SOHO|SME Conference

SOHO|SME Business Conference & Expo

Yesterday I took the day to attend the SOHO|SME Conference & Expo in downtown Toronto, organized by the SOHO Team. While in many ways I felt the event left much to be desired, there were certainly some good highlights.

Billed as a conference for small business owners, and themed towards providing actionable and practical advice for growing business in 2010, this appeared to be a perfect fit for us. Not only all our clients small businesses looking to improve their marketing – Strider is itself a small business, and I’m always eager to learn how we can improve as a business. Best of all, attendance was free for the first 1,000 registrants.

The nice thing about offering an event for free is that you can boost your registration numbers quickly and provide more value to your exhibitors. The downside is that people don’t value that which is given for free. In speaking with a fee SOHO team members I got the impression they were disappointed with the turnout. While over 2,000 people registered, I honestly doubt that even half of them showed up. I arrived late due to some transit issues, and was amazed by the stacks of unclaimed badges.

The highlight session of the day for me was the Social Media for Business session – oddly enough, the last of the day (and separated from the overlapping networking reception by only a curtain). Dave Forde, Erin Bury and Helen Overland did an excellent job of educating and informing the audience on how a small business can dedicate a reasonable amount of time to social media and achieve tangible results. Rather than offer the pat answers of “get on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and and and …” they emphasized having a plan and taking a targeted approach to social engagements.

The ever-friendly Vanessa Wynn-Williams of Yahoo! gave an overview of PPC advertising on Y!’s platform – more of a sales pitch than a list of action items. Where I felt her presentation really failed was the emphasis on PPC vs SEO, including claims that “SEO takes a long time and requires changes to your site, with no gaurantees for placement.” I was left wondering if she’s ever heard of keyword research (beyond the suggestion box Y! offers during account creation), ad testing, keyword grouping or landing page testing. Rumour has it those tasks take a bit of time and require constant efforts. [/sarcasm] Also, the only “guarantee” with PPC is the heart-attack upon seeing your bill if you going running head-first into a paid search campaign without planning and research.

Conference highlights:

• Good audience of interested and motivated small business people (I LOVE you guys!)
• Nice venue – Fairmont Royal York Hotel, across the street from Union Station, lots of space

Suggestions for next year:

• Promote earlier: SOHO is a “lead generation and marketing service” yet I only heard of the conference 10 days in advance, through their partner Canada Post. At that time, free registration was still available, meaning that 10 days before the event not even 1,000 people had registered. The week before, I also received invites from Nebs and Yahoo!
• Discount instead of free: People are more likely to attend something they have committed money toward. Even a nominal fee will motivate people to overcome the rainy weather.
• More cohesive schedule: There were events running in different rooms at different times, but no two events started or ended at the same time. This left long gaps between events and meant we couldn’t attend every session we wanted to. There is a point where you can only circle the tradeshow so many times without feeling like a caged (and bored) rat.
• Move past the 101 content: Some of the entry-level material was useful, but having some more advanced sessions would benefit the more savvy business owners.
• Have answers ready if you’re announcing a launch: SOHO is launching a new social network that’s “Facebook for businesses” (but it’s not LinkedIn, really). However, they were not willing/able to say anything more, instead opting to pass out business cards encouraging people to email for details. Like it would have been that hard to have a 1 page brochure and a special promo landing page made up for your own conference attendees?!?

At the end of the day I was glad to have attended, and I met a number of interesting business people whom I look forward to connecting with on LinkedIn. (Because by the time this new SOHO network that’s not like LinkedIn actually launches, we’ll probably have forgotten about it.) Whether or not I attend again in the future will have a lot to do with the line-up of speakers and sessions.