Event Review: Launch Bloggers Conference 2019

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Just wanted to following up on my day trip to OKC the other weekend! My friend Cassie from True Agape hosted the very first Launch Bloggers Conference in Oklahoma City and I am so glad that I invested the time to attend. As you know I really wanted to step out of my introvert box and do new things in 2019. I normally would not attend something like this all by myself due to my severe social anxiety. I know it sounds silly but if you deal with anxiety, you will fully relate and if you don’t ..you will never truly understand how debilitating this condition is. I battle it every second of everyday.

Our conference took place at the beautiful OKC Museum of Art which is one of my favorite places to pass time when I am in the city. The Museum’s permanent collection covers a period of five centuries with strengths in European and American art from the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, contemporary art, and one of the world’s largest public collections of glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, whom I adore! The Museum boasts the region’s premier repertory cinema, which screens the finest international, independent, and classic films and is home to the Museum School, which offers classes for students of all ages as well as art camps for children. Amenities include the Museum Store, the Roof Terrace, and the Museum Cafe, a full-service restaurant, offering lunch, dinner, Sunday brunch, a full bar, and catering services. I always love the special exhibits too. They currently are showing the lovely work of Ansel Adams through May 26th so I would definitely check it out!

First up was Melissa from Polished Habitat who told us all about what to do after we hit publish. I learned so much from this session. She shared her “blogging loop” strategies which are Do, Track, Manage, and Plan. And reminded us that we need to make a list of every blog we have ever written and go back through them. Affiliate links die. Perhaps there is something you can tweak to make it fresh and new and the major thing I took away is forward linking. We are always back linking with old content on new content but we need to be forward linking new content to old content. She also had some great tips for Pinterest and SEO as well as the newsletters we are sending out. We talked about some things to do to help with our click rate! If you are a blogger and you see that Melissa is speaking at an event, well I highly recommend you learn from her! I had the biggest road block on some of my old content prior to talking with her and she made things make sense for me here. So I plan to rework my older blogs from three years ago adding new photography and new information to make things fresh and current, even adding redirect links. I do think it’s important to see how much we evolve as writers and photographers but there are also some things I wish I never wrote or took a photo of because the quality is so poor. I am way too hard on myself, I know! LOL! Thanks for all the homework Melissa!

Next up was Marisa Mohi and she taught us her tips and tricks on building an editorial calendar. And all though I am very good at this one, it was so nice to be reminded of the the things I am doing right in this blogging, content creation world. I did learn some new tips for “Guest Posting” and look forward to diving into that so I hope to find some high ranking sites that are accepting submissions. I also need to collect some backlinks to improve my SEO game. Marisa is such a wonderful writer and I have enjoyed keeping up with her on Instagram. She has great Insta Stories. And is also a fellow dog lover.

After a great morning, it was time to take the OKC Streetcar to lunch at The Hall’s Pizza Kitchen in Midtown. I am a huge fan of public transit and absolutely love that OKC has invested in this project.

Hall’s Pizza Kitchen was a perfect place to celebrate #NationalPizzaDay. The space has a very laid-back New York vibe to it. The menu all though we had a set buffet of lunch was a mixture of pizzas, salads, and some great unique starters. It was one of those menus that you could actually choose a few dishes from; plenty of options which weren't too over the top or adventurous. Because sometimes you don't want a pigeon, you just want a pepperoni pizza. You feel me?! We started with the Quinn’s Burrata-which is burrata drizzled with truffle honey, prosciutto, Calabrese olive oil, and wood fired flatbread. We also had the Bacon Jam + Pimento which is charred jalapeño pimento cheese and bacon jam and OMFG….just cover me in this stuff when I die!!! I am still dreaming of it! The pies came straight from the wood-fire oven and I enjoyed the ones we had chosen for us. I look forward to bringing my Rodge here because I know he is going to love it. I would love to try brunch too. And OMG- those lemon drop cookies. I sure wish I had a dozen sent to me for my birthday next week.

Dear cookie gods..are you listening??!

It was great to meet the staff at Hall’s and also meet the lovely Tabbi Burwell from Visit OKC. I look forward to working with Visit OKC to bring you more travel itineraries for day trips and weekend getaways so let me know if there is something specific you would love to see!

Our final speaker was Sam who took us through Mediavine, who specialize in full service ad management. They build sustainable businesses for content creators! If you are interested in monetizing your blog through ads and have 25k sessions a month on your website you should definitely apply here!

We then had about 45 minutes to network with attendees who shared the same niche. I would have preferred more learning time or mediated networking time but that’s just me! LOL! At least you know no matter what, I do not sugar coat things. Ask me my opinion and I will give it to you.

All in all it was a perfect day and I cannot wait to implement everything that I learned. Thank you so much to the following sponsors who made this event free for those attending. You are so appreciated and it does not go un-noticed!

Visit OKC/ Oklahoma City Museum of Art/ Head Country BBQ/ Mediavine/ Glacier Confection/ Halls Pizza Kitchen/ Grandma’s Lye Soap/ CM Customs Inc/ OKC Streetcar/ McAlisters/ and Kize Concepts. //And special thanks to Cassie over at True Agape for working so hard for us Oklahoma bloggers!!!!!