The conference saved our company tens of thousands of dollars, but my boss wouldn’t spend the $20 or so to enter. It was a life lesson for me that conferences are worth their weight in gold. So it alarms me that there are so many companies that don’t even have a budget to attend a regional, national or virtual conference! Our Zoomerang weekly poll showed that over 25% don’t have any budget for any conference! Conferences are ideation machines. They not only excite you because you’re surrounded by peers, they recharge your thought process and make you think outside the fog of your company.

• National conferences – to be honest, I rarely go to a session at a national conference! I spend my time in the vendor hall and walking back and forth connecting with industry leaders. At night, you can find me at every hotel bar that’s housing the guests. The conversations with industry leaders is amazing. If you let your employee go to a national conference, give them a bar budget so they can buy a prospect, a vendor, or an industry leader a drink or two. That’s where the magic happens!
• Regional conferences – if you want to look big nationally, you’ve got to be big regionally. I love leading sessions at regional conferences. It provides me with an opportunity to test new presentations out with a familiar audience and meet local talent. I attend sessions at regional conferences and often skip the drinks after. Sometimes the sessions are a bit sketchy or salesy… but typically I walk away with information I can use. These conferences are pretty inexpensive, so the ROI is easier to make.
• Virtual conferences – if you’re a vendor or speaker, there’s no better return on investment than a virtual conference. People attend these events to learn and buy. If they cared about meeting the speaker, they would have traveled to the conference. The business we get out of virtual conferences (for the last 2 companies I’ve worked with) has been incredible. If you are an attendee, it’s fantastic – you can leave, return, see every demo you ever wanted to, and do it from your desk (or couch).

No conference? I’m being honest and telling you that your brain (or if you’re the boss… the brain of your employees) is turning to mush. Get out of the office and go get recharged! If you’re a boss, challenge your employees to come back with 3 key strategies that will overcome the travel expense and cost of the ticket. If you’re an employee, promise your boss that you’ll come back with 3 key strategies that will overcome the expense!

To find conferences, I like Plancast and Lanyrd. My favorite 3 large conferences have been BlogWorld Expo, Webtrends Engage, and ExactTarget Connections. Locally here in Indiana, BlogIndiana and Masters of Business Online are favorites. And virtual conferences – I love all the Social Media Examiner events and a ton of others!

Please comment with your favorite conferences and whether they’re national, regional or virtual!

In the past, I’ve utilized my Technorati rank as a guide to how well my blog was doing. I LOVED Technorati. I was even in contact with some of their team directly. I wrote a plugin for use with Technorati! I even got to preview one of the releases.

On July 11th, I broke the 2,000 mark on Technorati. Today I’m ranked 3,356!

Rank Down, Popularity Up?

• Am I blogging less? No.
• Am I getting less links from top blogs? No.
• Am I getting less links from any other blogs? No.
• Is my readership down? No.
• Are my subscribers down? No.

I just broke 1,000 RSS subscribers and I’m averaging another 1,000 readers daily – this is great growth for the blog and well ahead of where I was when I was breaking the 2,000 rank.

So What IS the Problem with Technorati?

Here’s what gives… just look at the blog ranked #98 on Technorati:

The problem is that Technorati is accepting non-blogs disguised as blogs. Here’s the about note on the CNN’s Political Ticker itself:

The CNN Political Ticker is the hottest destination for the latest political news with dispatches, behind-the-scenes reports, and expert commentary, 24-7.

Do they mention ‘blog’ anywhere in the description of the site? What, because they’re posting news articles to WordPress, this is a ‘blog’? I realize there are many definitions of what a blog may or may not be, but putting feathers on a pig doesn’t make it a chicken.

Technorati has removed blog #45 John Chow from the Top 100 list because they disagree with how John accumulates his links with other bloggers… but yet they allow CNN, a media giant, to pose as a blog? C’mon Technorati!

Technorati is being massively infiltrated by editorial and advertorial websites that are trying to ride the blog rollercoaster… and because of it, they’re losing their own authority, and ultimately, their credibility in the blogging space. In the meantime, the bloggers who helped build the popularity of the service are the ones left out in the cold.

UPDATE: Ian Kallen of Technorati responds, “When Is A Blog Not A Blog?“