K and I are both back to our normal routine this week after spending the past weekend attending BlogHer ’12 in New York City.  It was a complete whirlwind, but we enjoyed meeting lots of new people, learning about new ideas for 2S2C, and getting to know more about various brands.  Here are a few of our BlogHer ’12 highlights (seen in the photos above):

• Having an awesome dinner on Thursday night at Bobo in the West Village.  We had to wait a little bit for a table, but we had drinks and appetizers at the most adorable bar on the 2nd floor.  The food was phenomenal!
• Going to the California Dreams private party at the Terrace Club.  It was pretty cool to grab a cocktail on a rooftop bar and meet some fellow bloggers.
• Getting to see Martha Stewart speak at one of the keynote speaker lunches.  K was also pretty excited about the Martha Stewart Home Office journal from the Staples booth.  Katie Couric was also a great keynote speaker.
• Seeing the Pioneer Woman and the Jimmy Dean sun in person!
• We laughed until we cried at the Listen To Your Mother Open Mic Salon.  If anyone sees a list of everyone who spoke there, please let me know- there were so many great speakers/bloggers!
• Getting our photos taken with not one, but two different characters dressed up as bananas (Dole and Jamba Juice.)  Also, stunning photo of the two of us with a Great Northern toilet paper background- check.  K sailing the high seas with the Gorton’s fisherman- got it!
• Trying out the new Starbucks Verismo system that is being released this fall.  Check out my latte that I made in the photo above!

We also tried to attend as many BlogHer panels as we could.  Between the two of us, we ended up attending

• iPhoneography
• Ten Things You Can Do Now to Maximize Your Social Media Expertise
• Leveraging Facebook and Twitter
• Leveraging Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram
• Protecting Your Blogging Rights, Respecting Those of Others
• Hot to Make an App, and How to Price and Value Your Services

Wooh- I think I need another cup of coffee just typing that. I think our three biggest takeaways from those sessions are:

1. Sign up for a Google+ account to help increase search traffic.  This seemed to be a reoccurring theme through many of the sessions.
2. Develop a media kit for 2 Sisters 2 Cities (this tutorial from @cecilyk was mentioned several times over a few sessions.)
3. We need to decrease the load time on 2S2C so search engines won’t penalize our search results.

While we learned so much and had a great time attending BlogHer ’12, K and I both agreed in the future it would probably be more beneficial to us to attend a more specialized conference, such as BlogHer Food.  Most of the bloggers we met focused on parenting, fitness, celebrities, and other topics that we don’t cover.  Did you attend BlogHer ’12?  What was your experience like?