Do I fall in love too easily?

I decided to write this blogpost in english given that the conference I write about here was held in english and all the keynotes presenters spoke english. Please let me know if this is seen as a hazzel for those of you who are norwegian.

 

Last week our largest client, Schjærven, sent me to attend the biggest conference regarding web, social media and digital marketing in the nordics; Gulltaggen in Oslo, Norway. I participated on the work shop day-part of it last year, but this year I was there for the whole three days (and some nights). Before I write about what this blog post is going to be about, what I learned and what I took from this conference, I must give a big shout out to the arrangers of Gulltaggen; INMA with Ola Hanø, Anders Willsted, Hanne Ninnea T. Gjerde and others. They did a fantastic job getting the perfect mix of keynote presenters, making the conference run smoothly and providing us with with a great meeting place to hook up with collegues, heros and business. The only feedback from I have to give, regarding what could make this a better conference next year; book more female speakers! Brilliant woman are out there, and even though they might need other incentives to say yes than the guys, it might be a good idea to give it to them. To make it a better, more balanced and more varied conference.

 

 

So – back to the content. Back to the keynotes. Back to the love…

Working with social media for clients of a small company like VU (Valen-Utvik.no), sometimes can be lonely and demanding. I don’t have a boss telling me what to do – and acctually; I don’t even have clients telling me what to do. I have to tell my clients what I think we could and should do, and most often they tend to agree with me. They do this because they trust me, trust that I know why I advice as I do and trust that I have more experience on the subject than they do. And mostly I am confident that this is true. On good days I feel ahead, I feel that I contribute well and that my clients have a good reason for trusting me. I feel like a catch, I feel like they have sign off on a good deal and that I have earned their trust. And luckily; I have mostly good days.

 

But – we all have a few bad days once in a while.

On less good days the feeling that everyone else knows a whole lot more than me, sneaks up on me. A feeling that telles me that I should have known more, I should be able to stay further ahead of my clients and my advices, my skills and my knowledge of communicating in social media feels a wee bit fraudulent. Do I have numbers to back up my decisions? Do I have a long term strategic plan for content for each client? Do I have well-founded reasons for doing what I am doing, saying what I am saying, advicing like I am advicing? One these bad days I question myself, what I do and what I know. And I’m giving a whole lot credit to my competitors, my ‘collegues’ in this communication industry and to what our clients knows.

 

I do what I do, because I believe in what I do and because I believe that what  we do for our clients can’t be such a bad idea. I most definetly don’t think that I have provided my clients with rocket science, it’s more that I have given them common sense, on a new communication plattform. I feel quite sure that it won’t hurt our clients to talk to their clients, to make content that makes people want them to become followers and if we are lucky; let them become ambassadors. But there are no sure thing in communicating in social media. There are no do this and that will follow, for sure. And given that what we do is to produce content for our clients, what we do is very, very often; following our gut feeling. We consider what we would like ourselves, what we would enjoy. And of course, we base our feelings, advice and thoughts on what we know, what we have read and what others have shared; what we have learned from people in love with communication.

 

And therefor – back to the love, back to #Gulltaggen.
(click link to get all tweets regarding Gulltaggen)

I loved so many things at Gulltaggen and below I present my five biggest inlovements (I just made that word up, yeay!);

 

1.

What I loved most about Gulltaggen, is that they made me love myself more. Okay, maybe not love myself more – I’m still norwegian and we don’t like people who are in love with them selves. But; what I took from keynote presenters such as Chris Brogan, John H. Willshire, Mari Smith and Gary  Vaynerchuc, is that I do know quite a bit about communicating in social media. That my gut feeling is quite up to date. It’s not only me saying to our clients how important to be human, how important it is to give, give, give – and they will recieve, and that helping others is a way of helping yourself. I can now back up my sayings with new found statements from foreign speakers with a whole lot of experience and confidence between them. Disclaimer; No, this doesn’t mean that what all these great people said was old news to me and that they didn’t bring anything new to the table. Its just me showing appreciation about them being able to give me a renewed confident in myself and what I do.

 

2.

The second thing that I loved most about Gulltaggen, is what people like Joshua Davis, Kevin Kelly, John S. Rose and Bryan Eisenberg, provided for me. Brand new thoughts on fields of communication, of the importance of design, of social media, of being a part of this industry, what direction this whole thing is going in and what it would look like, and how people will (or will not) pay for things, in the future. With less immediately relevance to my every-day work, but not at all less important to get a grip on. I love how people with new thoughts can make me love new fields of information, want more of it and want me to focus on new areas of my business.

 

3.

The third thing I just loved, loved, loved at Gulltaggen, was the fact that Patrick Meier, Alex Bogusky and Jamil Abu-Wardeh & Maz Jobrani, kicked some serious «Isn’t social media just entertainment for boring, lazy teen-agers?»-butt! I have enough examples now for any potential client, family member or other who want to tell me that social media is just something that will fade away when the youth wants to do new, cooler stuff – since it’s not important for the rest of us anyway… Thanx!

 

4.

The fourth thing, or person, that for me was one of the most positive surprises at Gulltaggen, was Mr. Avinash Kaushik. People who know me, knows that I am a big fan of structure, numbers and analysis – a bit of a numbers nerd actually. I see numbers and forms in most things and I love to create stuff and make decisions based on solid research. Even so – as the days goes by, I find my self thinking «oh, this should be measured, this should be tracked in a way – but I don’t have the time right now and well, its going quite well on its own, doesn’t it?» Well, one thing I now know after Avinash’s keynote presentation, is that he thinks I should die. He is of course totally spot on; it takes a few hours to fully get into tools as Google Analytics, it takes a few minutes to set up and it takes a few minutes each day to read, understand and use – but the result on the other hand, is so much more! We get to make good decisions based on numbers and statistics, and we can test out different strategics or campaigns, learn and do better the next time. Oh, I love this stuff! A big bonus for me was that Avinash was able to give his keynote in a way that people absolutely loved! That meant two positive things for me; 1) people open their eyes to analytics and saw the value and the love of being a numbers nerd and 2) people saw that people who love statistics and analytics can in deed be funny, speak of numbers with great passion and with a whole lot of humor. Well, not that I will be funnier because Avinash is, but they get to see that the possibility of a structured, numbers loving analytic being funny, is something that isn’t only fiction – it can be true! Thats a good thing!

 

5.

And finally, the last love, number five; I just loved that for three whole days I was able to hang out with, talk with and be social with collegues in mind. For a small company like ours, with only two employees being my husband and myself, getting out like this, surrounded with people who get what we do, who is interested in many of the same things that I am – and who provide me with challenge, new thoughts and positive and / or constructive feedback, is extremely valuable. And when we get to be challenged with new thoughts from foreign speakers aswell, this gives us a good ground for interesting discussions.

 

So – I’m in love.

I have found new love, become more in love with already known love and have renewed my love for communication in social media – all in one conference. That must be a great compliment to INMA, the keynote presenters and the people who attended Gulltaggen, don’t you agree?

 

Some of the keynote presenters had such great thoughts, that I might want to share them in this blog to present & share them with my readers. The presenters first on my list are Chris Brogan and John H. Willshire, so please come back if you want to read more about what I took from their presentations and why I loved them.

 

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