Articles Tagged with Events

Online Networking (Anti-Sell Style)! My Cardiff Met Centre for Entrepreneurship Webinar Talk

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Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

Hello! So… I was meant to give a networking workshop to a bunch of Cardiff Metropolitan University students around mid-to-late March, but then this whole Coronavirus/COVID-19 happened (you might’ve heard of it!), soo inevitably we had to cancel. But the lovely folks at Cardiff Met’s Centre for Entrepreneurship asked if I wanted to do a webinar instead – with (understandably) a focus on online networking tactics rather than offline/face-to-face ones. If you saw my Anti-Sell talks at either Freelance Heroes Day 2019, or Swansea Digital Marketing towards the end of last year, it’s an adapted version specific to the things we can do during our current situation – a ‘lockdown edition,’ if you will.

During the hour-ish-long webinar, I give tips on:

  • What types of online networking opportunities exist – some obvious, some less-so,
  • Why you should target ‘semi-related’ groups/communities instead of just directly-related groups/communities, and what I mean by that,
  • How to remove (or at least reduce) the nerves that can come with participating in something online for the first time, e.g. a webinar or Facebook group,
  • How running or creating your own thing (rather than just ‘attending’ things) puts you in so much more of a visible position – and takes things further,
  • How you should ask for testimonials (i.e. where and how you should try to acquire them),
  • Why you should always try to remain calm, professional and respectful towards others,
  • Aaand a bunch of other stuff.

The folks at the Centre for Entrepreneurship recorded it, passed the recording onto me, and gave me their blessing to publish it publicly on YouTube – big thanks to Hannah, Steve and Lyndsey!

Here are the slides on SlideShare as well:

As an aside, I’m eagerly looking to do more webinars, podcast interviews, written/blog interviews, etc. at the moment – so if you know anyone looking for a guest/speaker/whatever (delete as appropriate), please let them know about me. As thanks I’ll send a free copy of the book to whoever helps me to land something (a free PDF copy for now, and then a free paperback copy as well once the lockdown has been lifted). Check out my speaking page for info, testimonials, past speaking gigs and more.

The talk is in line with Anti-Sell, the ‘sales guide for people who hate sales’ which I self-published last year. Learn more about it here.

Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

Anti-Sell – My Freelance Heroes Day Talk

Steve Morgan at FH Day 2019 photoAnti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

On Thursday I spoke at the incredible Freelance Heroes Day in Wolverhampton, which is an annual one-day conference run by Annie & Ed of the amazing Freelance Heroes community.

My talk was in conjunction with my new book, Anti-Sell – essentially a condensed talk version of the book, giving sales and networking tips to freelancers and small business owners who struggle with (or simply downright hate) sales.

Here’s the link to the slides, plus they’re embedded below:

I was blown away from the feedback following on from my talk. Here’s just a few examples of some of the lovely things people said:

Incidentally, if you’d like me to speak at your event about small business sales/networking, then please do get in touch. You can see my list of past speaking gigs here.

Oh and if you’ve yet to buy the book, go here. It’s available in paperback, Kindle and self-narrated audiobook formats from Amazon, Audible and the iTunes Store.

[Image credit – Steve Folland]

Anti-Sell now has its own dedicated website & blog! Check it out at Anti-Sell.com.

Become Cardiff SEO Meet’s Site Review Sponsor and Have Your Software Demoed to a Room of Digital Marketers…

Cardiff SEO Meet has some fantastic sponsors, including food sponsors and – as of the next event (our 8th one) – a website sponsor (website coming soon!) and a photo/video sponsor.

Recently however I realised that there’d be a great opportunity for someone to be a site review sponsor too, who’d get all the usual perks (listed below) and – if they’re an SEO software/tool provider – a really good added extra…

What is a site review? How do they work?

Our site reviews are essentially live SEO audits, where we quickly audit a volunteered website in 20-30 minutes, running it through a few different SEO tools and trying to give the website volunteer as much ‘quick win’ info as possible – whether that be related to keyword research, technical SEO, inbound link building, Google Maps optimisation, ecommerce SEO or whatever else is applicable to them/their business/their site. The volunteered site is announced privately to the Meetup group a few days before the event, giving them time to do some homework (if they want to) and come to the event prepared. We take suggestions from the audience on what might be wrong with the site and what they could be doing to get the most out of SEO.

Wanna learn more? I wrote about site reviews in more detail over on State of Digital.

We’ve run site reviews since the 2nd event, so we’ve done 6 in total so far. Only one has been filmed, which I’ve embedded below if you want to get an idea of how they go…

Notes on the video: a) you’ll have to forgive the filmed-on-an-iPhone quality; b) the first one we did was a bit clunky and we ended up veering away from SEO-specific topics in parts – they’ve run a lot more smoothly since then; c) it starts about 3 minutes and 25 seconds in

What do you mean “demoed to a room”…?

Cardiff SEO Meet Bierkeller stage photoWell usually we jump into a variety of tools: so I might run Screaming Frog, take a look at the site’s links using Majestic, etc. etc… and even get some random suggestions from the audience (the best one we’ve had to date is Keyword Shitter – LOL). There’s no particular reason why I choose these tools – I just go with what I already use and know.

But then it hit me: with the site review sponsor, we could showcase an SEO software tool for 5-10 minutes of the site review, giving it extra attention and focus during the audit. So if a technical SEO tool takes the slot then we spend longer looking at technical SEO; if a link analysis tool takes the slot then we spend longer looking at link analysis; you get the picture. And if someone takes the slot, I’ll make sure that we don’t use any of the sponsor’s direct competitors – so if it’s a link analysis tool, we won’t use any other link analysis tools – just the sponsor’s.

Click to read more!

Cardiff SEO Meet is Back (Already)

Cardiff SEO Meet at Bierkeller (Prisma)

Well that really was a brief hiatus… 😂

Less than a month ago I blogged saying that Cardiff SEO Meet was going on hiatus until after my son’s operation. Well between then and now he’s had updated scans and the doctor thinks he no longer needs his op any more, as everything is improving nicely, which is fantastic news. It means that I can carry on with Cardiff SEO Meet without the worry that I may have to cancel/reschedule the meetups to fit around the op.

(Also, sorry for being so open about all this, as I know it makes people uncomfortable… I just wanted to explain my reasoning in case anyone thought I was postponing events and taking a break from it for weak or unimportant reasons.)

Anyway… with that in mind, I’ve gone ahead and booked the next three dates at Cardiff Bierkeller, which is where we were for the last event. Here they are:

  • Cardiff SEO Meet #8 – Thursday 19th July
  • Cardiff SEO Meet #9 – Thursday 20th September*
  • Cardiff SEO Meet #10 – Thursday 22nd November

* For this event we’ll be in a different area of Bierkeller to usual, as our usual room is unavailable for this night. I’ll post more about this on the event’s dedicated Meetup page when the time comes.

There’s also a few minor/subtle changes that are being made going ahead:

  • You’ll notice above that the dates are 2 months apart instead of 3, which is something that I floated in the hiatus post. It means that we’ll be running 6 events a year going forward instead of 4. I also have some really exciting speakers in mind for the next few events (including an international keynote speaker)!
  • Instead of RSVPs on Meetup being open 2 weeks before the event date, RSVPs will open straight away, as soon as the event page goes live (usually 4-6 weeks before the event). I just think this’ll make it easier for people – I liked the idea of having a scheduled ‘ticket release’ time/date, but I always worry that the people who see the Meetup page as soon as it goes live forget about it by the time the RSVPs open, and therefore that we’re missing out on potential attendees.
  • Site reviews are continuing to happen, however whereas they used to be free for the site ‘volunteer’, I’ll now be asking for a fee – this is only because I’ve been messed around a few times in the past, with people cancelling last-minute or not having their website ready in time (e.g. if it was going through a launch or redesign). It’s £100, however half of it is a deposit that you get back after the event (so £50 really), and the money goes to charity as a donation. Want to be considered? There’s a bit of a waiting list but feel free to email me expressing interest. A few rules and terms apply though, so I can’t promise that you’ll be accepted (it’ll make more sense when we discuss it).

So keep an eye out for the Meetup event pages for each one in due course. Want to make sure you’re kept updated? Join the Meetup group and follow @CardiffSEOMeet on Twitter.

Cardiff SEO Meet is Going on a Temporary (& Hopefully Brief) Hiatus

Cardiff SEO Meet logo (Prisma'ed)I love running Cardiff SEO Meet – but it’s a lot of hard work.

Each time I run one of the events, I think to myself “enh, it’s just 2 speakers, and they’re 3 months apart – it’ll take no time to sort out!” – but then I inevitably forget about finding and liaising with the speakers; sorting out the site review volunteer; sorting everything out with the venue (which takes infinitely longer when we change venues – which has happened twice); hiring a helping hand; double-checking that the sponsors are happy with everything; scheduling a ton of tweets; and all the other stuff that goes with it.

The last couple of events have been especially tough to organise because since last summer my youngest son (who recently turned one year old) has been in-and-out of hospital due to an on-going health issue. He had an operation scheduled for January just gone, so at the time I booked the next event for March (the 7th event) because I thought that the op would be well and truly out of the way by then and that he would’ve also fully recovered by then, too. But I didn’t consider the fact that the op may get rescheduled… which it did. A lot. First to early February, and then there was talk that it’d take place in March… Uh-oh.

It’s now been rescheduled again, this time in May (and there’s talk that it may move yet again). The next event should take place around then (May/June) if I want to keep it true to the quarterly formula. But with the op looming and its date still possibly TBC, I’m reluctant to book the next Cardiff SEO Meet date only to have to cancel/reschedule it if they end up clashing…

So I’ve decided to put Cardiff SEO Meet on temporary hiatus until the op’s done-and-dusted and my boy’s seen a full recovery.

It’ll hopefully be brief… Heck, it might work out that it’s only a couple of months longer anyway (a gap of 4-5 months instead of 3).

Anddd… No promises but I might start to make the event every 2 months instead of every 3 months when it returns. So there’s good news in the pipeline.

I just wanna take the time to say a big thank you to Zoe at Cardiff Bierkeller (who was great to work with – especially when we had to reschedule the most recent event due to the snow), the speakers and site review at the last event (Rhydian, Francesca and Jacqui), and the five sponsors for the last couple of events: Tom of Ghost Marketing, Peter of Xanthe Studios, Brett & Kim of Traffic Jam Media, Gareth of Made Clear and Rakesh of Escentual.com. And everyone else who’s supported the meetup in one way or another. You people rock.