cruel to be kind

I have been putting this of for far too long, because I wanted to have a more detailled posting, but as usual, there are your plans and then there is what life makes out of it. ;)

My presentation at Blogworld Expo 2009 was titled “10 Ways to Grow Your Audience” and was basically an enhanced version of my 2008 presentation “10 Ways To Build Your Readership“.

The big trend in 2009: Everybody
One of the big trends for me in 2009 was, how much ‘normal’ people started to adapt this stuff I have been doing for decades now. And suddenly how I am not any more the weird one, but everyone does it. The biggest thing for me was, while in Vegas, to ask everybody if they knew about twitter. And nearly all of them did – waiters, cab drivers, etc. I did not have to start with “there is this thing called the internet” but could start asking “what is your twitter name”. There is a change coming and I am curious how it will unfold in 2010.

I preface the slides with this notion of everybody, because it explains the way I have put them together: usable for beginners but also helpful to a little bit more experienced audience. You may note that I tend to put a lot of text into my slides and the reason for that is simple – I like people to be able to work with those slides later.

This years slides had a very simple call to action: “Think”. Think like your audience, think like how the tools you want to benefit from are build and used by others and think out of the box:

You should:

• think Audience
• think professional media
• work like a professional
• think workflow and procedures
• think Stumble Upon
• think twitter
• think offline
• think Newsletter
• think Facebook
• Stop thinking A-Listers
• Pay it forward

Thinks you cannot buy with money:

When I do presentations like this, my main goal is to make people understand and help them to use these tools. Therefor it is my biggest reward when people do come up to me afterwards and tell me, if it has helped them or not. And to my delight, one participant came up to me telling me how she attended my seminar last year and brought a friend because of it – and liked this year’s presentation as well. ;))

Tags: blogworldexpo, presentation