As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Danny, Chris and the session coordinators sift through thousands of speaker submissions to make their selections. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close on April 14, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not by the end of April.

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If you’re accepted to speak, you’ll receive a pass to the entire SMX event. Ready to pitch? Head over to our SMX speaker pitch form and submit your proposal. We’re closing the pitch form early next week, so don’t delay! ]]> http://searchmarketingexpo.com/blog/20120323-101812.php/feed 0 http://searchmarketingexpo.com/blog/20120213-154957.php http://searchmarketingexpo.com/blog/20120213-154957.php#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:49:57 +0000 Chris Sherman http://searchmarketingexpo.com/?p=18425 The agenda is live, and we’re now accepting submissions to speak at SMX London on May 15-16, 2012. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, this is because there are no openings for that session. Use this form to submit your request.

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Danny, Chris and the session coordinators sift through thousands of speaker submissions to make their selections. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close on March 5, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not by March 12.

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close on February 20, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not by the end of February.

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If you’re accepted to speak, you’ll receive a pass to the entire SMX event. Ready to pitch? Head over to our SMX speaker pitch form and submit your proposal. We’re closing the pitch form Monday, so don’t delay! ]]> http://searchmarketingexpo.com/blog/20120106-110816.php/feed 0 http://searchmarketingexpo.com/blog/20111220-105129.php http://searchmarketingexpo.com/blog/20111220-105129.php#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:51:29 +0000 Chris Sherman http://searchmarketingexpo.com/?p=17582 The agenda is live, and we’re now accepting submissions to speak at SMX West 2012, San Jose, CA on February 28-March 1. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, this is because there are no openings for that session. Use this form to submit your request.

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Danny, Chris and the session coordinators sift through thousands of speaker submissions to make their selections. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close during the first week of January, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not shortly thereafter.

Anyone can submit a session idea for an SMX conference, even if you’re not interested in actually speaking at the show. Just tell us the name of a suggested session, a description of what you’d like the session to cover and your contact information, if you like. Contact details aren’t required, but they help in case we have follow-up questions.

Interested in speaking on a session you suggest? You can indicate this by ticking the “I’d Like To Speak” box to let us know. However, in most cases, you’ll need to put in a formal pitch after the final agenda is posted using our separate speaking pitch form. This form will only be active once an agenda has been finalized.

Remember that all sessions at SMX usually feature 3-4 speakers with 10-15 minutes each of speaking time, so please make sure your idea will accommodate that format. We’re not interested in any ideas for sessions where a single individual would speak for an entire session. And also please remember, no product or service pitches.

Key milestones for SMX West

Again, the “suggestion box” is for session ideas only. We will open up a separate pitch form for people to apply to speak on specific panels once the agenda is posted.

• The session “suggestion box” is currently open; closes December 3
• Agenda posted & speaking pitch form opens week of December 12
• Speaking pitches close January 7

Have a suggestion? Please read our guidelines for speaking at SMX conferences, then use the SMX session idea form. And don’t delay—we’ll be closing the session idea form in just a few weeks.

Unlike some other industry conferences, our primary goal in programming SMX is to make sure our attendees get the maximum possible value from the time and resources they spend to experience the show. Of course, we’re also happy when our speakers and their companies get valuable exposure, leads or even business as a result of their participation. But we find that some people who ask to speak either mix up our priorities, or don’t fully realize that our prime directive is to invite speakers who put attendees first.

This leads some potential speakers—even people we know to be knowledgeable, experienced and well-known—to submit proposals that for various reasons just aren’t acceptable. They then wonder why we reject their pitches in favor of other speakers. Even though we’ve written detailed SMX speaker guidelines, these people seem to have either ignored them or worse, decided to go against our guidelines in the mistaken idea that we’ll be impressed.

In the interest of helping people prepare the strongest pitches possible—ones that have the best chances of being selected—we’ve come up with some “best worst practices” that invariably result in speakers not being selected to participate at SMX. It’s a bit snarky, but addresses some of the things we see from people who didn’t read or don’t follow our guidelines, and we thought this approach might get through to those folks.

Best Worst Practice #1: Ignore our detailed speaker guidelines. We spell out clearly and explicitly what we’re looking for. After having read literally thousands of pitches, we know immediately whether someone has read the guidelines or not. Speakers who ultimately get invited have clearly read and understood the guidelines, and tailor their proposals to meet (and often exceed) our guidelines. Speakers who have not read the guidelines are almost instantly rejected. Bonus #fail points: Read the guidelines, and then submit a proposal that ignores them, or attempts to circumvent them for some reason.

Best Worst Practice #2: Ignore the fact that our single most important priority is to serve the needs of attendees. If your pitch is focused mostly or exclusively on you, your product or service, that’s a very strong signal that you haven’t understood our priorities. Bonus #fail points: Don’t even mention the benefits, tactical tips or other takeaways our attendees will gain from your presentation. Keep it totally focused on you.

Best Worst Practice #3: Start your speaking pitch by talking about yourself, your company, your products/services, clients, awards… Our speaking pitch form is simple, and has two very different, explicitly labeled parts: What you want to speak about, and who you are. Keep them separate. When we’re asking what you want to speak about, we don’t care who you are. We often don’t even look at bios/credentials until a the content of a pitch has impressed us. Keep biographical details in the very explicitly marked “Bio” section of the pitch form. Bonus #fail points: Don’t even discuss what you’ll talk about. Assume we know you or your reputation and you’ll just pull something together and everyone will be happy.

Best Worst Practice #4: Write your pitch like a press release. Make it as promotional, vacuous and boring as possible. Bonus #fail points: Don’t write your pitch yourself, but instead have a junior marketing or PR person who hasn’t read our speaker guidelines write the pitch on your behalf. Double Bonus #fail points: Don’t even bother to read what that junior person has written on your behalf.

Best Worst Practice #5: Assume nobody else is pitching for the session you are, or that your reputation will push you ahead of all others. As said, we value speakers who are articulate, knowledgeable and well known. We also value speakers who have done well at past SMX events. But the industry has matured, and new people with interesting ideas and valuable information or tactics they are willing to share with our attendees (and who have obviously read our speaker guidelines) are emerging all the time. It’s not uncommon for 20 to 30 (or more) people to pitch for panels where typically only two or three openings are available. As much as we’d like to accommodate everyone who submits a good pitch, simple math allows us to invite only roughly 1 in 10 people who pitch for a given session.

If you want to stand out, make sure you stand out, because you can be certain others will. Also realize that this means that as much as we’d prefer not to, we’re forced to reject a lot of really good pitches, so don’t necessarily take that rejection personally. Bonus #fail points: Assume your reputation is all you need to stand out above all else. We certainly pay attention to reputation, but we pay more attention to outstanding pitches that reflect a genuine desire to really offer significant value to our attendees.

Best Worst Practice #6: Submit a pitch that’s kinda/sorta/not really related to a session topic. Once an agenda has been finalized, there are no openings for presentations on topics that aren’t explicitly described in the agenda. If you don’t carefully read and understand what a session is about and then tailor your pitch to match the topic, others will. Bonus #fail points: Submit the same kinda/sorta/not really pitch to multiple sessions.

Best Worst Practice #7: Submit a pitch that you created for a conference or workshop where you’ve presented in the past, without tailoring it to fit the SMX description. We aren’t interested in how well this session was received at any other show. We want to know how and why it will be kickass for SMX attendees. Bonus #fail points: Don’t bother (or fail to remember) to change the name of the previous conference in the pitch itself.

Best Worst Practice #8: Neglect to provide all details necessary for a session coordinator to fully evaluate your pitch as it compares to others for the session. Include just a few vague bullet points, or generalizations. Bonus #fail points:Don’t write anything in the form – just provide links to blog posts or Slideshare presentations that require the session coordinator to leave our system and take extra time and effort to understand what you’re proposing.

Best Worst Practice #9: Devote most of your pitch to industry stats or trends that support why this is such an important topic. It’s painful to state the obvious, but we run an industry news site and we know the stats and why they are important—that’s the reason we decided to put the session on the agenda in the first place. Bonus #fail points: Don’t describe what you plan to talk about other than “I plan to talk about why this is so important.”

As a final note: we sincerely appreciate all of the excellent pitches we’ve received over the years. A big thank you to everyone who has worked (and continues to work) hard to bring high quality content to SMX and our attendees. We know we couldn’t do it without you!

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. Danny, Chris and the session coordinators sift through thousands of speaker submissions to make their selections. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://searchmarketingexpo.com/speaker-form) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

If you want to know what we aren’t looking for, see our The Best (Worst) Practices For NOT Being Invited To Speak At SMX.

The speaking pitch form will close on October 21, and we’ll notify everyone whether you’ve been selected or not by the end of October.

Do you have a topic you’d like to see covered in a session at SMX Social Media Marketing? Something you’d like to see covered in depth, or a discussion of advanced strategies and tactics for getting the most out your social media marketing campaigns? If so, we’d like to hear from you.

Anyone can submit a session idea for an SMX conference, even if you’re not interested in actually speaking at the show. Just tell us the name of a suggested session, a description of what you’d like the session to cover and your contact information, if you like. Contact details aren’t required, but they help in case we have follow-up questions.

Interested in speaking on a session you suggest? You can indicate this by ticking the “I’d Like To Speak” box to let us know. However, in most cases, you’ll need to put in a formal pitch after the final agenda is posted using our separate speaking pitch form. This form will only be active once an agenda has been finalized.

Remember that all sessions at SMX usually feature 3-4 speakers with 10-15 minutes each of speaking time, so please make sure your idea will accommodate that format. We’re not interested in any ideas for sessions where a single individual would speak for an entire session. And also please remember, no product or service pitches.

Key milestones for SMX Social Media Marketing

Again, the “suggestion box” is for session ideas only. We will open up a separate pitch form for people to apply to speak on specific panels once the agenda is posted.

• The session “suggestion box” is currently open; closes September 19
• Agenda posted & speaking pitch form opens week of September 29
• Speaking pitches close October 21

Have a suggestion? Please read our guidelines for speaking at SMX conferences, then use the SMX session idea form. And don’t delay—we’ll be closing the session idea form on Monday, September 19.