You will find my overall personal experience at the SES Chicago Expo on a separate post.  What I wanted to dive in here is in regards to the first keynote speaker Jeff Jarvis, Author of What Would Google Do?

Without any doubt Jeff is a great speaker, hands down.  I have not read his book and have little anticipation of doing so as my understanding is that it deals with a lot of hypothesis which I like facts a little more; but I could be mistaken.  Also, part of me is lazy and I have kids, so personal time…HA… I don’t think so.

Probably the most significant ‘take-away’ I got from Jeff’s presentation was “Content With No Links, Has NO Value”.  How true is that, millions of people add content to web daily and no one knows about it unless you builds links and send traffic to your content.

Jeff Jarvis Speaking At SES Chicago Expo

Jeff spoke of a very interesting topic in that users of the internet are moving away from search engines and relying more on their social networks for information and advice.  I found this to be very true from what I see on a regular basis.  Just go ahead to Google Trends for a minute, and search for the phrase ‘Chicago Hotels’.  Notice how the search for this phrase is trending downward year over year.  Why is this?  Well, more and more people are utilizing social media and web2.0 sites for information, reviews, rates/pricing and much more.  Why visit a search engine when you can ask your social network which are honest views and reviews, not some affiliate trying to make a buck.

Anyway, Jeff’s past in largely in media.  He spoke of in the past how media outlets had the strategically approach of ‘we tell the people what the news is’ and ‘people will find you’ (meaning people will find the media).  Because we are in the new age of technically, there has been a complete shift in the media approach.  Now, more than every ‘the people decide what news they want’ and ‘you must now find the people’ (meaning the media must seek and bring the news to the people).  Is the new age of technology killing media? Kind of.  But media outlets need to adapt.  People would rather follow a niche site on a RSS feed or follow a Twitter link from a trusted friend rather than pick up the newspaper these days.

Something else I wanted to mention that was said by Jeff is that “Home Pages Are Dead”.  Now that’s a big statement.  But what he meant by that was in the past a home page was the entry point, the gateway if you will for site visitors.  Now, through social media your back end content pages are the entry point.  Create a great piece of content, and distribute it your social network; odds are this new and fresh content is not on your home page but rather a sub page or sub domain or blog.  Long story short, less and less people visit home pages of media related sites when getting their news.  People now search from links in emails and social networks to find newsworthy content, not XYZ Media’s home page.

My final thought: SES Chicago Expo made a great choice in having Jeff Jarvis as Keynote Speaker.