Posts Tagged ‘conferences’

Posted on July 13, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

11 challenges for social media / technology conference speakers

So…. you want to be a social media conference speaker? Last year when @OurHashtag planned the social media business forum we started receiving tons of submissions via our speaker request form from people all over the USA wanting to speak at our conference. Also as someone who’s been lucky enough to speak at various national and local conferences I often get asked about finding speakers for other conferences. Over the past two years, I’ve seen/experienced both the good and bad sides of speakers at conferences. I’ve seen people get upset and bash others just because they where not chosen or asked to speak.

The question I have for some is why do you want to speak at social media or tech conferences? To show everyone how smart you are? To help build your speaking resume? To get paid for sharing your knowledge? Regardless of what reason you may want to speak at a social media or technology conference, it’s not as easy as some may think. Here’s a list of 12 challenges for social media / technology conference speakers

1. New unique content
The last thing someone wants to hear after paying to hear you speak is a bunch of case studies that you have read from your favorite social media guide that the rest of the world is reading. When speaking at conference be prepared to come with new unique content or at least be entertaining enough so attendees can say they enjoyed your presentation.

2. Peer pressure / expectations
Don’t let the conference organizers over hype you or your presentation. When your times to give your talk the expectations may be to high and the audience is expecting you to wow them with social media case studies and shiny tools that most have heard before.

3. Adding value
This should be goal for every speaker or panelist who would like to speak at a social media conference or any event. Ask yourself how are you adding value to the conference.

4. Real-time critics and feedback
When speaking at social media conferences 9 out 10 times you can guarantee there’s a hashtag or twitter steam flowing somewhere in the background. If you’re sucking or crashing, expect a few angry/mean tweets to show-up in real-time. If you have the opportunity to see the stream during your talk, my advice is get through your presentation as fast as you can, jump to Q&A and write a blog post about what happen afterwards. Also you can try to either send a direct message or public reply to your critics. Most are fine with just a one way bashing but if you approach them some will go as far as deleting tweets or just apologizing.

5. Being always on
It doesn’t matter if you’re sick or had a recent death in the family. iIf you’re speaker at conferences and built a brand for yourself people will approach you and expect you to be same bubble of social media joy you are online. For example, I’m still upset about how I treated a Sony exec who approached me at SXSW 2010 while I was tired as heck. Not from drinking because I don’t drink but just tired. I was headed to the bloggers lounge and she walked over to me and said hello. I wasn’t mean or anything but was a little down. I don’t think she was too happy with my reactions and since then I have yet to hear from here even after reaching out a few times. If you’re reading this… I’m sorry.

6. Your quotes last forever
Be careful what you tweet is a motto of mine but when speaking at conferences be careful what you say. Audience attendees are trigger happy with their laptops and smart-phones ready to tweet a quote from your session. If you say the wrong thing it could be game over and stored in Google and quoted in recap blog post for life.

7. Getting paid for your knowledge
With so many people talking about social media today you’ll think everyone is an expert. The truth is there are no real experts, some just have more experience than others. Regardless you’ll find tons of people who are willing to speak for free at social media conference therefore set your price but be willing to negotiate.

8. Budgeting
You’re now getting paid to speak at a social media conference, your travel and hotel stay is covered. But don’t forget about food, taxi, parties and other miscellaneous charges. Especially if you travel to Las Vegas where everything cost almost as twice as much than any other location.

9. Preparation for the target audience
Make sure you ask the right questions to the conference organizer such as, who is the target audience for the event / session. Most will tell you marketers and agencies but that’s like saying everyone who’s trying to make money using twitter and facebook. If you have the opportunity, reach out to the local community for more information about the attendees if your speaking at an conference in a new city or ask the organizers for a list of companies represented from the registration list so you can be prepare your presentation for the right audience.

10. Winging it
Winging it is a term used by speakers when they wait to the last minute to prep for a talk or they’re speaking off the top of their heads. It’s something I think a few are proud to say afterwards, especially if they did nailed their talk. I’ve seen both professional speakers and newbies attempt to “wing it” but it’s not recommended. You audience deserves better if they come to hear you speak.

11. Dress code
You can almost guarantee that if you’re speaking at a social media conference someone is going to take your picture. With that being said the last thing you want is a ton of flickr photos tagged of you at various events with the same outfit on. Pull out the credit card and start shopping for your social media conference wardrobe.

So, do you still want to be a social media conference speaker?

If you’re currently a speaker what are some of the challenges that you have faced over the years?

Posted on January 4, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Social Fresh Nashville, a social media conference for marketers is next week.

Flickr photo by Jason Keath

Social Fresh Nashville is just one week away on January 11, 2010 and I’m excited to be one of  speakers for the first Social Fresh social media conference of 2010.

“ Social Fresh is a one day social media conference targeting professional marketers and focusing on case study heavy content. Jason Keath founded the Social Fresh series of conferences in early 2009. Keath saw a need in the secondary markets for conferences targeting an audience who works in marketing, advertising, PR, SEO or web development for Fortune 1000 companies or government. Social Fresh uses case studies of big ideas, success stories, and ROI of social media from a corporate and branding perspective. ”  via Techdrawl

Some of the other speakers include:

• Amber Naslund of Radian6
• Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines
• Kipp Bodnar of Howard Merrell & Partners
• Bert Dumars of Rubbermaid
• Lisa Hoffman of Duke Energy
• Jason Falls of SocialMediaExplorer.com
• Zena Weist of Embarq
• Jeff Cohen of SocialMediaB2B.com
• Nick Ayres of Home Depot
• Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine.com
• Matt Browne of Lending Tree
• Dan Zarrella of Hubspot
• Geno Church of Brains on Fire
• Tessa Horehled of THINK Interactive
• Brian Simpson of Roger Smith Hotel
• Greg Cangialosi & DJ Waldow of Blue Sky Factory
• and more!

I will be participating  on the Twitter and Facebook Success panel along with

Shashi Bellamkonda @shashib Social Media Swami  Network Solutions

Gavin Baker @gavinbaker Social Media Manager  Ruby Tuesday

Arie Ball @arie_ball VP Talent Acquisition Sodexo

Nick Ayres
@nickjayres
New Media +
Content Manager
The Home Depot

If you have any questions or topics you would like for us to discuss during the session, feel free to leave them on the Social Fresh Ning site for the panel here: http://socialfresh.ning.com/forum/topics/questions-real-twitter-and.

You can register for Social Fresh Nashville at http://socialfresh.com/nashville.  Hurry because the first social fresh  conference in Charlotte, NC  sold out.

Posted on November 10, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Where did October go? Traveling, speaking, panels & conferences, oh my! Speaking in 2010?

If you walk in local malls in the Raleigh, NC you’ll already see Christmas decorations and I’m like where did October go and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. But seriously where October go? Here’s a list of events I participated in the month of October and beginning of November. It’s like a flash to me.

Photo credit:RealTimJones
October 1- 4 – IzeaFest, social media and marketing conference,  as a panel moderator
October 7 – Triangle Social Media Club as co-organizer

Photo credit should read: (cc) Cameron Gawley - www.buzzshift.com
October 14- 20 – BlogWorld, Panels: Social Media, the bad and the ugly and use blogs to reach a multicultural audience panels ( I stayed in Vegas way to long)

Photo Credit: Digital Papercuts
October 22 – NC State Fair Deep Fried Triangle State Fair Tweetup - attendee & consultant

Photo Credit: eldebe™’s images

October 23 – The Social Media Business Forum

Photo credit:  lance

November 4 – Internet Summit – Online Video Panel

Photo credit: david.patterson
November 5 – Raleigh Real Estate BarCamp - Personal Branding and Social Media Tools Panel

To say the last thirty days have been busy is an understatement between traveling, speaking and all the same time managing projects, it’s good to have awesome friends and partners such as Jeff Cohen, Kipp Bodnar and Ryan Boyles. Thanks guys.

As we begin to wrap up 2009 and plan for 2010, I’m already schedule to speak at Social Fresh in Nashville, TN on January 11. I’m excited about 2010 and I know it’s going to be a great year but as I Gary Vaynerchuk says if you want to be successful you have to work your butt off!

Need a conference speaker for 2010? Email me info at socialwayne dot com

This #shamelessplug blog post is sponsored by FriendWayne.com

Posted on November 2, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

The ROI for attending Social Media Conferences. Defining your goals.

This is part 2 of my post “Why we planned a Social Media Conference in NC?” post. As I stated in the previous post it seems that everyone is planning some sort of social media conference, meetup, forum, workshop, bootcamp or webinar. Just like any marketing or social media campaign before you start you must do at least two things, one define your goal of attending and two, do your research before you attend. As the space has become crowded, for any person or business owner you need to make sure your employees take part in valuable conversations where they can learn to increase their knowledge to make they are a valuable asset to your company. As these events become more popular you really need to make sure you look at agenda from the conference organizers, the type of sponsors they are attracting and the speakers. Don’t just look at any conference with big names or what some people call the “rock stars” of social media and assume the conference is going to be awesome.

A lot of the time people set unrealistic goals when attending conferences, they go with an expectation of being wowed by speakers and they will hear some grounding breaking secret that is going to tell them how to send a tweet and make a million dollars like Dell and that’s just not the case. But sometimes the over hype of attending a social media conference is to be blamed on conference organizers as they try to make the event sound awesome. Either way you should do your research and set realistic goals before you attend any conference.

Speaking of goals and getting to the ROI for attending a social media conference topic, as I mentioned defining your goals before you attend is key. While attending conferences most of the time your number one goal is simply to learn. I would say your second goal is to network for possible business leads or deals that could be profitable for you. For some, the goal for attending conferences is just a way to get out of the office and have a good time. That’s another story. One goal that I try to obtain while attending social media conferences is to create content while I’m there or afterwards via blogging therefore it becomes a resource not only for me but for my blog readers. Read a few post from David B. Thomas of SAS as an example

Now that you have your goals defined, then you measure the outcome by the following:

• Did you learn anything new?
• Did you build new relationships with possible partners?
• Did you create any new content before or after?
• Are you able to teach others about what you learned?
• Did you connect with someone new who you might be able to refer to someone else?
• Did you do more listening or talking?
• How many business cards did you pass out and obtain?
• If you’re planning a conference did you connect with a potential sponsor?
• Did you find answers to your  questions you had before you left?

These are a few ways I look at the ROI of attending not just social media conferences but any meetup or event.

Do you have any success stories from attending a social media conference? If so, please share in the comments.

Posted on December 8, 2008 - by Wayne Sutton

Talk Social News Episode 16: Peter Shankman @SkyDiver on Help A Reporter Out & Hustle

This week on Talk Social News we’re bringing you a special interview only podcast with Peter Shankman aka @Skydiver on twitter. If you don’t know who Peter Shankman is then just check out his blog at http://shankman.com . A hint, he’s a CEO, entrepreneur, adventurist and one of the funniest guys I know. Peter also started the email newsletter called Help A Reporter Out. For those of you who know Peter then, download and listen to the podcast and for those of you who don’t, listen to the podcast and then check out Peter’s blog.

I must say that Peter’s interview was one of the best and funniest we have done yet, take a listen and let us know what you think in the comments.

For our what the blog, the fail of the week and news of the week segments of the podcast be sure to check out the 1st ever Talk Social News live show in the post below. We also interviewed boxee.tv CEO, Avner Ronen during the live show.

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The interview: Talk Social News Episode 16 – length 39:18 download or click to play:[audio:TalkSocialNews0016-PeterShankman.mp3] Subscribe to podcast in iTunes:

Also we’re still looking for sponsors, if you’re interested see the Become A Sponsor page.