Blackboard Friday : TALKING to Shoemoney

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Why 90% of visitors hoping to ask questions to the big players at Pubcon will miss out on great lessons and friendships.

Usually when you see a mob of people approaching there is no doubt that one of the many Big Dogs of SEO or SEM is heading your way. Players like Greg Boser, Todd Friesen, Dave Naylor and Shoemoney are constantly getting barraged by fans and professionals looking to get in on some secret sauce formula for success. In my opinion the single most greatest reason why 90%+ of these people will not get any insight is because they don’t stop talking.

Seriously you got to imagine that these guys have heard it all and it takes one hell of a story to peak their interest. So here are my tips for getting your questions answered and maximizing your learning experience at Pubcon and future conferences.

1. LISTEN! It’s the easiest thing to do. Just listen instead of trying to talk about something you know nothing about or tell your story about how your business is so great or you are the next great spammer black hat making $100k before the sunrises. What you will see is how quickly people who just talk don’t get there questions answered (if they ever get to asking a question) and more importantly don’t LISTEN to the response because they just can’t wait to start talking again.

2. PRACTICE! That’s right I said practice. Sometimes you only get one crack at these guys so the last thing you want to do is stutter or mumble through your question. Distill your question down to the core of what you really need answered.

For example don’t ask general questions like “How can I make money with AdSense?” because that only leads to more questions like “What is your site about?” or “What kind of traffic do you get?”. Instead practice getting your description down to one sentence followed by a specific question. For example, “I run a music forum that gets 10k unique visitors a month. In your experience what have you found to be the best placement for ad units?”

3. ASK YOUR QUESTION! So by this point you have been listening and hopefully picking up some good tips. But what you don’t want to do is let your opportunity slip by saying to yourself “I can ask later… He/She seems busy…”. That’s procrastination knocking and you didn’t practice your question(s) for nothing. Trust me you are not the first nor will you be the last to ask a question. So make sure to walk up and ask your question.

4. WHAT NOT TO SAY! So you have already listened and been patient waiting to ask the question you practiced over and over again. Then you get your shot and ask and get a great response. The one thing you do not want to say ever after receiving a response is “Oh really? Well so and so said to do the complete opposite.” Why? The biggest reason is you are leaving a negative impression on a person who has taken the time to answer your question and secondly you are basically saying “I don’t believe what you just told me even though you are in a obvious position to know better.”

5. BE COURTEOUS! Remember to say thank you. It goes a long way.

Those are some quick tips that I hope will help to get you the answers you seek at Pubcon and any other conference you attend. Some of these conferences can cost a ton of money when you include Hotel and Airfare on top of your conference pass. So make sure you get the most out of them by preparing, setting your goals and follow up with action to accomplish the goals.