website to further the brand.
As the brand develops, I will be creating social media accounts specifically for Travel By Month and start promoting. This project made me realize what I was passionate about, It helped me understand how close minded people can be. We should all learn how to see from different perspectives! 

If you have any ideas or preferences about what city I should cover next, be sure to let me know! I can not wait to see where I take this brand.

This week my main goal was to shift the direction of my project. During the second week of the project, I noticed it was starting to transition from what I originally planned. The content I created was very artistic, but it lacked the spunk and excitement that I wanted. This week I made it less about the photos, and in turn made it more about the actual content.

- Results From This Week -
I maintained my goal of daily photos, shifted the content of my project back on its desired course, posted my weekly video, and started researching drip email campaigns with MailChimp. I also reached out to friends about things they think are interesting and unique about St. Paul.

- My Workflow -
It was another busy week, full of time in St. Paul. I was able to stay a little further ahead this week and I have a plethora of good photos to finish the week off. To shift the direction of my project, (as I discussed above) I started by looking at it from a different perspective "What would I want to see on
Travel By Month about St. Paul if I've never been there before?" My goal is to help expose people to St. Paul, and inspire them to look for more adventure. To help me develop a solid footprint for the rest of the month, I asked some friends to tell me what they enjoy about St. Paul and what unexpected things they think people should see.

- What I'm Learning -
I'm really impressed with how adaptable I am becoming, whether I'm trying to see from different perspectives, or dealing with harsh weather. I can always pull through and find ways to improve the Travel By Month content.
This past week I started researching more about MailChimp, and I am preparing to start developing my drip campaign.

- My Plan For Next Week -
As always, I'll be posting my regular daily/weekly content, develop my drip email campaign, and I'm planning on smoothing over any rough edges to the Travel By Month project page and blog page. 

The most valuable thing I'm learning in through this project is;
Adventure is out there! All you need to do is open your eyes.

The first week of my Travel By Month project has been fantastic. I am constantly working on creating content and gathering photos.

During the first week I posted daily pictures, created one video, reviewed a restaurant, and wrote a blog post. I have also been continuing the daily pictures on my Instagram. 

Because I live 40 minutes away from the city, I found it easiest if I planned 2 or 3 trips into the city per week. Since my first week was about the Cathedral Hill District, on December 1st I spent about 4 hours taking pictures and gathering content. 

I am definitely getting used to taking pictures and videos in unforgiving conditions. Between the cold, snow, and uncontrollable lighting, it was pretty challenging. I also am getting used to thinking ahead, last weeks video (Into The City) was definitely a stressful creation, but through the chaos I found myself coming up with better ideas and ways to improve the project even more. 

This coming week I will be putting what I already know and merge it with what I learned this past week. I have gotten much more capable of efficiently creating content, and keeping myself organized even with a busy schedule. This week is all about downtown St. Paul, and the unexpected adventures I will be going on. 

- Stay tuned -