respect

Pay to Speak at Your Social Media Conference? Are You Drunk?

Take a minute to imagine getting a new client.

You?ve worked hard to get to that stage, and now you?re ready to sign the contract.

Then the new client stops you in your tracks with these words:

OK, I?m ready to have you do your thing for me. But you?ll need to pay me first.

You look at them, surprised, wondering if you heard them right.

So you ask the obvious excuse me, and receive this reply:

You?ll have to pay me first. If you want to work for me, you?ll need to pay me. If you don?t want to work for me, that?s fine?I have options where you can pay me for the honor of me asking you instead.

You shake your head incredulously and wonder when your expertise became whittled down to you having to pay to do the thing you were invited to do in the first place.

Crazy, right?

Not according to the organizers at the Social Shake-Up Show, one of many social media conferences being held in Atlanta later this year.

Speaker or Sponsor?

I received an email from one of the event?s organizers, asking me if I was interested in speaking.

Or at least, I thought I did.

Turns out, it wasn?t quite that simple.

Here?s the body of the email:

Are you interested in speaking at the 2017 Social Shake-Up Show on May 22-24 in Atlanta?
500+ decision-makers will be in attendance, so it?s the perfect platform to discuss your latest product or to display thought leadership in front of a forward-thinking social media community.
Standing at the podium and delivering a powerful message in front of your peers validates the countless hours that you and your team put in at the office.
Our agenda is filling up quickly and I thought you might be interested in taking one of the remaining spots.
These open speaking spots are reserved for Social Shake-Up sponsors, so email me directly if you?d like pricing details.
Along with the speaking opportunity, you?ll receive all the benefits of being a Social Shake-Up sponsor.
If you?re interested, please contact me as soon as possible, as rates for our speaking spots increase after Jan. 20.

Let?s Break that Down, Shall We?

The introductory paragraph is nice enough.

It tells me about the event, and that 500+ decision-makers will be in attendance.

Although, in fairness, my five-year-old daughter and six-year-old son make decisions every day.

Like how much mud to roll in and how many times they can fit poop into a sentence at dinner time, so maybe that?s not such a selling point after all.

Then it goes on to sell me on presenting myself as a *cough* ?thought leader? to these important people.

So far, so good.

The second paragraph is where it gets fun/confusing/painful, depending on your point-of-view.

Standing at a Podium

To recognize all the hard work I?ve put in, honing my craft, building my expertise, and keeping me and my team in the office while our children are growing up and our lives are disappearing around us, I get to STAND AT A PODIUM!!!!!

See how excited I was by this revelation?

I had to use all caps to get the gravity of that offer in full.

A PODIUM. A REAL-LIFE PODIUM!!!!

Well call me Shirley and pour me a double!

Never mind the gratitude of clients, peers, or bosses for any successful project or undertaking?a podium is where it?s at!!!

After that bombshell, I could hardly wait to see what more this event could possibly offer me.

I mean, a frickin? podium!!!

Sponsor the Event

Onto paragraph three?.

Wait, what?s this?

You want me to sponsor your event, and that will let me get to the podium?

Can?t I just bring my own podium?

No?

Dammit!!!

So?to be clear?one of the organizing/sponsorship team for the event invites me to speak, but not as a speaker.

Instead, it?s as a sponsor, and by sponsoring the event I?ll get to be a ?speaker? (albeit at a podium)?

My Reply

Well, of course, I had to reply?

Hi,
So, just to clarify?you want me to speak at your event but I have to pay to do so?
On top of, undoubtedly, paying my own expenses for hotel and flight?
And the ?benefit? of this is I get to ?stand at a podium??
Is the podium a time machine, like the Doc?s DeLorean?
Because then I could see value in your proposal.
Or is it like that podium from the original Police Academy, because that looked like a rewarding podium!
Perhaps you meant possum?
I?m a firm believer that possums make for great photo opps, so I could see the benefit there. Though I think you might have meant ?stand beside a possum,? as opposed to at.
Anyhoo? Please advise if any of these scenarios are true.
Otherwise, I?ll have to decline before I have a laughter-inflicted hernia due to the ridiculousness of your ?proposal?.
Yours in eagerness (especially about the DeLorean!),
Someone Who Places More Value on Time, Expertise and Knowledge Than a Pay-to-Play Podium Slot

Or, in the immortal words of Mary Poppins:

Why do you always complicate things that are really quite simple?

You Say Exposure, I Say Tell My Kids Why They?re Hungry

There?s a commonly-held belief that exposure is a wonderful way to avoid paying for expertise.

This can usually be seen in two forms:

Write for something such as?The Huffington Post and be rewarded with thousands of eyeballs and impressions, thereby driving traffic back to your own blog.
Speak at an event (after paying for your own travel and accommodation costs) to get in front of peers and potential clients.

Or, you can go the Social Shake-Up route and make people pay to be a sponsor in lieu of giving them a speaking slot.

The first two are crappy enough.

The Huffington Post was bought for $315 million in 2011, and brought in $146 million in ad revenue in 2014.

Yet their business model is to get the majority of its writers to produce content for free, in exchange for eyeballs on their content.

Events?especially social media conferences?charge upwards of a few hundred dollars to attend, to almost $2,000, and beyond.

They have a bunch of sponsors, and they generally have anywhere from a few hundred one-day attendees to several thousand during?the course of two to three days.

And yet, they?ll only pay the ?top-tier? speakers.

But then you have the Social Shake-Up approach.

There are many reasons it?s wrong, and?to me, at least?unethical.

It?s Totally Wrong

But here are the core ones:

Speaking for exposure does not pay the bills. While the event organizers no doubt make money or get paid, as do some of the speakers (you have to assume), the rest are out in the cold, paying almost a thousand bucks for a flight, a few hundred bucks for a hotel, and then food and drinks on top. This, despite tickets for the event range from $700 to $1,800, and are non-refundable to boot. All for the promise of getting in front of ?decision-makers.?

Advertising on your site that ??speakers are carefully vetted and will deliver on the promise to share the strategies and tactics that have truly shaken up the ecosystem.? How carefully vetted can they be when they?ve paid to appear? It immediately devalues the promise of earth-shattering learnings.

Speaking of paying, every speaker who?does that now becomes a sponsor. Which allows the event to sell more sponsorships with the pitch, ?Sponsorships are filling up quickly.? Sorry, no, they?re not?they?re being filled up by people sold what is essentially an empty promise.

Now, don?t get me wrong.

Some Social Media Conferences DO Get it Right

There are some fantastic social media conferences that not only deliver value but treat their speakers with the respect they deserve and pay them for their time and expertise.

These are the ones you should support, and the ones I don?t mind attending.

The other ones?

The ones that are essentially saying, ?Hey, come stand in a room and get 15-20 minutes to talk to people who will probably never give you work no matter how awesome you think your talk is??

I?m going to keep my money from these guys.

Instead, I?m going to invest it in the work I know I get respected and paid for, and spend it on the family I do that work for.

And you can shove that up your stupid podium.

A version of this first appeared on Spin Sucks.

You Answer to Nobody But Yourself

When I was young and impressionable (and still trying to make an impression), I believed – foolishly – that I had to answer to people. Whether that was my boss, colleagues or peers, I was under the impression I had to answer to them in all I did.

Now, before folks get the wrong impression, yes, it’s definitely important to have some form of hierarchy to get things done. This doesn’t necessarily mean a boss/employee relationship, though – think of it more like expertise and the wisdom to make the right things happen.

But the idea that you have to answer to someone because they say you have to? Screw that.

Just like trust and respect needs to be earned, so does answering to someone. You want me (or others) to listen to you? Show me you know your shit, and show me you’ll use that knowledge to do things the right way.

Which brings us back to the opening statement.

People in positions of power may feel you have to answer to them, because their job title says so. But here’s the thing – people don’t stay in companies for 25 years or more anymore.

People also see through BS faster, and know that – thanks to social media – it’s easier to be connected to someone that can help them make their next move than it was just five years ago, when an old boy network and a good suit was the “in” to a new position.

What this means is that employees don’t need to take the kind of shit anymore that they used to stay silent about. Nor do they have to worry about a damaged reputation, since the truth always comes out. Always.

Instead, now people can choose what really matters to them – respect, reputation, family. Instead of answering to those that don’t deserve it, you now answer to those that truly matter.

Which, at the end of the day, is where the real rewards are anyway…

The Only Voice That Matters

All of us are just one person, yet we use many voices every day.

We have our normal voice that we use when we?re with friends and those we feel comfortable around. We?re not afraid to cuss if need be and we use crude humour and sarcasm at will. We know we can get away with it without misunderstood meanings.

We have our professional voice that we use at work. Whether it?s speaking with clients or bosses or employees, we have a different tone. We certainly don?t cuss and it?s only with the closest of business relationships that we feel comfortable injecting more of our own personality.

Our parents and grandparents make us talk differently still, even though we?re fully grown. We use respectful tones and I personally never swore in the company of my parents.

We use a different voice again in professional situations. In shops and stores or public transport, we adopt a courteous yet authoritative tone. We know what we want so we use a certain tone to achieve that.

Yet despite all these disparate voices, there?s one thing that holds them all together.

YOU.

You control these voices and how they?re used. You control whether they?re used positively or negatively. You control whether they garner fear or respect. You control whether you?help change the world or accept the status quo. Your control defines the perception of you by others.

We may have numerous voices, but at the end of the day there?s only one that truly counts.

What?s?your voice?

image: ALA – The American Library Association

Surprise – Disrespecting Competitors Doesn’t Work!

Expo2008: Squared & Diagonal You have a product. It’s an awesome product. Thousands of people use it; share its strengths; promote the heck out of it; evangelize about it to anyone who has a question about that product.

It becomes? a benchmark. When someone mentions the service or platform your product is built for, it’s almost the de facto recommendation.

Truth: pretty much everyone in your niche loves your product.

Then a new player comes into town.

They’ve seen what your product can do. They know its strengths, yet they know it’s one key area where improvement could happen – user-friendliness. While your product is unquestionably solid and respected, it’s not the easiest to use for the everyday person on the street.

It needs extra work that not everyone can afford to put the time into. It needs skills that not everyone has, or can learn. That’s not a weakness; just reality. The new player has seen that, and has released a product that makes it just as easy for Joe Average to use as Joe Expert. Everybody’s happy. Experts can still use your product, while the average consumer can use your competitor’s – there’s room for everyone, after all.

Except there’s not, according to you. Instead of relishing the challenge, and letting your product speak for itself, you decide it’s more productive to put down your competitor instead. You talk about your competitor’s design knowledge and denounce it by saying, “Company X don’t know jack about it or care, either.” Despite the clear opposite.

You publicly call your competitor’s promotional plans “lame, uninspired and barnacle marketing”. Even though the competitor’s marketing has so far been purely from user recommendation – much like the users of your product recommend yours (and rightly so).

Is this the new form of product selling? Putting down the competitors in public? I was curious, so I asked the question whether you should put competitors down or let your product do the talking. The responses were pretty unilateral.

Kevin Richard says you should wow your customers and let them do the talking. Arik Hanson advises that disrespect can have a long-term impact on your reputation. Justin Levy thinks you should save time and effort by not dissing your competitors and use it instead to make your company and product better.

There are numerous? other examples from Rebecca Leaman, Peter Hodges, PRDude, Tina Marie Hilton, Mike Smith, Ari Herzog, John Haydon, Tim Jahn, David Holliday, Andi Narvaez, Leona Skene, Nan Palmero, Jenn Mattern, Al Tepper and Michael Pearson.

Seems pretty simple – your product is your response to competition. Anything else is just poor form.

Of course, you might not even care anyway. Your sales pitch points to the high profile users that your product resonates with. The popularity of these guys will continue to sell your product for you.

But will it? Reputations take a long time to build but they can fall in seconds. Will the high profile customers persuade the general public to buy your product when that same public starts to notice the conversations taking place about competitor respect? Will they want to risk their own brand by supporting yours?

Maybe. Maybe not. But is it a question you’re willing (or can afford) to find out the answer to?

photo credit: tochis