Day 2 of The Total Beauty Experience

Yesterday I shared with you an overview of the first day of the Total Beauty Beauty Tour and Blog Summit I attended.  Below is an overview of Thursday's events.  It was very informative and lot less taxing on my feet!  We spent the day at L'Oreal's Tech Center in NYC and received a full day crash course on how to improve ou PR relationships, the quality of our blog content and how to improve revenue opportunities.

Thursday's Blog Summit Day:

• Breakfast at L'Oreal
  
• Attended a workshop that addressed answers to at home hair color questions. Here is a pic of some of the ladies coloring hair:
  
  
  
  (God forbid we were to color real hair LOL)
  
  
• Took a break to get Makeup Touchups
  
  
• Attended seminar on how to increase the traffic to my blog and websites with SEO. The facilitator, Stoney deGeyer is an amazingly kind dude.  He was chock full of info and very personable.  His company is called Pole Position Marketing.  Stop by his site for some search engine and marketing help. Especially, check his blog.
  
  
• Learned from PR expert Lauren Donner, Asst. VP at Tractenberg. She explained what PR companies need to to hear from you in order to find you interesting as well as how to be politically correct at events.
  
  
• Had lunch with the TotalBeauty team and met with some of the L'Oreal execs. - Nice, down to earth, personable people! Lunch was also very nice. I had the chicken and potatoes. Had to have my carbs LOL
  
  
• Came back from lunch and L'Oreal had us design our own makeup look on a piece of paper. We
  turned it in and guess what?  They are going to send us the products!  We also got to keep the products we used.
  
  
• Learned how to improve my blog's content, images, and ad positioning.  This information was presented by Colleen Padilla, Founder of ClassyMommy.com; Jennifer Romolini, Deputy Editor of Yahoo! Shine; Rachael Been, Photo Editor at AOL Stylelist and Total Beauty's own Beth Mayall, Editor in Chief.  She is one of the friendliest, most classy ladies I've ever met.

Throughout the day, L'Oreal did it again.  They graciously gave each of us a $100 certificate to shop at the company store! I was shocked really. After what I received when I got home the night before, I didn't expect anything else.  Here's what they sent:

The cute little lipstick tube in the pic above is what they gave us upon departure.  It's actually a flash drive!

Lastly, but certainly not least, I can not forget to mention and thank Chris Alexander.  He is the Community Manager for us bloggers at TotalBeauty.com and he is phenomenal.  This guy keeps us all sane!  He helped keep the agenda moving along smoothly.   Chris eminates kindness, structure and character.   I'm sure the Total Beauty team and my fellow bloggers agree.  It was great to finally meet him.

Our summit ended with a Happy Hour Cocktail Party with L'Oreal and some networking.

Stay Tuned for EVEN More (including pics and video) on the Beauty  Tour, Summit and Fashion Night Out in New York!

Explore The Total Beauty Experience - Day 1

The last few days have been amazing! I attended Total Beauty's annual blog summit.  It's Fashion Week in NYC and Thursday was Fashion Night Out so that added to the festivities and excitement.

Normally, I don't get all caught up in the glitz and glamor, downplaying things and keeping it mostly natural.  However, how could one not get caught up in all the beauty, skin care, fragrance and style :-)

I wanted to share all of the events, photos and a special video I had done of me getting my face air brushed at Sephora.  NOW I know how the models look so darn flawless. It's fake LOL.

Before I get down to sharing (which will take place in a number of posts), I wanted to give a big hearty THANK YOU to Total Beauty for making the beauty tour and informative seminars possible.  I can not express my gratitude enough. I got to meet some amazing people in the beauty industry who I may never have crossed paths with.

During our Total Beauty tour in New York City, I had the pleasure of visiting and going behind the scenes with Victoria's Secret Beauty, Chanel, Tractenberg & Company (a large PR firm), Kiehl's, Molton Brown, Warren Tricomi (at the Plaza Hotel in NYC), and the infamous L'Oreal.

I have to give big props to Victoria's Secret and L'Oreal.  They really took care of us.  I can't even do them justice by giving them a little honorable mention so I will share with you separately about my time with them and some of the others that help shape our world of beauty.  Over the week or so, I will share in defined detail the wonderful things that I experienced on Wednesday and Thursday.  In the meantime, here's an overview:

Wednesday (traveled most of the day via tour bus):

• Met up with Total Beauty team and  received a nice tote bag (to the right) filled with some nice goodies (chocolate...yippee!, water, pretzels, a travel coffee mug, signature notebook and pen)
  
  
• Breakfast and new product previews (yet to be released!...coming for the Holidays) at Victoria's Secret headquarters. They were very generous to us bloggers and I can't wait to share this one with you in a day or so. Hint: 1,000 Wishes
  
  
• Visited Chanel Boutique in Soho and received a sneak peak of some of their latest skin care offerings. Chanel sent us on our way with a nice little signature bag that contained one of their nude nail color polish and some of the new skin care samples
  
  
• Visited Tractenberg & Co. to preview products from 22 of the brands they provide PR for. They also provided lunch. This was a very busy site as there were so many products to view.  I am not going to share them all with you because some were not nearly as impressive as others.  Over the next few days, I am going to give you my opinion on the products I sampled and were impressed with.
  
  
• Visited Kiehl's (signature skin care store around since 1851!) and received an overview of new products and some generous samples and a full size jar of their body cream (very luxurious and decadent...more on this in a future post)
  
  
• Visit to Molton Brown for a preview of some of their new products and a snack of mini cupcakes
  
  
• Visited Warren Tricomi at the Plaza Hotel for introductions to some of their product offerings.  This place is truly classy. I was introduced to a number of product lines.  3 or 4 of them left a really good impression on me and I will share that in a few days as well.  I also met up with one of the buyers and she requested that I get her some samples of my Blended Naturals line!! I can't wait to share this one for you. Imagine li'l ole me at The Plaza!
  
  
• Night ended with dinner at TAO, a hot spot in NYC. Dinner was delicious and a raffle was conducted of which two lucky ladies won a video cam and an I Touch. Here are some photos from dinner:

That's it for today. I'll give you Thursday's dish tomorrow and more over the week.  Check back daily. I plan to give it you the entire tour in bite size chunks!