It’s taken me a while to write this post because I wanted to put my personal feelings toward New Orleans behind me and write a post strictly about The Niche Mommy conference and my experience and take away from that.
The conference was held at the historic Roosevelt hotel located right off Canal Street. The location was the perfect distance to the street cars that you can ride for just $1.25 for a nice tour of the city, to the Audubon Butterfly Garden and the famous French Quarter where you could find the 24 hour Cafe Du Monde!
But let’s talk conference. I left The Niche Mommy conference feeling more confident in the direction that I want to take this blog. More confident that it will get me where I want to be without compromising on the quality of my content. Up early on Friday morning to hear Ted Rubin’s keynote address on Return on Relationships. Hearing Ted Rubin speak was inspiring. I could listen to that man speak all day and just soak everything up like a sponge. Ted said “It’s not about the platforms, it’s about the relationship.” and I strongly believe that. I want to reach people on a more personal level, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about letting people know I see them, it’s also about learning more about my followers, clicking the like button doesn’t automatically make me that person’s friend and I understand that. I want to bring you all valuable content that you enjoy reading about, that shows you products that you may not have heard of, to show you places that you want to visit.
I particularly like that this conference went beyond basic means of bringing in dribs and drabs of cash. Sure, it’s nice but I find that everyone usually says the same things time and time. I may have some learning to do in that category but that’s not all I care about (cash), I care about you.
The Content Kings, a trio of dads (@EPaynetheDad, @MochaDad @Jeffrey_Funk), presented an amazing visual presentation focused on, yep, content. Content and blogging go hand-in-hand and honestly, I wasn’t too keen on hearing anymore so I didn’t plan on going to this session. But these three dads encouraged the bloggers in attendance to engage with our readers by telling our stories.
They also offered practical tips how to seek out people in your space and learn from them, or how to build your storytelling muscle (write everyday!), how to use your analytics to improve your performance and predict trends, how to find your passion, or how to use headlines to pull in the reader. I just sat in their workshop and listened and may have gotten a tiny bit teary eyed over the video at the very end of the presentation.
I can’t say enough about the fabulous sponsors that I actually got to speak with like Huggies Latino, Heart of Haiti, Britax, Audubon Nature Institute, and Collective Bias. Britax has always been a long time love of mine and I even won an amazing in-line single/double stroller so of course they were my favorite conference sponsor!
Nadia announced that next year’s conference is going to be once again in New Orleans. I would love to attend but for me, NOLA doesn’t fit me so I don’t think I’ll be attending just because it’s in New Orleans again. For me, the business connections, personal connections, personal growth, professional learning and cultural experience were well worth the time away from family. I think the investment next year will be well worth it for anyone who attends. The Niche Mommy Conference was just what I needed to push myself and this blog forward.
Disclosure: A special thank you to Chuck E Cheese for sponsoring me to Niche Mommy. All opinions are my own.
Last Day! 
These are excellent tips! I wholeheartedly agree with Ted.
Sounds like a fun conference.