iFabbo San Francisco Conference!

Yesterday was a long day! Star Focal went to the iFabbo San Francisco conference with our best friend from Casandra’s Reviews . After only 3 hours of sleep and a WHOLE lot of caffeine, we were on our way to San Francisco for our first ever conference! We could not wait to meet other bloggers and to hear what all the panelists had to say!

We were amazed when we walked into the Merchants Exchange Club! It was a beautiful building and there was so much going on! We got our name badges and went to take a seat but got caught along the way with all the brand booths that were set up! The first booth that I got stuck on was the Boohoo.com Booth! I was able to snag their Danni Velvet Fringed Kimono! I fell in love immediately! Stay tuned for a review of this and hopefully many other Boohoo products!

Another great booth at iFabbo was the Becca Cosmetics Booth! I was very excited about this booth! What I did not know was all the awesome information they were going to share with us about their company! For instance, did you know that Becca Cosmetics was started because they wanted to create a foundation line that EVERYONE could use? 50% of their foundation line is light to medium shades and the other 50% is medium to dark shades. I am definitely in the ghost white category, but I love that they think about everyone when they create their lines and not just a select few! We also got a personal demo of a new product that I will talk about later on!

Another great booth that I got to check out was the Lotus Premium Denim Booth. Lotus Premium Denim was created to make our lives easier when it comes to picking out that perfect pair of jeans. I personally know how hard it is to find a great pair of jeans and I was wowed about how cute these were! They eliminate the need to get your jeans altered for that perfect fit! I hope to be able to share their products with you soon!

I also checked out the Prai Beauty Booth and while a lot of their products didn’t apply to me personally, we got to check out some of them out and I cannot believe how amazing they are! They had a large selection of items to rejuvenate skin and give you the extra moisture you need. I also love that one of their collections is named 24k Gold. We had a lot of fun looking at their products.

There were two other booths that I did not get a chance to check out because they were pretty packed! One was the Dermalogica Booth. They were doing a face mapping exercise that was creating a lot of buzz and I was a little bummed that I didn’t get to check it out! I have heard amazing things about their products and this is another company that I will be sharing with you a little bit later on.

Last but certainly not least was the Beautisol Booth. The cool thing about Beautisol is that it was created by one of the founders of iFabbo, Sinead Norenius! Beautisol offers many different self tanners that I hear are absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to share them with you! So stay tuned for that one as well! I wish I had some more pictures of the booths, but apparently I was so star struck that I forgot to keep my camera out of my pocket! lol

PR: How to create an impressive Press Kit/Media Kit and how to develop better Agency/Brand relations

Okay, so now to the good stuff! So obviously I am not going to share all of the secrets I learned at this conference but I will share with you who was there and a couple things I took from the conference. The first panel of the day was “PR: How to create an impressive Press Kit/Media Kit and how to develop better Agency/Brand relations.” Members of this panel included Alle Fister from Bollare.com, Crosby Noricks from PrCouture.com, Adrienne Arieff from Arieff.com, Lorraine Sanders from SFIndieFashion.com, and of course our wonderful moderator Rebecca Silliman from ModCloth.com. This was one of my favorite panels of the day, okay they were all my favorite, but I got a lot of information from this one. One of the main things I learned from this panel is to have your own voice and to make sure that it is the same voice in everything you write. Don’t be afraid to be yourself because that’s what people are looking for.

Increasing reach and followers: ‘How to’ for all the social media platforms

The next panel was the “Increasing reach and followers: ‘How to’ for all the social media platforms.” This panel was moderated by Sinead herself and included Laurie Mueller from Facebook, Alex Loscher from Google +, Merlena Stell from MakeupGeek.com, and Jen Mathews from MyBeautyBunny.com. They taught me that I should make sure to take my voice from my blog and apply it to social media and to make sure that I am talking to my readers and not just broadcasting to them. The biggest piece of information that I will take out of this is too ask questions when I post instead of just posting what I wrote. Make my readers want to know more about my post instead of just showing it to them.

Photography/Videography : Tips and tricks of the trade for better images and more engaging Videos

This next panel blew my mind, Literally! This was the ” Photography/Videography : Tips and tricks of the trade for better images and more engaging Videos” panel. Moderated by Hadi Leila Labarang from MyMuseBox.com and featuring Serge Jespers from Adobe, Jeff Fluhr from SpreeCast.com, Jim Barcelona from InstagramersUSA.com, and Susan Yara from NewBeauty.com. I was excited about learning more about photography. We got to see the new Photoshop and I have to say that this is a must have for everyone! It was amazing to see and it has so many awesome features. I learned from this panel that Videos get more feedback than regular posts and readers appreciate it more when you schedule a video or live chat regularly.

Lunch!!!

After the panel we had lunch, which was provided by MadVideo! I will talk about Madvideo soon, but we had an amazing lunch thanks to them and I was truly grateful because after such a long morning I needed some fuel! I had a Turkey and Bacon sandwich, some chips, an apple, and of course an amazing cookie!

Legal zone: FTC rules, updates, trademarks and copyright

After lunch we had the “Legal zone: FTC rules, updates, trademarks and copyright” Panel. I was very excited about this one because it is very hard to find accurate legal information about blogs. Mona Bajwa from Trymbl.com moderated and Gregory Lemmons from LordBertram.com and Laura Slezinger from VentureGainedLegal.com gave us lots of great info! From this panel I learned to be very careful about what I put on my blog and how I can protect it and to always ask permission to use any photographs or even company logos in my post.

Monetizing your blog: Work smarter not harder

One of the panels that I was most excited about was the “Monetizing your blog: Work smarter not harder” Panel. It was moderated by Tonia herself and included Oliver Deighton from Viglink, Christine Martinez from Luvocracy, Amanda Nudelman from Disqus, Amber Murray from BueatyJunkiesUnite.com and Koldo Garcia from MadVideo. While the main purpose of this blog is to give my readers information so that they can make informed purchases, it is hard to spend all this time on my blog and not get more out of it. I was excited to learn how I can continue doing what I’m doing but make some money on the side. So what did I learn from this panel? I learned that Disqus is pronounces “discuss” and not “diskiss”! Okay maybe some of you already knew this, but I was in the dark. WAY IN THE DARK! lol

Cupcakes and Lemonade!!

Luvocracy let us have a cupcake and lemonade break! The cupcakes were absolutely amazing! Thank you Luvocracy for all your great information and the cupcakes!!!

The future of fashion and beauty in the digital space

The last “Panel” of the day was “The future of fashion and beauty in the digital space.” Moderated by the lovely Roxanne Nejad from Boohoo and including Annemarie Frank from HSN, Bianca Posterli from Glam.com, Euenia Chien from ShopStyle, and Tracy Sun from Poshmark. I loved learning about the latest fashions and where these icons think fashion and beauty are going over the next few seasons!

I learned so much yesterday that it is going to take a while to implement it all into Star Focal, but I cannot wait to see where we will be going next! Stay tuned because I will not only share with you what we got in our goody bag that was worth over $400, but I will also share with you my look for the conference! Be sure to check out iFabbo and any of the wonderful people/companies listed above. They were all absolutely amazing and I had a blast!