Second Time Attendee, First Time Speaker

By Chris Link

Back in August, I was lucky enough to be able to present at this year’s GWA Conference in Buffalo, NY. I presented about search engine optimization (SEO), sharing the stage with the brilliant and well-known boutique landscape company owner Jan Bills, who is also an expert at Facebook marketing.

This was the second GWA conference I attended, so I knew what to expect from the conference itself.

However, I had never presented before, so this was definitely a learning experience. I have to be honest, though, knowing how nice and friendly everyone is at the GWA conference helped ease my nerves about presenting. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know if I would have agreed to present, because I would have been too nervous.

I was absolutely blown away with how many people attended our presentation! And not only that, there were so many great questions that we ran out of time to cover them all.

During the presentation, I told a story of how being a member of GWA has benefited me.  A week before the conference, Jan and I were on the phone trying to figure out how we should do our presentation. Later that night, I was working on my website and started to get a bunch of notifications from our Facebook business page. As it turns out, Jan had shared a post of ours on her Facebook account which has over 300,000 followers. And that post went viral!  So over 160,000 people ended up seeing our business’s post because of Jan sharing it.

It was a big “wow” moment for me, and validated my GWA experience.

I have met many amazing people and created friendships by being a member of this great organization. These amazing GWA friends have also helped me spread the word about our new business. This is a benefit I cannot measure or replicate with anything else. This is truly the best organization I have been a part of.

 

Meet the Author

Chris Link is the co-owner of PlantAddicts.com. The website sells hard to find plants directly to homeowners. You can also join Plant Addicts Anonymous which is a loyalty program that helps people save money on plants by earning points for purchases, friend referrals, birthdays and more.