This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series - feel free to nominate someone over here.
Kelvin Newman lives in Worthing, a town in England with his wife and kids. No, he is not based in Brighton, even though he is the founder of BrightonSEO, a very large SEO/SEM conference. He says his wife is super patient with him and shared this hilarious story with me:
I'm lucky enough to have a very supportive family. My wife is especially patient, like the time I bought an arcade machine to give away at BrightonSEO, loaded it in the car but couldn't get it out, or fit a passenger in the car while my wife was about to give birth to my eldest. Or that time when I accidentally got three pallets of brightonSEO tshirts delivered to my house rather than the office while I was away on a work trip. Oh and I'm lucky to have kids who despite plenty of evidence to the contrary think I have a cool job organising a stupid big party.
Kelvin has been in the SEO community for over a decade, and you can tell, he loves helping people in the industry. Not only does he run an SEM conference that thousands of people attend yearly, he is also constantly sharing content with his followers and helping the community get smarter and better.
He is always looking to help both those new in the industry and those in the industry for a long time, to pursue larger goals like speaking at events or simply networking with like-minded people. This helps the individuals in the industry grow in their professional careers, it helps the whole industry simply get smarter, more efficient and better overall.
Running an conference is a huge headache, trust me, I know first hand. But Kelvin does it with grace and more importantly, he does it because he really cares about the results it has on those who attend, speak and participate in those events.
I should note, the event starts today, so he is probably super busy right now!
Kevin Gibbons nominated Kelvin and wrote:
Kelvin has done more for the UK search industry than anyone I could think of.I've known Kelvin for over 10 years now, he's always been very passionate about SEO - and has channelled that into creating such a fantastic event in BrightonSEO which has scaled incredibly over the years.
Kelvin and his team, have done a great job in bringing together everyone at all levels of experience to educate, network and have a good time.
He's always found a way to help people get into the industry, whether as an attendee, or often as a first time speaker. And for the older heads like myself, it's more of a reunion, where you have to go to meet back up with everyone!
Kelvin Newman Bio: Kelvin Newman is a search marketer who inadvertently ended up organising one of the world's largest SEO and PPC conference. BrightonSEO started out as a few people meeting up in the pub to talk about their little area of interest. Each time he arranged the event he had to keep booking bigger venues, now more than 3500 people come to the event from 40 countries.
Favorite thing about the SEM community? The camaraderie is something that really makes the SEO industry so special. You can rock up at an event start talking to some randomly and find a friend for life. It's the same online. Even the busiest members of the community have plenty of time to help people starting out or just learning about SEO. You can learn more about SEO free of charge on the most popular blogs and social accounts than most people learn at university. It's strange to work in a sector where people are almost competitive in how generous they can be in their knowledge and support.
One piece of advice to the SEOs out there? Find a topic or sub specialism you really enjoy and dive deep, that's a great approach for anyone in-house or agency side. It's especially useful if you're looking to build your industry profile. As time goes on and your career progresses you'll have to broaden your skills and outlook but taking the chance to dive deep sets you for where-ever you eventually end up.
Favorite things in general? I'm a person with ever changing hobbies, finding a new hobby and really learning about it inside and out. Eventually I get bored and move onto something else but that initial interest and devouring anything I can possibly learn about the subject is so much fun. At the moment that's about electric vehicles like Tesla and Sinclair C5s, in the past it's been mountain biking, hifi, record collecting, bread making, homebrew, you name it I probably had a very intense interest in it for six weeks!
What you want to be known for in the SEO space? I just want to help people meet and learn ways to do their job a little better. It's not a crazy ambition but I like finding crazy ways to achieve it.
To learn more about Kelvin, check out BrightonSEO, he also wants you to check out RoughAgenda.com and you can follow him on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series - feel free to nominate someone over here.
