This year I’ve spoken at more than a dozen conferences, and attended a few more. Speaking at conferences can be fantastic exposure for you and your business, but it’s important to discriminate on speaking invitations you accept; it’s also critical to take full advantage of the ones you do accept.
Here are a few tips:
1. Know the audience. Are you speaking to potential customers/partners/vendors? Or are you talking to people that are unlikely to need your product/service? I always ask the conference for demographics on the audience before agreeing to speak, and turn down ones that have little relevance to my business. Scanning the other speakers and sponsoring companies is also a good barometer.
2. Network. Once you know you’re speaking, check out the speakers list and reach out to speakers that are potential partners/customers. Speaking at the same conference is a great context to do business. This year, I’ve met some incredible partners and customers at speakers’ dinners and panel prep meetings.
3. Mind the farm. Make sure that while you are traveling, your team back at the office has leadership. It’s easy to get caught up at a conference – another time zone, another language, another world – but it’s your team at home that is building your business. Make sure they are supported and that you’re not leaving a leadership vacuum when you travel.
4. Share. I post videos of all of my talks on our internal Yammer and my Twitter account. It helps to give your team context on what you’re doing when you travel. It’s also a great value add for attendees and other speakers to share your presentation. I use slideshare.com – a great, free service.
5. Have something special. I rarely just attend a conference anymore; usually I’m speaking, or Mobile Roadie did the official conference app, or we’re sponsoring. Have a hook – don’t just be an attendee – to get even more value.
6. Be picky. Your time is your most valuable commodity. Even if they’re flying you business class, even if the hotel is nice, even if it’s exotic to be in a different country, it’s not worth it unless it moves your business forward.
Here are a few reasons why I find conferences so valuable:
1. People are focused. When you get people outside of their day-to-day, in a different environment, they are focused on meeting new people and doing business. It’s a different context than meeting someone in their office, and it can be a quick way to build camaraderie and relationships. I’ve met many LA CEOs at conferences outside of LA that I would not have known were it not for the conference bringing us together.
2. Conferences are filters. The more difficult a conference is to attend (either cost of a ticket, location in the world, or invite-only), the higher probability that you’re going to meet serious people. For example, MIDEM, a music conference in Cannes, France, is one of the best conferences I’ve been to. Cannes isn’t easy to get to, and as a result there are mainly C-level attendees.
3. Everyone in one place at one time. It’s hard to get industry influencers, or CEOs of potential partners, etc. in the same place at the same time. Conferences do just this, and as a result you can make a big dent in a small amount of time.
