The Snowball Starts Rolling

This was a different kind of conference. From the start, a strong symphony of tweets and a streaming video feed allowed everyone in the world to feel as though they were there. There were no firewalls – everyone was encouraged to share.

To distill and salvage the best ideas, attendees were asked to submit and vote on the best insights from the conference – in a sense, crowdsourcing reference material.

These small bits of data – tweets, quick insights, even over-heard conversation – were collected and documented. Blog posts tallied quick insights (by @damphoux) or categorized learnings (by @anetah) or took more time to provide longer, more detailed lists (by @JayBaer).

Lists gave way to more analytic posts – some taking a broad view by session (like @AlexPoulos‘ Takeaways) and others meditating over one particular element of the event (like @SonnyGill‘s Online Community post).

It’s the snowball effect and a good conference – one that provides the best information and then encourages attendees to share it – can get that snowball rolling.

Not What I Intended

When I sat down to write this post, I intended to do a recap from the sessions I attended. It would have been descriptive, useful…and utterly boring.

Instead, I’m captivated by what’s happened after the conference. Just days later, the philosophy and strategy discussed at the conference have been launched into action, using the same social media marketing tools that spurned it.

Check out the Twitter stream – it’s still going! Attendees (and non-attendees) are still sharing information, insights and ideas about smart social media/marketing strategies.

On top of this continued sharing is that we know each other personally now. I shook hands with Ann Handley, had a one-on-one blog therapy session with Paul Chaney, and drank some beers with DJ Waldow. These are now people I can ask for help or bounce ideas off of, and who hopefully feel like they can do the same with me.

What’s This Mean And How Do We Use It?

In the past, you came home from a conference, stacked your collected business cards on the counter, and may have never given it a second thought.

Now, conferences have to be more. Your attendees expect it. What they’re buying isn’t just a ticket or a rubber chicken lunch – what they’re buying is access and an experience that continues long after the conference ends.

It also means that attendees will have more resources than ever to guide them. My time at the conference was amazingly useful – I have tons of notes, believe me – but now I have even more presentations and reports at my disposal to peruse afterwards.

Here’s one concrete example: Michael Stelzner wrote the Social Media Marketing Industry Report and presented a session about marketing that paper. (Stelzner was quite successful; 40K people read the report and 500+ media outlets and blogs ran stories about it in just the first 4 weeks after publication.) I know about the report because I answered the survey and read it on the day of its publication.

But what I didn’t know was the amount of strategy used in its release. Stelzner walked us through the entire process – helping influencers to gain social capital, pre-writing emails sent by these influencers on his behalf, setting up a double opt-in email list process…even the type of URL shortener selected for its measurement capabilities. This story emphasized all of the little tactics that support an overall strategy.

Make no mistake: these collected, categorized, uploaded, and saved resources (like Stelzner’s) will inform client work I touch in the future. Instead of one or two days to absorb this information, I now have all of the time in the world. I get more out of it, Critical Mass gets more out of it, and our clients get more out of it.

Consider these points if you haven’t joined the conversation yet. It might seem like just starting a blog or just attending a conference. But it could also fundamentally change the way you do business.