Want to go to a Conference? Why do you want to go? What are you going to do when get there? What’s your game plan? To get the most out of a Convention, it’s important to have clear goals and a game plan going in.
Many people attend conferences without a clear reason for why they are going; some just go to make new contacts or get new ideas. Sponsors are usually looking for more publishers and to do more business with the publishers they have. Publishers are usually on the lookout for something that can make them more money. Regardless, you should have something in mind before hand other than show schwag (like T shirts) and hangovers before you attend.
If you’re an SEO Consultant looking for new business, the non-SEO conferences can be a goldmine of opportunity. If I still did consulting, I could have easily picked up 20 new clients at Webmaster Access. As it was, I felt like I was beating people away with a stick whenever I even mentioned what I do. Of course, I heard the usual horror stories of people who hired a snake oil slinging SEO consultant who promised top rankings only to deliver a failed adwords campaign and not a budge in organic search engine traffic. There is a serious demand out there for SEOs who know what the fuck they are doing; probably because they are so few and far between.
If you can deliver organic results and want new clients, you should polish your elevator pitch and make sure you don’t sound desperate. Clichés like “the hungry don’t get fed,” “the rich get richer”, and “I don’t want to be part of any club that would have me as a member” really do apply. If you don’t need new business, it will be a lot easier to find.
Webmaster Access was, as most conventions are, much more about talking to people over drinks than the actual seminars. In the future, I probably won’t bother attending the panels; when I’m not laughing to myself about what people are saying, I’m usually rather bored. There’s always a couple of speakers or panels that are really on their game and I believe there’s a market for someone to aggregate, organize and discuss all the best speech and panel videos on one site. But I digress. . .
We had a game plan going into the conference and achieved what we wanted with our partners. We are allowing certain sponsors in the Adult space to take part in our SEO blitz and most of the biggest brands are really excited to be on board. In some cases, they have to clear it with their deal-killing monkeys legal teams before we can get started. In most cases, we’re going to be hitting the ground running over the next couple of weeks.
My next event will probably be the January AVN show in Las Vegas. If I do attend, you can be sure that I’ll have a conference strategy going in. Will you have a game plan for your next show?
3 Responses to “Conference Strategy”
Aye. There is absolutely a shortage of available, experienced SEOs: New leads and/or recruiters are seemingly hitting them all up every other day. Attending small meet-ups over drinks in addition to or instead of conferences, and one hears people talk about how they always learn the most at such functions. And if one isn’t going mostly to speak, one should still be very methodical about which panels, sessions and days to attend or not. Even just following a given Track can often be like a shortcut to thinking. Going in without a personalized plan - also regardless of whatever one’s peers are doing there - is just playing pinning the tail on the donkey with the tail(s) being made of one’s money.
Good article Quadzilla. So far my conference strategy for Pubcon Vegas was 1 box of Monte Cristo No.4’s, 5 boxes of Alka-Seltzer and hiding the return fare home.
This has definitely made me rethink.
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[…] But. For the people that pay to attend. I doubt that it’s usually worth it. Some people hype up the out of session networking. Or how cool it is to hang out with people and talk shop. When I read SEO Black Hat’s Conference Strategy posts, I thought, good idea. […]