It’s a weird thing, being at something like a social media conference, if you’ve never gone. You get a mix of two types of attendees: The needs who do this stuff for a living, and the non-needs who are their bosses. It’s a brilliant culture clash watching everyone trying to network in an environment like that. no one is sure in that situation who thecool kids are.
I’m insane Diego at the moment for Social Media Marketing World. While I’m looking forward to a number of panelists in the coming days, I do find it funny how often time has been set aside for “networking” in the schedule. In fact, there will be one panelist specifically telling the crowd how to network.
So a lot of this really is about meeting people, and not necessarily getting secret sauce on increasing engagement.
But so what? I’m not here to comment on the inner workings of your average social media trade show, I’m here to figure out what my team should be working on this year.
For tomorrow, I’m planning on hitting the following:
1) How to create customers for life by informing more and promoting less – Jay Baer
2) How to use YouTube to build an unstoppable brand – James Wedmore
(Though at the same time, “How to optimize your social channels for lead generation” will be going on as well. Hmm.)
3) Turn social advertising into leads and sales
(Something I’d think everyone would want to know.)
4) Social Media ROI: How to finally deliver measurable results.
(This one causes me concern, because I’m already pretty good at doing this. I want to hear things I’ve never thought of. I don’t want to realize I should be trying to get speaking gigs at conferences because it turns out I’m so much more The Man than I thought I was.)
After all of that,there’s a “networking cruise.” But I think I’ll take a pass.
Ciaoenrico 