2009 Miami Chamber of Commerce Goals Conference Wrap Up

This year’s Miami Chamber of Commerce Goals Conference was a phenomenal networking event. We sponsored a booth featuring our latest analysis tool and provided a few progressive marketing representatives with immediately actionable SEO reports. There was strong turnout from South Florida’s business elite and it was remarkable to see a diverse group of business owners/representatives mingling and investigating innovative business services.

Our booth was a hit; stylistically, functionally, and visually. As a relatively new Miami SEO agency, it was intriguing to see the reactions from business owners who had never heard of SEO or realized their “online marketing efforts” were in need of improvement. We spend quite a bit of time in the SEO world, and we forget sometimes our industry is still burgeoning. In fact, this was the first trade show in which i’ve ever participated where one of the other vendors actually explained to me they “didn’t want to be found online” because they want people only to locate them by branded search.

I still can’t quite come to terms with that statement.

Sitting next to trend setters in the business community like wachovia, terremark, wackenhut, konica minolta, and a multitude of assorted advertising agencies was a remarkable feeling. It’s humbling to realize how far we’ve come in a relatively short amount of time…and we’re exceptionally grateful to the people and business affiliates who’ve helped us grow so quickly. The more time we spent speaking with vendor reps from the other marketplace sponsors, the more we realized the demand for our services is growing.  Bringing your business online, properly, is an arduous process…and without the right people on your team…can have disastrous consequences.

For me anyways, the most difficult aspect of the show was speaking with people who contracted SEO services and didn’t get the results they were promised. There’s a ton of companies out there masquerading as qualified SEO’s, which greatly reduces the credibility of everyone else who actually knows what they’re doing. This is a rampant problem in the SEO community, and it’s something everyone on the right side of the law is working to neutralize.

As a result of my experience at the 2009 Miami Chamber of Commerce Goals Conference, I’ve realized there’s still a tremendous need for ground level SEO education. For the most part, influential business leaders in our community still don’t “get it”. That’s a big problem…because they’re missing out on a myriad of opportunities to launch their companies into a more productive era and help other companies become stronger during difficult economic conditions.