Finding my Bliss | Blissdom 2013

Well, it’s finally here… my Blissdom re-cap.  YAY!  I’m going to share some of my thoughts, lessons, and experiences. Let me first share a few pics of the incredible Gaylord Texan, where the conference was hosted.  What an incredible place!!  The hubby and I came in a few days earlier and enjoyed many of the amenities in-between our site-seeing and shopping extravaganzas {giggle}.

There was a replica of the Alamo, a HUGE glass atrium providing natural lighting
to all the restaurants, walkways, and succulent plants…….and they had their very own Riverwalk.

Blissdom kicked off on Thursday.{via}

I was basically attending alone.  I had a number of bloggers that I had hoped to meet, but with 800+ attendees, I knew it might be hit or miss.  Nerve wrecking to walk into the opening reception alone?  Heck, yeah!   However, I quickly found Kristen, Jaime, Jodi, Kristi, Taylor, Mackenzie, and Allison and the rest was history!  There was one familiar face in the crowd, someone I had met at BlogHer last year too, Alissa.  It’s always good to see familiar faces!

As the conference continued, I was blessed to meet some other fabulous ladies:  Thuy,  Jen, Tonya, Jennifer, Ashley, Samantha, Lindsey, Kelley, Amanda, and Claire and others (forgive me if I’ve left anyone out)!  And then there was Jon Acoff.  I also got some good eats and lots of fun swag.  Confession:  the books were the most exciting for me… all kinds of goodness wrapped up in those hard cover books that I got to bring home!  YAY!

So, we’ve covered the location and some of the incredible peeps that I met… now it’s time for me to share a few of the relevant tidbits I walked away with.  Let me also say that I went into the conference with NO expectations.  I set a few goals for myself and accomplished those, and anything else was extra.  I honestly walked away with more ‘self help’ inspiration than anything.  And you know, what?  I needed it.  I’ve been on a roller coaster of emotion with blogging over the past few months.  I have to admit that it’s a love-hate relationship.  {hee-hee}.  We’ll save that soap box for another day.  Anywho, here are a FEW of the tidbits of truth and inspiration that I brought home with me.  Ready or not, here we go…

The conference kicked off with keynote speakers, Scott Stratten.  He was uhhhh-mazing! Scott shared some incredible reminders regarding social media, branding and staying authentic to our brand/business.  I couldn’t possibly share everything, but a few things that Scott shared have really stuck with me:

–> Talk with people, not at them!
–> Twitter is a conversation, not a dictation.
–> Humanize your brand!
–> Make your content good enough that people want to share it!

Connect, don’t collect was also a fabulous reminder in regards to the friendships/relationships that you make at these types of events.  I don’t need to collect hundreds of business cards, what I needed to focus on was making some connections.  I did just that!  I can say that I came home with some fabulous new friends with whom I anticipate collaborating with and blazing a new trail in my blogging adventures.

I’m going to insert a thought or two here on conferences and cliques real quick, if you don’t mind.  After attending two conferences solo, I’m confident that based one my observations,  cliques are inevitable.  Typically, those you room with will be the people you will tend to gravitate to throughout the conference.  However, you can choose to let the cliques discourage you and potentially ruin the conference for you -or- you can embrace the opportunity of meeting new people, sitting at a table full of complete strangers and sometimes stepping outside of our comfort zone.  There are a lot of re-cap posts out there… some good, some bad and, honestly, some are just plain ugly.  No conference is perfect and will meet everyone’s expectations.  That seems completely impossible, and one attendees experience is not going to be anothers.  I think we all have to experience them to understand the dynamic they provide, the education it may or may not offer and weigh the pros and cons for ourselves.  I’ve always been blessed to make a connection or two that proved to be invaluable and they’ve turned into incredible friendships.

Moving on…  I would {love} to start doing some videos, in the near future, so I chose to attend the You Tube session.  I learned a lot of great information there — such as the trifecta of connecting all of your readers/viewers to your other social media outlets, somehow placing different tidbits on Instagram, Facebook, You Tube so that they’re clicking around.  An example would be that if I did a craft video, at the end of the video (and also in the description/comments of the video), suggesting that they visit the blog to see where my supplies were purchased, etc.  and vice versa.  I loved that… and while that may be obvious to many You Tubers, I’m super new to it and found those tidbits extremely beneficial.  PLUS, if you’re monetizing your blog and your You Tube channel — you’ll get two clicks and potentially make more money. Boo-yah!

I also loved that they said to think of your channel on You Tube like a TV show.  We all have a sitcom/show that we love and plan to watch at a specific time each week, right?  Well, plan to post your videos on a specific day and at a specific time each week so that your viewers know when to expect new material.  Fabulous tips for a newbie like me.

The last part of that session that I enjoyed hearing was, “Don’t feed the trolls.”  Now, I know that the comments on You Tube videos can be much more cruel and down right mean next to a blog post; however, there are mean people all over the internet.  Don’t feed them.  Ignore them.  It’s not worth the wasted energy.  Makes perfect sense, right?  Well, sometimes we want to kill them with kindness — just say no! Don’t do it.  Let it go and love the haters {smile}.

To avoid the length of this post becoming too incredibly long, I’ll share one more session that made me smile, that was with  Simon Salt.  He topic focused on the wise old saying  “Believe in Yourself!”  He reminded me that I need to look in the mirror and say, “I Rock!” and “What I do is brilliant!” and “I am going to be the best I can be!”  Simon also stated that “If you try to please all the audience — you stop being YOU!”  I needed to hear that.  Sometimes we work so hard to please everyone else and we lose a piece of ourselves in the process.  Do you ever feel that way?  Thanks for helping me keep things in perspective, Simon. I want to stay true to myself 100% of the time.  A book that he mentioned as a ‘must read’ was Amazing Things will Happen by CC Chapman.  That’s been added to my to-do list {smile}.

I’d also {love} to share what I took away from John Morgan and John Acoff, but I’ll have to save those for individual posts at a later time…. so stay tuned!  Honestly, I chose some GREAT sessions and felt so incredibly inspired.  You know what?  I’m incredibly blessed too — having such fabulous readers like YOU who whisper words of encouragement in comments and e-mails.  Thank you for that!

Overall, I had a fantastic time of learning, chatting, laughing and complete and utter exhaustion {ha!}.  It was worth every minute and I hope to do it all over again next year… but for the time being — SNAP! is happening in less than two weeks.  Woot! Woot!

Here’s to accomplishing great things…
and finding your bliss!  xo

I’ll be partying {here and here}.
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