Last weekend I was in San Francisco for iFabbo’s Social Media Conference. I was super excited to see all the panels and meet new people. It was a short trip for this 1 day event, but it was a ton of fun! If you couldn’t make it out to #iFabboSFcon, keep on reading to see what went on!

The first panel of the day was the PR Panel, which featured tips on improving press/media kits and developing better brand relationships. Everyone wanted new roll up banners for retail stores as they all knew their front facing needed help. It featured Alle Fister from Bollare, who I saw at LuckyFabb earlier this year, Crosby Noricks from PR Couture, Adrienne Arieff from Arieff Communications, Lorraine Sanders from Digital Style Digest, and Rebecca Silliman from ModCloth.

One interesting fact from this panel is that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine…I think that shows the power of video. Speaking of YouTube, my 5 year anniversary on OliviaMakeupChannel is coming up next month! I also grabbed some great tips on creating a media kit, which is something I’ve never done before.

Next there was a social media panel that focused on increasing reach and followers, which is a big concern for me! It featured Laurie Mueller from Facebook, Alex Loscher from Google+, Marlena Stell from MakeupGeek, and my friend Jen Mathews from MyBeautyBunny. iFabbo’s fabulous co-founder Sinead Norenius moderated this panel.

I learned a lot of great tips on how to improve my Facebook page, as well as tips on increasing my followers on various social sites. I’m definitely going to try to utilize “call to action” in my YouTube videos…asking viewers to do something should definitely increase interaction!

Next up was the Photography & Videography panel. This one is very important in my opinion because if you have bad photo or video quality, it can make or break how well your blog/YouTube does.  This panel had Adobe’s Serge Jespers, Spreecast’s Jeff Fluhr, InstagramersSF’s Jim Barcelona, and NewBeauty Magazine’s Susan Yara. It was moderated by Hadi Leila Labarang, editor of Bay Fashion Magazine & founder of My Muse Box.

I will say that I didn’t learn too much from this panel personally, because I have done a lot of research to improve my photography & videography skills over the years, and most of which was information I’ve already heard. But, for a new blogger or a blogger who is looking to improve, this was perfect. I was glad to see that Adobe is upping their Photoshop game with Content-Aware. It was kind of hilarious because there were audible gasps while Serge Jespers was doing his demo, showing how you can use content-aware in various ways. I already use it with CS5, but in the next version it is going to become bigger and better. I think Photoshop is a valuable asset to bloggers and even YouTubers, but I think people are wary because of the price. Serge recommends Adobe Lightroom to bloggers, so that may be an alternative.

After lunch we had a fireside chat with Becca Cosmetics. We got a quick demo of their new Perfecting One Brush, which we got in our gift bags & I am super excited to try!

The Perfecting One Brush is supposed to replace all of the brushes you use to do your face: foundation, blush, bronzer/contour, and highlighting. I’m excited to try this out on myself…I definitely plan on doing a video on this…it’s almost a challenge to see if I can actually look good after using the brush for all of those products, right?

Here is Becca Cosmetics style director & national makeup artist Kerry Cole demonstrating the brush using Becca products. She managed to use all of the products I mentioned above in only 10 minutes!

Another important panel for me was the Monetization Panel. Blogging is fairly easy to get the hang of, but I don’t know the first thing about monetizing. It’s so hard to make real money off of blogging, at least for me. In this panel I gathered some great tips & new information that will help me improve my ads performance. This panel featured Oliver Deighton from Viglink, Christine Martinez from Luvocracy, Amanda Nudelman from Disqus, Koldo Garcia from The Mad Video, and my friend Amber Murray from Beauty Junkies Unite. It was moderated by Tonia Korakis, Sinead’s iFabbo co-founder!

After this panel, I know I’m going to sign up for Luvocracy finally, and also switch my comments to Disqus, because you can actually have ads through them, which is awesome!

Those were all the panels I managed to photograph, because it was hard to juggle my camera, phone, and notebook all at once!

There was a section with quite a few brands showing off their products & treating bloggers to samples. I had my skin mapped by Dermalogica and got a few samples…I’m even being sent 3 full sized ones to review. They had a few other products in their gift bag, and I’m loving the samples so far!

British fashion retailer Boohoo was also there, and they treated bloggers to a piece of their choice. I picked out this black top with a faux leather peplum hem. I really want to wear it, but it’s sadly a few sizes too small, because they didn’t have all sizes available! Maybe I can give it to a friend, or just lose some weight, right? We also received a credit to use on the site, so I’ll definitely write about whatever I decide to pick up!

Becca Cosmetics had their own booth there as well. I was able to snag a ton of samples, including their cult fave Beach Tint. Can you guess which color I picked? I’m also very impressed by their foundation & Ever Matte Poreless Priming Perfector. I’m definitely picking some up soon!

That just about does it for my little weekend trip to the bay! Thanks to iFabbo for hosting a great event. I can’t wait to see how it grows next year. I think they will definitely have more brands. I’d love to hear from more beauty brands in the future…there are even a ton of great brands in the bay that they can reach out to (Sephora, Benefit, Bare Minerals, etc.) If you’re a blogger, make sure to sign up to be a part of iFabbo!

Don’t forget to check out my fall inspired outfits that I wore when I was in San Francisco! I hope to be back soon…