I know many of you might be a bit over the Fitbloggin recaps. And I know I have already shared the following posts over my insights from the conference:

• Blog Tips Part One – Being Yourself, SEO, Building Relationships
• Blog Tips Part Two – Value of Readers, Goals of Blogging, Invest in Your Passion

But I sincerely hope you grant me just one more post to allow me to relive my fun and have a chance to capture it in this post as a virtual keepsake of sorts. I promise cute baby pictures at the end! 😉

In my first recap, I left off after our first morning with the many fitness activities. It seems so long ago and doesn’t even begin to cover the main conference events! Friday afternoon consisted of two panels: one discussed blog and brand relationships while the other touched on blogging as a hobby versus as a profession. After those, we all got prepped and ready for the Sears Social at 6 before heading out to dinner.

The social was fairly low-key. We all grabbed our complimentary drinks and hung around for awhile chatting while deciding on where to head for dinner. No matter what though, when you stick a bunch of bloggers in a room it will be a good time.

from top left: with Jenn, with Tina, with Gabriela & Courtney, social shot

After the social, a group of 12 of us headed to Mo’s Seafood for dinner.

Somewhere we had heard a recommendation for the restaurant and it sounded like a great fit…until we got there. The service was far from stellar and the food was far from delicious. It tasted okay, but my crab cake had a ton of shell in it (ew!) and the shrimp/scallops were in a very bland sauce. At least they were cooked alright though!

Veggies and bread rounded out the meal.

Along with great company!

Courtney, Amanda, Julie, Theodora, Heather, Gracie, Gabriela, Nicole, Anne, Tina, Jac

At least when service is slow we have plenty to talk about! I had a great time with these ladies and I miss them all already.

Saturday consisted of conference sessions all day long. They had so many great ones to choose from! I fueled myself up with a banana and a bowl of oats topped with berries, granola, and maple syrup to get through the first half of the day.

Then, I got my live blogging fingers ready to capture the blogging from hobby to career session. I don’t think I have typed so fast in my life. I was glad to have my duty out of the way in the first session so I could relax, enjoy, and note-take at my own pace in the other sessions I attended:

• Building an Online Community:Balancing, Monetizing and Inspiring!
• Ditch The Diet: Eat Intuitively
• SEO For Fitness Bloggers: Increasing Visits & Monetizing Search Traffic
• Know Your Stats (although I quickly learned I wished I had attended the Blogger Responsibility talk instead as the stats info was more basic than I expected)

We powered through those sessions with the only real break coming for lunch.

I want that lunch in my life again. It consisted of roasted vegetable mix, potatoes with red peppers, an apple and cabbage slaw/salad with blue cheese, and a roll. So good! It even held me over fairly well until heading to dinner with the roomies that night.

Luckily dinner on Saturday had much better food! I craved something rather different than my norm, but I went with it. Even though everyone around me ordered spinach salads that sounded amazing, I couldn’t deny the sudden hankering for fish and chips after seeing them on the menu.

They delivered. I devoured them. And still had room for a little fudge pit stop later. Always room for dessert, you know? We even booked it to the fudge shop to make sure we got our fudge fix before they closed! On the way back to the hotel we stopped off to say good-bye to some of our other blog friends before everyone began heading home in the morning.

My shuttle picked me up at around 10 am, which gave me plenty of time in the airport. What better way to kill time than with some food? I was hangry after only having a larabar earlier that morning. Enter Starbucks perfect oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit.

It was my first time having it and I was fairly impressed. It did a nice job of filling me up for my flight home. After leaving everyone I could not wait to get going home. I missed my little family so much!!!

I immediately teared up upon seeing those faces greeting me. Home really is where the heart is! And oh – go figure that Baby B learned to roll over while I was gone. I guess he wanted to have his own special surprise for me for when I got home.

• Do you like seafood? I’m very picky about seafood and will typically only eat it when at a beach. Unless it’s sushi or Cheeky’s fish tacos of course.
• What is a travel food pit stop you usually go with?

Check out part one of my Fitbloggin conference insights and the blog tips I picked up!

Number Six: Free samples rock! And we should utilize those relationships. We received so much swag this weekend. I’m still impressed with myself that I managed to fit it all into my two carry on bags to bring it all home. As excited as getting a bunch of free stuff makes me, the thought that companies out there exist that support bloggers excites me even more. So many brands worked to help support this conference. That just shows me that they are open to making connections with bloggers. Knowing that, I fully intend to keep building relationships with these brands in the future and value their products even more than I did before.

all images from the Fitbloggin Sponsors page

Number Seven: Know your goals. During the session on making your blog more professional, which I captured as a live blog, Ryan kept bringing up the importance of knowing the goals you have for your blog. It can be anything. It can range from wanting to inspire as little as one person to a platform for selling other resources you share to gaining more subscribers and page views. Once you know your goals, make sure you express it in what you present in your blog. Make the actions you hope those who come across your site take a predominant focus. For example, if you hope to gain subscribers, you should have subscription and follow options easily accessible on your site.

Number Eight: Have a passion so you can be willing to invest in your blog. Whether you view your blog as solely a hobby or as a potential source of income/opportunity, you invest in your blog.  It takes time and energy to share your thoughts with others. You need to find a niche you feel strongly about so you don’t experience burn out. Once again, the message of staying true to yourself prevails. Also, if you hope to move past simply blogging for yourself and ever strive to reach more readers, a monetary investment will likely come up – in the form of hosting, design, web tools, learning experiences, materials used (cameras or food for example) and more.

source

Number Nine: “Fit” doesn’t mean “no fun”. I certainly noticed that many of us in attendance really do try to live a life of balance. Everyone seemed to want to have an enjoyable time and not stress over things like food. Sure, we had numerous workouts we could choose to join on Friday. Sure, healthy and balanced meals appeared for our breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. Yet the focus still seemed to be on living life and soaking up all the time we had with each other. I hope to express on my blog that healthy living is fun and I sure appreciated feeling that same mindset surround me this weekend.

image from my roomie Katie (with Heather and Alicia)

Number Ten: Your readers are the MOST important. I wanted to save the best for last. I cannot cannot cannot even begin to express my gratitude for the relationships I have developed with everyone who reads my little musings on FFF. I would not have a reason to give so much of myself to this blog without you. I truly believe a blog is only as good as its readers. I don’t mean that in the sense of the number of readers, page views, or comments at ALL. I mean that in the sense of the quality of relationships and community built from you visiting this site. FFF would be nothing without you! Any blog would be nothing without support from others. Never lose sight of yourself in blogging, but also never forget the people who help make it happen – readers!

What ways do you invest in your blog? Does passion reflect in a person’s blog?