This post was originally published on Inside PR 2.97.
Live from New Orleans… well live to tape – Gini, Joe and I are together at PRSA Counselors Academy’s annual conference for agency owners/leaders (and we all had our parts to play…). The theme is ‘Jazz Up Your Agency: Stylings from the Best in the Biz’ and we thought we’d recap our first day and a half.
Joe talks about the opening keynote – a one-two punch featuring Gini and Jay Baer. They interviewed each other and offered a primer in content marketing and how agency owners can build trust and their businesses by integrating certain aspects of their personal and professional lives. We may think otherwise, but we get clients based on people and not the company name.
In addition to an engaging talk, the attendees all received a copy of Gini and Geoff Livingston’s new book, Marketing in the Round.
We continued our focus on content marketing with our second keynote, Marcus Sheridan, a hilarious, in your face presenter, who transformed his pool business into a content marketing powerhouse that used the long tail of search to generate sales results. His takeaway is to think about all the questions your customers are asking and write content that offers helpful answers.
As an event geared to business owners, Counselors’ other focus is to provide practical sessions that improve the way you run your agency. These range from profitability and processes to understanding and managing people and creating a culture. Joe did a roundtable on how to get your staff thinking about the business of the business and turning them into an army of entrepreneurs, based on Jen Prozek’s book and her 2011 keynote.
Next year, the conference will be in June 2013 in Austin Texas and Dana Hughens is the chair. If you’re an agency owner or leader, we think you’ll find a lot of value and encourage you to check it out. In the meantime, you can get a flavor of Counselors Academy from the Sharypic photowall.
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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.
This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.
