I am honored in this episode to interview the one and only Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, as he talks about the upcoming 2nd Social Media Marketing World in San Diego, California in late March, 2014. Learn what differentiates his social media conference from others.

Key Highlights

[00:29] Introduction of Podcast Guests, Mike Stelzner

[01:13] Who is Mike and What Mike Does

[02:15] Wat Made Mike Launch from Blog into Physical Social Media Marketing Summits

[03:43] The Value of Attending Physical Social Media Conferences

[05:07] How Mike Differentiated His Conference from Others

[07:01] Mike's Little Secret

[08:58] Improving from Last Conferences

[10:34] New Speakers Coming In

[12:26] Final Thoughts

[12:44] Connect with Mike

Notable Quotes

• When people ask me about the value of going to social media, conferences, physical ones, you do have the education, but then you do have the networking and you meet people that you may end up working together with, you may end up end up hiring, they may end up hiring you or you make friends for life, it's really a magical thing when you bring people together, so I couldn't agree with you more.
• I'd thrive on on being able to meet people face to face and actually have conversations and not just like in nightclubs where the music is blaring, and a lot of these other conferences, they had their parties, but they were in nightclubs. And you could you just couldn't hear anything, you know, and it was impossible to network.
• And you know, it just goes to show that we often forget, but social media is about the social part, right? It's totally about meeting each other. And a lot of people forget about that.
• But I think the real stuff that happens is when you make those kinds of connections, that could lead to future you know, collaborations, or, like you said, employees or, or just, you know, building deeper relationships with people that you love and respect so that you never know what will happen.
• I wanted the speakers because this is a social media conference, I wanted the speakers to actually be accessible. So we didn't actually give them a place to go just for them. Instead, we gave everyone the same place to go, which was this massively big place

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