On Tuesday instead of working I went to SES Hamburg (a leading search engine conference, sidenote for the uninitiated) for some fun. I showed off my great Panama hat (Yes, I tricked you, I don’t actually wear sombreros!) and enjoyed telling 150+ people about social media.
Now as a man of business I always measure the ROI of everything, like in “the ROI playing 30 minutes with my daughter: 5 smiles and 2 hugs” ;-) so I decided to reflect upon the ROI or rather the top 10 benefits of wasting my precious time as a Search Engine Strategies speaker (Please keep in mind that I was only there for a few hours, so the outcome might seem more poor than it really is):
- Being told by a renown blogger and marketer that he is a “huge fan of my blog”
- Meeting people from the largest national publishing houses who “want to do something with blogging and/or social media” and want me to ***
- Getting lots of business cards by business people who want to do “some social media business” with me, at least 5 wanted to work with me on such projects, damn, I need to find time to write them all.
- Getting a job offer for full time employment for a “big corporate client”, I still have to decline it (if I’d reply to every message instantly I would never have the time to blog) I actually prefer self-employment and independence
- Eavesdropping on the competition by flattering them
- Meeting my clients who normally pay me without ever bothering me besides that
- Actually feeling like an expert. You don’t unless 150+ people really listen to you without throwing things at you.
- Getting a day off: Come on, the SES was vacation for me, it wasn’t work at all, I felt like a newborn (as we say in Germany)
- Getting an authority link from SES, hey we’re doing SEO here after all ;-)
- Getting free food (I’m not a gourmet at all, despite the “Chef” in my name, but the food was not what I expected, sorry)
So all in all, you clearly see that search engine conferences are, similar to social media and blogging, a complete waste of time. I want my money back!
This thing has 7 Comments
Oh Nice one.. :-),
You just gone for fun there, what about the confrence and views and opinion of others.
well, most of us HAVE to use conferences like that for networking, exchanging views and speaking to potential clients…
And our industry is a friendly one, with nice, open, funny people (I really had fun there, honestly!)
Lucky you, if you can just sit at home and do you own thing :-)
We´ll make sure not to bother you again..
Hey Jamess, it was great to talk to other like minded people but with my tight schedule I came, spoke and returned. Being a freelancer just taking off 2 days means nobody else will do my work during that time so I could only spare one day or rtaher a few hours.
david: Well thank you for bothering me in the first place :-) It was a great experience. From the business perspective you should have some goals I think going to a search conference. Aquiring new clients? Getting known in the industry? Getting more know-how? I got a little bit of everything. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to capitalize on it as I have too many clients already to deal with 5 new ones etc.
Hey Tad, great stuff…I didn’t realise you were speaking at the conference.
I would love to do something similar one day when time and interest permits, hope it went well for you.
Hey Glen, I wasn’t sure if I go at all till the end due to some obligations. Also you need to spend some time in order to use the new contacts for mutual benefit. I’d like to write to all the people who chatted me up because of their projects but was unable not only due to a large backlog of other “offers to write”.
Btw.: The only reason I can imagine why you haven’t been invited yet is that you’re beyond reach in South Africa,.
Conferences are always fun. I’m actually going to one this wednesday, but as a participant, not as a speaker. I have a bit of a problem with speaking to strangers in public, but I’ll hope to pass it. You know, most people consider public speaking worser then death itself!
Yeah, attending a SEO and SEM conference has it’s own certain advantages.
There are good opportunities to know really what’s going on right in the industry,
and one can define their strategy too.
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