Passion or Money?

A few days ago I had an exchange with Hugh Mcleod about a post he'd done where he was talking about using your industry's biggest blogs to advertise your own.

That's advice that should work for those of you considering blogs for your industry events.  Many, many subjects are now covered daily by numerous enthusiast and consumer-oriented blogs that will attract readership by your exhibitors and attendees.  Judiciously selected which of those to advertise on will help get your blog jump-started.

But what of our own industry?

I had commented to Hugh that in the case of the trade show industry, TSMR is the most subscribed to blog, best as I can tell, which should also imply most trafficked.  Where does someone like me go to advertise?

It's relatively easy to "trick" people to visiting for the purpose of getting more eyeballs over here.  But we're not about eyeballs.  We're about connecting on ideas and putting out messages that resonate with people willing to listen.  That kind of organic growth is extremely hard to come by in this industry. 

I personally know 95% of everyone who comments over here.  I think the almost same could be said for Face2Face and TradeshowBlues, perhaps even Expophile.  And if we don't know the commenters personally, we've likely at least heard of them or their organizations before.

Some of our growth challenges may be due to the perception that we talk way too much about blogs and social networking over here, which tends to draw the same commenters over and over again and which probably turns many other off who come here to read about M&A activity and industry gossip. 

I've chosen to write a lot about marketing built on social networking because (a) the subject interests me, and (b) that's among the areas with the deepest concentration of content currently being blogged, which is key to building readership. 

Posts about blogs and Web 2.0 types of communications represent about 40% of TSMR content.  Which means 60% of what's here is still applicable to show managers who want nothing to do with blogging right now.

Besides, there just isn't a ton of info being blogged regarding direct mail (Bob Bly) or other "traditional" marketing at this point.  Most of the PR content being blogged about has to do with, you guessed it, using blogs for PR. 

That's not all.  Currently the majority of articles on shows and conferences that are picked up on the PR services and hit my Google feeds happen to be tech and marketing events.  I'd estimate 80% of the show stories I see are on tech and marketing events.  Thus we tend to report more on those than others.

We'll do something like 60,000 individual viewer sessions this year.  That's not bad (actually puts us in top 1% of most-read blogs) and certainly a hell of lot better than our first six months in Q3/Q4 2003.  I keep asking why it's not double or triple that and I'm not entirely convinced it's because of everything mentioned above.  It's something else. 

Odd thing is, I was averaging higher daily readership on my previous effort ("Xiled in Sofia: Please Send Mexican Food", no link available) from back when I was in Bulgaria.  That blog was part industry-related, part travelogue, part cultural observations.  Maybe the higher traffic from three years ago was because there were 1/10th the number of blogs back then and everyone was checking everyone else out?  Or maybe it was that the content resonated with more people because it was covered subjects other than trade shows and provided a look as to how Western marketing methods and trade shows fit into a post-Soviet economy.  I honestly don't know.

But what I'm thinking is this:  Today's best blogs out there are ones where both the authors AND their readers feel passion for their subjects being discussed.  It's a two-way street.

At the moment, it seems as though the folks associated with big shows just don't give a lick about much of anything I'm talking about here.  It's the smaller shows, the alternative media folks, individual exhibitors and industry suppliers who keep this thing going, not the Reeds, VNUs, Advanstars or Pentons.

Having been in the industry for 20-odd years, I've become very cognizant of the fact that many folks from the abovementioned companies are there not for the passion of exploring the potential of trade shows and conferences, but for the money involved in managing higher-margin properties (can you tell I'm heading off to SISO in a few hours?)  Nothing inherently wrong with that.  Many times I've wished I could turn off my right brain and focus on balance sheets.  But I can't.  I'm a marketer.  New ideas excite me more than managing profit centers.  I've tried the latter and it didn't take.

As we're now into our third year over here, I've noted who's commenting, where my leads are coming from and who I'm talking to on a regular basis about projects and concepts.  And with one exception, these people are not from the big guys.  They're from the fringes - small shows, fast-track seminars, application developers.  Some have former "big show" experience, others don't.

One thing they all share is a passion to do something new.  And to offer and present content and concepts in ways they believe are markedly different than what the big shows are doing.  For most, theirs in the only skin in the game.  There is no development war chest, only a second mortgage.  If they lose, they're not just risking a job title.  They're risking what they own.

These are the folks I want to work with.  So you may be seeing a shift in content focus over here towards smaller events where the energy is high and the passions higher.  No risk for me since the big boys aren't paying attention anyway. 

I don't want to be the guy in Hugh's cartoon.