Alun Rowe at Think Visibility Stephen Pavlovich at Think Visibility Dom Hodgson at Think Visibility

Alun Rowe, Stephen Pavlovich and Dom Hodgson at Think Visibility. Photos by Steven Lilley

Minutes pass. Then some more. Tapping of the fingers, friction between brain cells. Sip of ol’ trusty Red Bull. You know what, I’ll just take the leap. This is my first post, and I’ll be damned if blogging isn’t frightening. But it’ll pass. And how do you overcome your fear? You dive in the deep end of the pool. With sharks. Okay maybe not sharks, but you get the idea. So I’ll tell a tale of my initial fear of going to my first seminar last weekend and how that went for me. Natually, I live to tell the tale.

You’ll be forgiven for assuming I booked my Think Visibility ticket in advance and counted down the days to this much awaited day, quite possibly striking each day on my hello kitty calendar. In cruel, harsh reality however, I wasn’t able to buy a ticket as the event was sold out, and even when I bid on a charity ticket via e-bay, I missed the bid by just seconds as I was helping myself to a large glass of white wine when I was visiting my sister in Manchester. I went back home to Leeds feeling glum, until that fateful morning of the event on Saturday March 13th.

Due to a last minute cancellation from Sixt UK half an hour before it started, I was able to go down to the event, though I’d be missing out on the morning sessions.

BRANDING: Your Brand Is More Important Than Your URL

I arrived at lunchtime which was great to meet others and grab some lunch before going to Alan Rowe’s session about Branding which covered Social Media topics. Within the first few minutes of Alun’s talk I was getting comfy, and not just in my seat. I thought, hey this isn’t so bad. I was so scared that being devoid of SEO experience, I’d be out of my depth, but Alun’s talk was a great starting point for me.

LINK BUILDING: Getting The Links That Matter

Paddy Moogan’s talk about link building was influential and motivated me to create a link building plan, something which I have previously played around with but hadn’t put into action. This was Paddy’s first presentation, but he did a great job! Word on the street (oh okay, the Internet) is that Paddy received great feedback for this. His thoughts on Think Visibility can be found here at Pin Digital Blog (or skip to the presentation slides). Also check out Link Building 101 (PDF).

SOCIAL MEDIA: Social Media and Viral Marketing

The 3rd session with ‘local lad’ Illiya Vjestica was a light hearted end to the individual sessions, which covered Social Media techniques and practices, how viral marketing makes an impact and why. I was glad to get a double helping of social media in one day, and Illiya made this session fun and motivational. Now my productivity has been given a good kick in the right direction..!

SEO: The BBC, Search Engines and Reach

The last session of the day was with John O’Donovan from the BBC. I didn’t think the topic of changing headlines would hold any significance to me, as (up until now) I had just one task as a Freelancer (besides managing my finances, my time, being productive, and oh, just about everything else, but onwards we go). Design. As I mentioned at the start of (this incredibly longer than expected) post, I was afraid of blogging. Obviously, I’m now at the point where I have ventured into the whole concept of writing on such a public level, and here we are.

Where was I.. oh yes. Blogging. Scary. Grr.

I’ve always been fascinated with writing (ask my English teacher Mr Kane, I would hand in a whole novel – more or less – when he asked us to write 5 pages) so why I was terrified of blogging is beyond me. Sitting in on John’s presentation was hugely inspiring – I learnt the importance of headlines, not just changing the headlines themselves, but choosing your keywords can make a difference.

Last Words by Dom Hodgson

The closing speech by Dom was great. Many, many applauses for everyone involved, including the Think Visibility team, speakers, sponsors and Alea for being such a great place to hold the event. I think by this point a lot of people needed a drink!

The After Party

The after party was fantastic, although I didn’t stay too long and missed out on the casino fun – Wine makes me tipsy and therefore sleepy, the free bar tended to that! It was great to hang about and have a chat with other people from the event.

What I Took Away With Me

No, I didn’t loot the casino and run for my life..

As a designer with no professional experience of SEO, this was a great first event for me, and has given me the confidence to go down that road again, not only to September’s Think Visibility, but for other SEO events. I would like to see some (in-depth) usability topics covered too.

If you are curious about SEO and want to learn more about the theories and working practices (some great examples were covered by the speakers), I would suggest giving September’s Think Visibility a go. It was fun day for me, and great for networking, though no-one was pushing business cards on me, I’m happy to say!

My first post was …slightly more lengthy than originally intended, I wasn’t joking about with jumping in at the deep end, it turns out! Usually I would blame it on my over active imagination, but this was a real story, honest..

I’d gladly link to any other reviews of Think Visibility 3!
Send me the link to the review/s in the comments section.