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DOYO Live to take place August 4
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Lowellville native Dennis Schiraldi saw the pulse beating in Youngstown when he moved away.
“Every time I would come back I would be like, ‘Oh, there’s something new,’” he said.
Schiraldi is now a part of what’s new in Youngstown.
The marketing master and founder of CYO Marketing, a local marketing firm, created Youngstown’s first DOYO Live, a digital marketing and interactive design conference happening Aug. 4 at Youngstown State University’s Williamson College of Business.
The conference will feature several speakers including Joe Pulizzi, an entrepreneur, speaker and author of “Content Inc.”
Pulizzi is the founder of Content Marketing Institute, a content marketing educational resource that hosts the world’s largest content marketing event, Content Marketing World, in Cleveland every September.
Pulizzi’s conference attracts 4,000 people. Schiraldi’s goal for Youngstown is to bring in 200, but he hopes for the conference to grow every year.
“We want to build allies and make this positive for the area,” Pulizzi said.
Schiraldi was inspired to start DOYO after he went to a conference in Rochester, Minn. He realized the area could use a conference of its own.
“We have a ton of marketing professionals [here],” he said.
He asked around and heard “we need it, we need it, we need it.”
“I kept getting validation from people in marketing who are business owners,” he said.
But DOYO is not just about the conference. The conference is an extension of the DOYO website that launched in January. On the site’s blog, marketing professionals consistently write up advice for followers.
“This is an educational resource that will generate content constantly,” Schiraldi said.
Pulizzi explained for businesses to break through to consumers they need to have valuable, relative information out there.
“Most businesses don’t do this,” he said. “We still focus on our products.”
His new book, which every DOYO Live attendee will receive, focuses on a six-step method to help entrepreneurs build an audience with their content.
Before 1990, consumers only had a small number of channels to get their content. Now, thousands of channels are at their fingertips.
“That’s why it’s harder to get attention today,” Pulizzi said. “It’s more difficult but there’s more opportunity.”
Pulizzi will talk about the six-step method in his book at DOYO Live.
Nate Riggs, keynote speaker from NR Media Group, will discuss HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Methodology.
The conference also will have 15 breakout sessions, networking and workshops.
For more information and to register go to www.doyolive.com/.