Engaging Audience Conference

I will admit that the whole idea of  The Audience Conference intrigued me. It made perfect sense that our business of online marketing is not that different than the business of being a comic, but I wasn’t sure what to expect from this conference. I was excited to be able to go but I wondered if a day of being entertained would also teach, would it be worth my time?  Would there be PowerPoint presentations or just an endless stream of people trying to make me laugh and show me how easy it is for some to engage an audience? Who in the world would even think of this line up which included among others, the creator of Thesis WordPress theme, a coder, a couple of media marketing folks and a bunch of comedians? 

Loren Feldman, of 1938 Media and Missy Ward & Shawn Collins, of Affiliate Summit, are the producers of The Audience Conference which was held at Carolines on Broadway. This was the second annual Audience Conference and I hope there will be many more.

Loren opened the conference explaining the purpose was to show the similarities between the two industries and to hopefully, learn from the comparison. As he pointed out, we (online marketers/webmasters) sometimes spend too much time on the backend and forget the purpose , engagement. The psychology is the same, and whether you are a comedian or a webmaster you need to engage.  If you are engaging, you get  more laughs – or more clicks.

To demonstrate his point, Loren assembled an interesting lineup. Unlike most conferences, there was no Wifi, so we were not able to tweet or connect. Most of us pulled out pen and paper but other than writing down names, we took no notes. We were engaged, we listened and we learned.

The host was Loren Feldman and the speakers were:

• Brian Alvey
• Chris Pearson
• Dan Patterson
• C.C. Chapman
• Chris Brogan
• Jason Calacanis
• Heather Gold
• Harrison Greenbaum
• Carmen Lynch
• Morgan Murphy
• Rachel Feinstein
• Dan Allen

Each “presenter” had their own individual style and approach but there was one commonality. Every single performer, both geeks and comedians, possesed the ability to connect and engage the audience. After each performance, Loren asked a few targeted questions and then took questions from the audience. The answers were enlightening; we learned about struggles, challenges and tweaking strategies. During the Q & A  it became apparent that the comedians are not only skilled at engaging an audience they can also explain it. Engaging an audience, whether online or offline, is hard work and takes practice.

The geek presenters were good, entertaining and yes, at times, even funny. The comedians were excellent; I highly recommend catching a performance  of any of them if you ever have the opportunity. (The Audience Conference website linked to  above has additional information on all of the speakers and comedians.)

One of the most valuable lessons would come from one of the comedians who in the beginning, was not as funny as perhaps she had hoped to be. By the end of her performance, she did  manage to turn it around and in spite of the rough beginning, kept us engaged throughout. There is not a single person in the audience who has not been in her shoes.

We have all blogged or written something we thought filled with passion or excitement only to have it fall on seemingly deaf ears. We have all carefully prepared a new webpage  that we were sure would go viral only to have it not even found on the first 20 pages of search engine results.

What do we do? If we hope to be successful, we tweak; we learn and we adapt our style, we “tighten it up”. Learn from both your successes and your failures.

So, who knew we could learn so much or that we had so much in common with comedians?

Remember, it’s about engagement – don’t lose sight of that.

And next year, when you hear about The Audience Conference, grab a ticket and go. You’ll laugh but more importantly, you will learn. I even left The Audience Conference with a renewed energy and a clearer understanding of the importance of the audience.

Thank you to Loren, Shawn and Missy for putting this all together and to all the great speakers for sharing their stories, their knowledge and their humor.

A very big thank you to Missy for making it possible for me to attend.

Tagged as: Affiliate Education, Affiliate Summit, Events, The Audience Conference