I believe that the future of social media is video. I also love social media. The ability to reach an audience from a phone or computer is a blessing to many.
For these reasons I was very excited to attend the the 5th annual Vid Summit. For those of you who are not familiar with what VidSummit is, I am going to borrow the description that they have listed on their website because it describes the event perfectly. “Where The World’s Top Video Influencers, Video Marketers And Brands Reveal Everything They Know About Turning Videos Into Sales”. Tickets to this event are not cheap, a full attendee pass will cost you $797, while a virtual pass option will cost you $197.
The three day event is composed of a reception and kick off, networking party sponsored by Patreon on day 1. Day 2 and 3 are packed with seminars, and when I say packed I mean PACKED. From 8 am till 6 pm each day you have 3-4 options for seminars that you can attend in each time slot. The vast majority of these seminars would be greatly beneficial to anyone active in the digital space.
It was great to see the creators I watch while at home in person, and you could really feel how passionate they are about the industry and the knowledge that they were sharing. Another fun bonus was seeing many creators that I enjoy watching who were not there to speak, in the audience soaking up the information.
Gary Vaynerchuk gave the lunch keynote speech on the second day, to a packed and eager audience. Online Gary is larger then life, and in person even more so. He has a way of commanding a room which can not be taught, his honesty and blunt way of speaking really seemed to resonate with the crowd. He spoke about his journey, starting out in 2006 with a 20 minute wine show that very few people watched in the first 18 months. Then explaining how content creators are inherently selfish and focus too much on themselves rather then focusing on their own truth. He explained that there was a fundamental difference between being an entrepreneur and being a successful entrepreneur, and went on to explain how for many years he would stay up till 4 am answering every single tweet, comment, etc. The crowd listened eagerly to each and every inspirational word. Gary, along with all the speakers was happy to stay after his speech to meet and speak with the audience one on one. There was an option to purchase a private lunch with Gary, which regrettably we did not do. After hearing him live, I am certain it was a valuable experience for those who did.
Vid IQ sponsored the regular lunch for everyone else, and attendees were able to eat and chat with each other in the seminar rooms and in the lobby.
We, Daily Ovation, were honored to be a part of Matthew Faraci’s seminar entitled “Launching Your Video: How to Create a Moment that will Garner Media Attention”. For those of you not familiar with Matthew Faraci, he is a media strategist whose work you have seen included in successful campaigns with many companies including Universal Studios, Harmon Brothers and Squatty Potty. His seminar focused on utilizing the media to the benefit of creators and we were thrilled to join him on stage and advise what we look for in press releases, and give some do’s and don’ts. It was a pleasure to get to speak with many of the attendees afterwards about helping them reach new audience members by publishing their press releases.
The day ended with a keynote from Daniel Markham, who is a creator I was not familiar with. His channel, What’s Inside, started as a school project for his son and he explained how he has grown to over 6 million subscribers. I really enjoyed hearing him speak about his journey, and many of the lessons he spoke about could be easily applied. The big take away for me was to listen to your audience, they will tell you what is working and what is not. Lean into it.
Needless to say I was thrilled with the first day of seminars at VidSummit. I felt that it was definitely a good value for the full price ticket and we still had another full day of seminars to go! More on that tomorrow.
If you are a content creator or involved marketing I highly suggest you go to next years VidSummit. For more information you can check out their website: https://vidsummit.com.
