I’m about to head home after having attended SES San Jose for the third time in my Internet marketing career. My thoughts on the conference are mixed: I thought the SEO-focused sessions that I attended were solid (Search: Where to Next?, Search on a Dime, the Advanced SEO Roundtable with the always entertaining Todd Friesen), especially for beginners, and that, per usual, the lunches were atrocious (pasta salad, soggy sandwiches, shiny hot dogs and cafeteria-style pizza squares three days in a row).
However, I’d say that, overall, the social media tracks were a disappointment. I heard from a lot of people that Turning the Social Web into Real ROI was a disaster, and that the panelists ended up talking about the Facebook ad network the entire time instead of focusing on ROI as a whole. As I blogged earlier this week, I thought Igniting Viral Campaigns was a mixed bag, but what was really perplexing was the fact that the programmers put two social media sessions opposite each other, scheduling Igniting Viral Campaigns and Social Media for the Little Guy at the same time. When there’s a limited number of social media tracks, you don’t want to pit two against each other and risk splitting your audience who has a social media interest. It just seemed like poor programming to me.
Managing Conversations and Reputations felt extremely general and basic, with more of an emphasis on “what is social media marketing” than actual takeaways and advice. I already shared my opinion of the Black Hat vs. White Hat session, and I heard from attendees that the Twitter and Blogging site clinic was extremely repetitive, with the panelists focusing way more on Twitter than on blogging and giving the same advice for each Twitter account (maybe this should have been a session instead of a clinic to avoid repetition?).
I love that search conferences are incorporating more social media tracks into their programming, but I think that the sessions need a bit more organization. SES’s social media tracks don’t feel as if they had any organization or quality control–I get the impression that there was little to no communication between the panelists prior to the conference to go over what everyone was going to talk about in order to avoid overlap and ensure that the flow of the session runs smoothly.
I checked out SMX East’s agenda and felt that the social media tracks are almost an afterthought, with all of them falling on the last day of the conference. Both SMX and SES lacked the always-popular link bait session and clinic, which I always felt was one of the more entertaining and valuable social media sessions. So what’s going on here? With SMX quickly putting the kibosh on their small Social Media conference and both series phoning in their social media tracks, why does there seem to be weaker emphasis despite the fact that social media continues to get bigger and bigger?
Here’s what I think needs to happen in order to improve the quality of social media tracks at conferences:
- Have a better vetting process for speakers. Everyone thinks they’re a social media expert nowadays, but that’s certainly not the case. A well-known name in the search industry isn’t necessarily a social media “guru,” so there really needs to be better quality control to ensure that speakers aren’t just going to offer up some generic, basic slide deck and waste the audience’s time with boring, repetitive information.
- Organize the speakers and communicate with them before the show. I noticed a lot of repetition in people’s presentations. If someone is going to focus on giving a general overview of the session’s topic, he should go first and the other speakers should focus on other angles, like actionable advice or case studies or examining the ROI. The moderator and the panelists all need to communicate with each other and make sure that they know what everyone’s talking about and how the session is going to be paced. This is common sense, people — 4th graders doing group presentations know to do this.
- Focus on the topics. If the session is about Twitter and blogging, talk about Twitter AND blogging. If you’re talking about social media ROI, talk about the ROI, not Facebook. Keep the session on-point and structured — you need to deliver according to the audience’s expectations.
- Tie the presentations and topics back to search. I think panelists, moderators and organizers forget this part the most. We’re at a search conference, yet I almost never hear how social media ties into search (with the exception of reputation management panels). Remember to keep that search aspect in mind and talk about how social media marketing impacts your company on a search level — does it help more of your pages get indexed? Attract links? Help you dominate the SERPs with more real estate in the Top 10? Etc.
What do you guys think about the quality of social media sessions at conferences lately? How can organizers improve these tracks? Do you think SMX should bring back the social media-focused conference, or do you now expect every large conference to have a social media track or at least a few sessions devoted to it?
I think your last bullet is the most important one – tie it into search. That should be one of the reasons why you'd launch a campaign in the first place, to have an impact in rankings.
One thing to focus on in the future should be showing people specifics of a successful social media campaign – I know you might not be able to show an actual client's site in a presentation, but it would be beneficial for an audience to at least see a scenario that outlines exactly how various social media techniques worked in a client's favor, through all the steps – social, then search, then conversion/roi.
Yeah, showcasing a specific client case study may be tough due to NDAs, but I do love tangible examples.
"I get the impression that there was little to no communication between the panelists prior to the conference to go over what everyone was going to talk about in order to avoid overlap and ensure that the flow of the session runs smoothly"
RKelley you are AWESOME! Social Media panelist communicate? pffft…To busy twittering to look over their shoulder and ask "Hey, whats your presentation on?"
Haha, you know all too well how we operate.
We have 11 direct social media sessions at PubCon and 5 Social, Brand, and Reputation Management panels. There are also 3 other review sessions that will reference social media. That almost 25% of the conference dedicated to social media. The panelists are hard core well seasoned social media folks like Giovanni Gallucci and Joanna Lord.
I swear I did not write that article for Rebecca and the fact she and her boss here are on social media panels at PubCon is a coincidence.
Niche conferences are fine for niches, but most of us live in the entire web and business ecosystem. We wear the social media hat one minute, the email marketer the next, and the system admin when the site goes down. You don't live your life in a bubble – so we wont treat you that way. Just because you run AdSense, doesn't mean you don't join LinkShare or run Yahoo banners.
We actually looked very hard at spinning off a "social media" conference and we felt the content was too tied into traditional "webmaster space". It is the same reason we didn't break off a domain conference or a webhosting conference. Search, Advertising, Organic, and even PPC topics – they all blend in to our "space". Treating them as a "subconference" seemed to be the right thing to do.
Thanks butt kick Rebecca. I will be off redoubling efforts to make PubCon Vegas the best Social Media conference of the year.
Brett Tabke
PubCon
I appreciate your insight into how you program your events. You're right–larger conferences need to encompass more than just one aspect of Internet marketing. I'm probably just being biased because I focus a lot on social media. I'm not looking for a huge chunk of sessions to be social media focused–just looking for quality over quantity.
I agree there is a need for more alternative marketing tracks – but since the monetization of social is such a mixed bag people are hesitant to jump in – companies need to be aware of the legalities etc etc
With Mike Grehan taking over the reigns I know you will see a revamped agenda at the SES conferences – but in all fairness we should give him a little time – NYC should be a whole new look and feel to SES.
BTW – while all speakers do not talk with each other – most moderators reach out and the speakers of each session have discussions about each others content.
I'll share a few thoughts….
First, when it comes to SMX, you have to remember that it's primarily a search marketing conference, not a social media conference. That's long been a hallmark of the shows I've overseen, keeping them focused on search. You love social, and that's great — I love it too. And social has an important role in search, but if you make it the dominant focus, you miss out on plenty of stuff about search that should get discussed. And then you run the risk of people saying "whoa, why's there not more search stuff?"
Because social is so important and has so much interest, we did do a standalone event twice. Would have loved to have kept that going in 2009, but frankly with the economy, people simply aren't getting out and traveling as much. As things improve, perhaps we'll see it come back in 2010.
SMX East's social sessions are definitely not an afterthought. Being on the last day isn't a sign that they are somehow not as good or as important than other sessions. It's just a complicated balancing act of figuring out what sessions are likely to cause the same people a conflict on what to attend (I want to go to this; I want to go to that). Just like you said — you don't run two social media panels against each other. Well, sometimes you don't want to run social media against certain SEO sessions, either (say a link building panel, right?) This time, when the final agenda came together, it made sense to run the social track on the last day.
On linkbait, honestly, I haven't run that session recently simply because you know, as some point you want to talk about something different. Link bait, link bait, link bait. I think a lot of people have got that by now, and if they don't, they can read about it online.
As for phoning it in, I'm not sure where that's coming from in terms of SMX. You didn't get into any specifics about SMX's social sessions at both SMX West and SMX Advanced this year. I heard pretty good reviews of them. I'm expecting SMX East's sessions will do great, as well.
Of course, one reason for that is that we already do vet all of our speakers, as you and others at 10e20 know, since you've all been speakers at some point. And we prep those speakers beforehand, to ensure that they don't overlaps and that the session has great flow and content. We do keep things focused and tied back to search. So suggestions 1 through 4? We already do that.
Nope — we haven't done a link bait session for a bit. The reason is simple — just how many times do you do the same old thing? Having done this plenty before, I felt like this year the topic was tapped out. Either folks know it already or can learn it pretty easily reading stuff online. I'm sure it will come back, but to do it again means you can't do something fresh.
Which leads me back to SMX East. Fresh — a full focused session just on Facebook marketing, rather than shoving it into a 15 minute corner among other "social media" stuff. Same thing for Twitter, a nice full session drill down. And a new session — social media as a reputation management tool, followed by another fresh new session, social media analytics. After all — if you've got the basics of drawling traffic social media down, isn't it worth a panel on analyzing that traffic and determining what works and where to focus your efforts?
Hey Danny, sorry for the belated response. I read your comment and I think you're right. Sorry for the sour grapes — I guess I was a bit frustrated from a few of the disappointing social media sessions I saw at SES. I can imagine that programming a show can be very difficult, and I will say that your social tracks in the past have generally been of high quality. I was just worried upon seeing the East agenda that people might be burned out on the last day and won't come see my social media colleagues work their magic during their sessions. I'm looking forward to seeing how East plays out on both the social side and the Internet marketing side (if I'm able to attend, that is!).
And oops, sorry I repeated my points on the link bait twice — meant to consolidate those into a single paragraph!
Hey Danny, awesome to see you among the masses
My .02 is that un-heralded case studies of great linkbait, with ROI or Rankings ROI, would continue to make a regular panel at every conference. For those of us that aren't in the Social world 24×7, they can be a great way to keep in touch with what's working and spur ideas for fresh linkbaity stuff.
Rebecca, I think that the lack of coordination by moderators is not a social-specific problem…although I had two fantastic moderators for my presos (Jen Laycock and Greg Sterling), their level of involvement–and sometimes even knowledge of the topic–can sometimes be lacking.
It did seem like the "old guard" SMM experts like Chris, Brent Csutoras, Neil Patel, etc. or "newer" ones who are amazing on-stage like Tony Adam or Carri Bugbee were noticeably absent from this year's SES lineup. This probably hurt the overall calibre of presentations…
"It did seem like the "old guard" SMM experts like Chris, Brent Csutoras, Neil Patel, etc. or "newer" ones who are amazing on-stage like Tony Adam or Carri Bugbee were noticeably absent from this year's SES lineup. This probably hurt the overall calibre of presentations…"
You would have to ask SES that, as all we can do is put in to speak… they have to accept
Wow – excellent article! Every speaker should be fully prepared. Sometimes it is just a chit-chat. This is business – we are spending our money and time – and we need to walk away with concrete "To Do" steps that will improve our own endeavors.
I thought Rebecca was making a subtle hint that SES was missing Danny Sullivan's stewardship
IMHO SMX Advanced has the most meat as far as takeaways of all the major Internet Marketing conferences – Danny is acutely tuned to the pulse of the market which was amplified when he was tapped by NPR to voice his thoughts on the Yahoo Microsoft deal – in particular the 2008 SMX Advanced with its revealing quasi black hat GIVE IT UP sessions albeit to Danny's chagrin.
PubCon in Vegas is like the Woodstock of Internet Marketing conferences where its truly about the networking & meeting of the minds (generally over drinks) in a party atmosphere – Brett does an amazing job organizing it on a massive scale & it seems everyone involved has been counting the days to its start.
,Michael Martin
Rebecca,
I felt that the session I did on Reputation Management was well done, with the speakers not tripping over each other topic-wise. That was thanks to our moderator (Sage Lewis) having a call with us all several weeks prior to the conference, to allow us to chat and discuss what we'd each like to cover. Each of the session moderators are supposed to do this, some do and unfortunately, some don't. This is where the conference feedback comes in, and you'd better believe that Marilyn et al read any and all feedback to know how to improve the conference for the next time around.
Another big problem with this is that social is such a broad field.
On one hand, people are using Twitter, blogging, and networking sites like Facebook, as a way out connecting with their already existing clients or having a more personal relationship to create brand evangelists. Where on the other hand, a lot of social media conversations are about using social media communities like Digg and StumbleUpon to get a lot of visibility for link building, branding, and traffic.
The two are like night and day when it comes to ROI and strategy, yet are often clumped onto the same panel as the generic – social media marketing.
At IM Spring Break, they were able to focus on specific aspects of social in the panels, and it made for really effective sessions. Panels on how to sell social internally, how to track social media campaigns, and how to create content for social media all have been very effective in explaining a process that anyone can implement.
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Social Media is defenitely an afterthought in my opinion at conferences, as we are always stuck in the far off rooms and at weird times. Even at the Affiliate Summit conference they stuck our panel in one of the smaller rooms, which ended up having no room to even stand 10 minutes before the session even began.
In Danny and SMX's defense, they did try making Social Media Conferences and do try to get some of the more active social media marketers to speak for them. They also have added social media to their Advanced conference as well.
The room for your session at Affiliate Summit was certainly not intended as any commentary on social media – we had to work with the space we had from the Hilton. And it was a prime time – first session of the afternoon on Monday.
Also, both of our keynotes (Chris Brogan and Peter Shankman) were pretty heavy on social media in their talks.
Sorry if that came off sounding negative, as the session we had was really good. Was just making the point that social media focused sessions are normally thought to have a small following and get less attention. Key notes always get the big room, so that doesn't count
I just meant that we picked those guys for keynotes because we knew we'd be getting social media from them.
"Social Media is defenitely an afterthought in my opinion at conferences…"
I definitely think that a lot of conferences fall into that trap. It's still a fairly new topic, so a lot of conferences focus on the big, obvious aspects of SMM, like, as you pointed out, Twitter and Facebook and whatnot.
I am glad you addressed this issue Rebecca. I feel it needs attention.
As times goes on it will get more coverage, the medium is in its infancy and folks are having a tough time deciding how to integrate it.
Although this is the case there is no excuse for not holding some of the panels like Brent laid out above, "how to sell social internally, how to track social media campaigns, social media ROI, and how to create content for social media"
These are really good subject matters that I don't see getting the proper play time like they should.
Pubcon is one of the few who have taken the effort and time IMO so far to integrate it appropriately. SMX had SMX social but has since kicked it to the curb (would love to see it brought back) , and the integration it has gotten into SMX advanced, SMX east thus far is definitely lack luster.
Thanks for the feedback… as you know, throwing an event like SES San Jose with 5k+ people, 70+ sessions and 200+ speakers is not easy.
That said, I would like to thank the speakers who did find the courage to get up on stage and present on the topic of Social Media Marketing and Advertising:
Clay Shirky, Author of Here Comes Everybody; Charlene Li, Co-Author of Groundswell; Stoney deGeyter, Pole Position Marketing; Ron Jones, Symetri Internet Marketing; Billie Jo Waara, Lawrence & Schiller; Jennifer Evans Laycock, SiteLogic; Aaron Kahlow, Online Marketing Summit; Brian Ellefritz, Cisco; Matthew Liu, YouTube; Greg Finn, 10e20; Barbara Coll, WebMama.com; Bill Leake, Apogee Search; Anna Maria Virzi, ClickZ; Liana Evans, Serengeti Comm; Brian Kalma, Zappos; Mike Volpe, HubSpot; Beth Harte, MarketingProfs; Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing; Dave Snyder, Search & Social; Chris Bennett, 97th Floor; Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR; Matt Bailey, SiteLogic
I would also like to thank those who spoke at our first ever ClickZ Social Media and Video Strategies forum, held in conjunction with SES SJ on the Tuesday:
Nate Elliott, Forrester Research; Soumya Ravi, Position2; Stacy Gratz, H&R Block; Beth Murphy, Digg; Pauline Ores, IBM; Martin Green, Meebo; Richard Jalichandra, Technorati; Steve Grove, YouTube; Ricardo Guerrero, Dell; Erin Bouchier, Google; Dan Greene, Google; Chris Sams, ZAGG; Lisa Abourezk, ooVoo; Shattuck Groome, Gotham Direct; Michael Fischer, Coldwell Banker.
Hi Rebecca,
I read your post, it was interesting. Since you have talked about social media conferences, I would like to recommend you a conference called Searchnomics at Santa Clara.
The conference is for search marketing & optimization, online advertising, digital marketing and social media strategies catering to Fortune 500 companies.
It will also address the core themes of search marketing, search optimization and social media marketing via 20 sessions, panels, keynotes, networking forums, and receptions.
Here is the link for the conference – http://www.webguild.org/events/searchnomics_home_…
Angela