Once again, I’m thrilled to be participating on behalf of Digital Always Media in the latest on-line  conference series “SEO WebConference 2012”. This series of live 1 hour guest lectures has been taking place since August 3 and I’ll be speaking on Wednesday August 29th on “Web Analytics for SEO“.

What I love about participating in this series is not just the ability to give back to the community, but the ability to participate in something I strongly believe will be come more common in the near future. Yes on-line conferences are and will be common part of everyone’s learning process.

The benefits of on-line conferences in this format are:

• No need to travel, saving countless hours of travel time and expense
• The ability to spread out the conference sessions over several weeks to minimize the impact of being out of the office for 2 or more days when attending external events
• Allows conference organizers to get high quality and hard to get speakers who can more easily schedule in 1 hour instead of giving up 1 -2 days (because of travel etc.) to speak for 1 hour

However, there is one major short coming to on-line conference. That is the networking that goes on before, between and after sessions. I’ve been to many conferences over the years where I learned more in a impromptu 15 minute breakfast conversation than I did by sitting through countless sessions. I’ve  also mad life-long friends during the non-session times as well.

But the missing element of the conference networking is slowly working its way into the on-line world. I know during my on-line classes for the s Digital Analytics program, I set-up specific time for the students to get to know each other during the live classes and have heard from some of them that they did in fact form bounds with the other students. I’m sure components like this will slowly start working their way into on-line conferences as well.

The lesson here, don’t be afraid of on-line conferences or even on-line events. You can still learn a lot and save time and money on travel.

Jim Hedger

Jim Hedger is an organic SEO and digital marketing specialist. Jim has been involved in the online marketing industry since 1998 and a SEO since 1999. Best known as a broadcaster, interviewer, content writer and search industry commentator, Jim is a frequent conference speaker and organizer. He hosts the search focused radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM and is a WebmasterRadio.FM conference interviewer. Jim brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, passion and creative thinking to each project. Preferring a teamwork approach, Jim strives to inform and train his clients and their staff to run and maintain their own search and social media efforts.

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