Searching Beyond the Paid

Friday, March 02, 2012

PPC Networking - The Fun Begins

Welcome to March! The long, cold winter is nearly over, and we anxiously await the longer days and melted snow…. Oh, wait – we’ve barely had any snow, at least here in Michigan. But who doesn’t get excited about the coming of spring?

I get excited about spring because it means search conference season! Actually, every season is search conference season nowadays, unlike 5-10 years ago when there was really just SES. But in the spring, it’s easier to travel, and it just “feels” more like conference season to me.

As I write this, SMX West is wrapping up. I didn’t attend that show – the west coast is a long trip for me, especially in February when the weather can be iffy (although, as mentioned earlier, it ended up not being so iffy). But a lot of people clearly did, as evidenced by the Twitter fail whale caused by the volume of tweets from the conference. By all accounts, SMX West was full of good content for PPC pros.

On the heels of SMX West, SEMs will head to the East Coast for SES New York, happening March 19-23. Although I won’t be attending this year’s SESNY, the conference has a special place in my heart – it was the first SES I ever attended, way back in 2003 when it was still held in Boston. In a way, that’s where it all began for me. SES is always a good show, and this one promises to be no different.

And then in April, the good folks over at PPC Hero and Hanapin Marketing are holding the inaugural Heroconf on April 16 & 17. I’m super excited about this conference, because it’s the first-ever conference focused solely on PPC. The PPC Hero team has assembled a superstar lineup of PPC speakers, including some of my “idols” like Andrew Goodman and Matt Van Wagner.

I am honored to have been invited to speak at this conference – I’ll be speaking twice on Monday: Account Structure at 10:30 am, and Managing Large Budgets at 2:30 pm. I’ll also be on the Q&A panel at 6:15 pm. Whew! It promises to be a great couple days of PPC networking and knowledge. If you’re a PPC pro and haven’t registered for HeroConf yet, what are you waiting for? Do it now!

Following HeroConf, the summer SEM conference season kicks off with SMX Advanced in Seattle in June. This is one of my favorite conferences – it’s smaller than the big SES and SMX shows, and the content is all advanced – no beginner topics allowed! Seattle is a great city, and the conference is super fun.

I know it can be tough to break away from the daily PPC grind to attend a conference, and they’re not always cheap. But just like any profession, PPC is constantly changing and evolving, and its practitioners need to stay up to date on the latest tools and techniques. I can’t think of a more open and sharing industry to be in, and I have conference networking to thank for my last couple jobs in SEM. It’s really worth it to attend!

What conferences are you excited about in 2012?

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