I spent this past Saturday at an Internet marketing seminar on the Gold Coast, Australia. I’ve been to a couple of Internet marketing seminars/conferences now, and this was a refreshing change from the usual pitch-fest. So what happened and why was everyone buzzing before, during and after the event?

Well, I helped make the event happen of course! Okay, let’s not exaggerate. I played my part in sending out emails, organizing accommodation, and speaking, but hats must go off to Peter Drew for hosting the event and Michael Silvester for organizing the event. And then there was our great group of talented speakers (James Schramko, Graeme Salter, Josh Uebergang and Quentin Brown) who, along with myself, Michael and Peter, shared some fabulous content.

And that’s not to mention our audience of enthusiastic, motivated Internet marketers. All helped to make it a great day of educational content, networking and fun.

Okay, but what exactly DID this event deliver and more to the point… why did it deliver when so many other seminars don’t?

Firstly, each speaker delivered solid, detailed content and didn’t hold back on the details. Not just during their presentations or when answering questions, but during the breaks too. None of the presentations were obvious presales to some kind of product or service. And there was no pitching at any point during the event.

Now, from a marketing perspective I’m not against pitch fests. If the model works, it works. But someone very close to the Internet marketing / business opportunity seminar business tells me that attendance at big pitch-fests - where the model is ‘tell-as-little-as-possible-then-pitch-as-much-as-possible’ - is declining. At least in Australia.

Maybe people are tiring of seeing the same old faces selling the same old things… and are discovering that what they’re paying for just isn’t delivering on its promise.

Now, we all know there’s a limit to what you can share in a 45-60 minute presentation, so I’m not sure why some speakers are worried about giving away too much information when they talk. And if the content is good… chances are they’ll end up getting quite a few sales out of it. I suspect that some of our speakers did, indeed, acquire a few clients based on their presentations. Probably long-term, loyal customers at that (what’s the bet their average lifetime value beats that of customers acquired at traditional pitch-fests?).

So there’s no reason to believe that Internet marketing seminars - like other seminars - can’t still be a vehicle for speakers to sell their wares. Or even that there can’t be any kind of pitching or “selling at the back of the room”. But I think we’re all realizing that “education sells”… which means there has to be education, not just selling!

The Gold Coast seminar was also small, which was invaluable in helping people get to know - and learn from - each other. That’s not to say that an event with a few hundred people can’t work. It’s just that a more intimate gathering - where you spend a whole day i.e. from 9am to after dinner and break bread with 20 or so others - gives you a real chance to forge true relationships. Future events are unlikely to be so small, but there is probably a “magic number” where having any more people will detract from the value everyone gets out of the event.

All in all, it was a fantastic day and I look forward to being part of future such events. Want to be there too? Don’t worry, just keep reading this newsletter and you’ll be the first to know. (Hint: if you live overseas, consider scheduling a trip to Australia next year).

Jason Calacanis - serial Internet entrepreneur and the guy who co-founded Weblogs, Inc. with Brian Alvey - announced on Friday that he was retiring from blogging. He subsequently sent an email to a list of about 750 subscribers explaining that blogging was dead.

Well, “blogging” as Jason understood it to be.

In his email, Jason wrote that bloggers now spend more time and effort trying to broadcast their blogs, than actually blogging:

“Bloggers spend more time digging, tweeting, and SEOing their posts than they do on the posts themselves. In the early days of blogging Peter Rojas, who was my blog professor, told me what was required to win at blogging: “show up every day.” In 2003 and 2004 that was the case. Today? What’s required is a team of social marketers to get your message out there, and a second one to manage the fall-out from whatever you’ve said.”

Jason went on to say:

“Excelling in blogging today is about link-baiting, the act of writing something inflammatory in order to get a link.”

Ironically (i.e. for anyone who remembers ardent bloggers announcing that EMAIL is dead), Jason heralded email as his communication tool of choice, owing to its “intimacy” and “immediacy”.

He pointed out that email facilitates a “level playing field” between sender and recipient, where there is commitment on both sides - the commitment of the sender to send, and the commitment of the recipient to subscribe to the email list in the first place. I should also add that Jason aims to limit his list to a 1,000 or so subscribers, in order to achieve a “deeper” relationship with his subscribers.

Hats off to Jason for making a choice about the communication medium right for him, based on his individual goals and circumstances.

But this is just a CHOICE - it’s not right or wrong.

Blogging HAS changed over the past 3-4 years. It has evolved from being an “open diary” kind of medium to being a medium used by a range of individuals, journalists, businesses, interest groups and others, for a range of purposes. And the term “blog” is coming to be synonymous with “website content management system”, rather than a style of communicating on the web.

Can blogging no longer facilitate intimate and immediate communications? Do bloggers really spend more time trying to get attention FOR their blogs, than writing interesting, compelling content ON their blogs?

Maybe the majority of bloggers ARE more interested in gaining attention for their blogs than writing worthwhile blogs in the first place. Heck, we all know of Internet marketers who specifically advise people to set up blogs purely for marketing purposes, regardless of their content.

And perhaps this is not what blogging used to be about. And on that basis, perhaps blogging is, to some extent, dead. But the same could be said about email: once it was used for personal messages between individuals, now it is used for personal messages between individuals… AND for business communication purposes… AND for promotional purposes… AND for all kinds of other purposes.

So, just like email is a MEDIUM, so too is a blog. If blogging is dead… long live blogging!

Furthermore, I can’t see why a blog - as a medium - can’t still facilitate an intimate, immediate and deep relationship between a writer and his or her readers. What’s stopping Jason from setting up a private blog that is only available to 1,000 of his closest friends? What’s stopping him from keeping comments private? Surely such a blog would have an advantage over email in the sense that it won’t suffer from deliverability challenges.

That said, I do agree that email has the edge when it comes to intimacy and relationship building. An email IS a bit more personal and “special than a web-based blog post. This is basically because an email - assuming it’s not spam - is an invited guest to YOUR PLACE i.e. your email inbox, and, as such, is likely to grab more of your attention and interest than a blog post appearing on someone ELSE’s website. So if I had to choose, I would rather send emails than post messages on a blog.

But, of course, you and I do NOT have to choose. We can do both. As marketers, we can enjoy the best of both worlds - the ability to have our blog posts spread or shared across the web in order to generate traffic and interest in our offerings - AND the ability to develop a deeper relationship with our subscribers via email.

Sources: Nik Cubrilovic, “Jason Calacanis’ First New Email Post”, TechCrunch, July 13, 2008, Wikipedia, “Jason Calacanis”, Wikipedia, Last Updated July 14, 2008