I have to say, yesterday was the perfect ending to the OMS Summer Tour (we do have one more in San Diego Sept 25th, but that’s my home town) in Denver. With about 240 attendees and 3 tracks, the enthusiasm was truly the stongest yet. The biggest “Ah ha” moment of the day came when talking on our keynote panel and the question was asked, “How do I target the older affluent executives with Social Media?” and the entire panel turned to our elder stateman, John Favalo, who best represented the demographic (yes, was quite humours) and he replied, “I don’t read many blogs, but if I do it’s the one’s of my customers”. This to me meant, that the older generation (64% according to Jupiter) do read blogs, it’s just a matter of finding out which one’s and that’s the hard part. Reason being that the blogosphere as really made the “Long tail” of publishing come true with millions of options vs. the good ole days of just a handful of publications to have your PR firm target. It’s a big world with niche within niche worlds of blogs. So, it will be more about a blog/buzz monitoring and responding than a single blog entity or two to market too.
Later we had the Happy Hour of all Happy Hours where we opened bar to an unlimited tab and Bashing the French, Weddings in Costa Rica, Writing the perfect presentation and numerous other entertaining topics could be over heard at our group dinner with Chaz, founder of Bronto, Gaelle (pronounced Gail), Nick, SEO Guru, Yorhchak, his mom, Marilee, of course Candyce, Thanh, Jeff Pedowitz and a cast of 30 others that made for a very eventful meal…. and finally, I sit here this rainy morning in Denver, relieved that the travels are over yet somewhat sad, that all the fun is behind us and we must wait another year for the road show to continue. Hope to see many of you at OMS Annual in San Diego on Feb 18- 20th.
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- Denver OMS: Catfish’s 40th, IBM Case Study and ClickZ Mobile Denver started out like most other OMS stops… good energy...
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[...] Original post by unknown [...]
Someday you really will learn how to spell YORCHAK!!!
OMS Denver, Who Would Have Ever Thought
With topics like SEO, PPC, analytics, persona development, linking strategies, blogging, blogging, blah, blah, and social media intertwined throughout, who would ever have thought this day long summit could possibly be entertaining? We at Clixo were two of the guest speakers and not even I was really “excited” about the day-LONG education. But to my surprise, Aaron Kahlow, the created of the Online Marketing Summit, had a way of setting the stage and/or tone to create an entertaining learning experience. He has an uncanny ability to make learning about Search Engine Marketing fun.
Aaron should have an additional title: Edutainer. I have attended, produced, and/or participated in hundreds of conferences, trade shows, summits, and workshops, that there is very little that can be done to surprise me, until now. I had never been instructed to boo the honorable guest speakers. When the room of over 200 individuals was told to boo the instructors, I laughed, and panicked at the same time.
Our guest speakers from Clixo were not in the room at the time to hear the context of why they might be booed. I knew how serious our speakers took the job of providing the most productive workshop possible and how hard they had worked identifying what this particular audience needed to learn. Hearing the audience boo our matter experts and founders of the company struck me as being a priceless moment. I debated over telling the speakers about the booing instructions, but decided I couldn’t bring myself to let it happen.
I had to inform Clixo’s instructors that when the Online Marketing Summit said it served for educational purposes only, it wasn’t just marketing verbiage. The guests were instructed to boo if any speaker or panelist spoke too much about their own company, which could come across as selling or pitching. Aaron and the Online Marketing Summit stayed true to their word regarding being an educational only event.
Not only getting to boo the guest speakers created a light-hearted fun experience, but at the ending panel discussion if a participants asked question, cocktails were whisked into their hands. There we were 200 guests in front of the elite panel asking about the newest analytics tools while a scotch on ice, a Manhattan, a martini, and a Bud Light were being rushed into the room for the previous questions asked. Now, that was an educational method I can honestly say I had not experienced before. If someone would have used this method to create educational participation long ago, I might have had a 4.5 in college and continued to earn a P.H.D.
Who would have thought talking about search engine optimization, email campaigns, ROI, Twittering, PPC, and so on, could be extremely fun? Needless to say, if Aaron Kahlow and his team ever want Clixo to participate in the Online Marketing Summit again, I am sure we will drop everything to be a part of the traveling entertaining learning experience.