Call for Contributions: How to Add Unforgettable Value at Your Next Conference (Without Being a Speaker)

Conferences can be intimidating.

Whether it’s a few hundred or a few thousand … keeping your head above the social waters — not to mention taking home the best lessons and putting them into action — is daunting.

So how do you get the absolute most out of your conference experiences?

Easy … you stop focusing on you and start focusing on them.

Give first. Ask later.

That might sound cliche. But, honestly, giving is the only way to (1) get out of your head and calm those stomach-churning, just-let-me-run-back-to-my-hotel-room nerves as well as (2) add unforgettable and relationship-building value to the people you meet: keynoters, speakers, workshop leaders, and fellow attendees:

“Give compliments. Give shares. Give connections. Give links. Give smiles. Give anything and everything you can: before, during, and after. A fantastic conference experience turns on real human relationships. And real human relationships turn on giving first and asking later.”

So here’s the deal …

I wanna kick off my 2017 conference season with exactly that ethos.

Come September, I’ll be hosting the keynote track at the world’s largest content marketing conference in the world: Content Marketing World. (Appropriate name, right?)

I’ll also be posting day one’s blog post over at Content Marketing Institute to kick the whole thing off.

This is your chance to get in front of CMWorld’s 4,000 attendees along with CMI’s 181,000 email subscribers and estimated 1,452,400 monthly visitors.

How?

By answering two questions in the Google Form at the bottom of this article. And, no, you don’t have to be a CMWorld attendee to participate (although that’d help).

But first, the backstory …

At 2016’s CMWorld, Nadya Khoja and I launch a project that produced 16,437 words, two infographics, 81 clickable Tweets, over 11k social shares, 116 backlinks, a takeover of Foundr Magazine’s Snapchat, a host of on-going relationships with content marketing’s biggest influencers, and a one-on-one sit down with the man himself, Joe Pulizzi.

On my end, I fell in love with CMWorld and felt like I’d suddenly cracked the code on attending conferences!

The whole thing took about four months and culminated in three posts:

1.

How to Attend a Conference and Take It Over (Even If You’re Not a Speaker):

2.

26 Headliners on How to Connect with Influencers at a Conference [Infographic]

3.

How to Network a Conference Like a Jedi: 55 Tips [Infographic & Click to Tweets]

This year … we want to go even bigger!

The post I’m preparing — the post I want your contributions to — will go live day one of CMWorld on Content Marketing Institute’s blog. That’ll be September 5th.

Here’s the link to the Google Form you can contribute to.

Just two questions, although the first one calls for a bit of creativity.

Before you answer, take a few minutes to brush up on some standout examples of truly remarkable (and value-adding) content CMWorld has inspired in years past:

?? Andy Crestodina’s #CMWorld Yearbooks

?? Simon Geisler’s Orange Hat and Joseph Kalinowski’s Orange Pants Society

?? Berrak Sarikaya's CMWorldCommunity Slack group:

?? Daniel Knowlton’s Direct Video Tweets

?? Ben H. Rome’s Lego Guy

?? Dominik Grau’s CMWorld Running Group

?? Maureen Jann’s CMWorld Twitter Meetup and Bingo Game

This post will go way beyond the usual “how to attend and network at a conference” tips. The idea — just like the title suggests — is to get as creative and value producing as possible.

Alright … here’s that Google Form one more time. Enjoy!