Happy Birthday! LocalU Turns 10 Today!
Carrie Hill

February 4, 2020 | ,

Matt McGee pointed out to me that today is the 10th anniversary of the first LocalU conference – held on February 4, 2010 in Spokane, WA! Of course, Matt provided, and I could not resist, including a walk down photographic memory lane.

LocalU started back in 2010 – and has reached out to agency, in-house, multi-location and SMB marketers in places across the US and Canada. We’ve held events in Edmonton, Austin, Williamsburg, Dallas, Wichita Falls, Southern California, Seattle, New York City – and Upstate New York – and a lot of spots in between.

As of January 1, 2020, LocalU was purchased by Joy Hawkins & Sterling Sky, Inc. Joy has some plans to improve LocalU – but is dedicated to making sure the collegial community stays intact. Our focus will always be on arming our members and attendees with the best, most trustworthy advice available.

Joy shares:

We will be sprucing up the LocalU forums and continue to promote them as a premium membership forum where you will still have access to some of the best experts in Local Search for a fraction of what consulting fees would cost. We also would like to plan LocalU Advanced seminars in fixed locations & months year over year, so planning your attendance and travel is easier to budget. We’re working to cultivate a group of writers to regularly contribute data-driven knowledge around local search tactics, tips and news to help our readers wade through the plethora of information they might encounter.

We owe a lot to all of the people who founded and have been involved with LocalU over the last decade, we wouldn’t be where we are without you!

Some of the founders and alumni have shared their favorite moments/experiences with LocalU.

What I love about Local U is all the sharing that happens at every event. Everyone is there to help everyone else navigate the weird world of local search, and there’s a level of camaraderie that I’ve never found at any other marketing event.

Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point

There are too many moments to recall, many of which happened at Mike B’s expense 🙂 . Aside from the friends and fellowship, my favorite times from LocalU were when we would do live consultations with actual SMBs in attendance. We delivered so much value in half an hour and some of those folks have stayed in touch ever since.

Will Scott, Search Influence

My favorite moment from Local U was at the first Local U SMB event in Edmonton. Ed Reese forgot that you needed a passport to go to Canada, and got turned back at the airport. Someone had to do his talk, so I volunteered. All I had were the slides and no context, so I just made it up as I clicked through the slides. It was my first time speaking at an event, and I was nervous to begin with. 😆

Darren Shaw, Whitespark

We’d love to hear your experiences with LocalU in the comments below! If you have fun photos to share – be sure to tag @localuniv and #localu on Twitter!

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Carrie Hill

Carrie Hill

Carrie comes to Sterling Sky with SEO experience that dates back to 2005! She has a passion for figuring out what works for each and every client and picking apart the problems that arise in our “it depends” relationship with Google. She has also been organizing and nurturing the LocalU Conference Series since 2017 – through to today – across a hectic few years of pandemic and back into in-person conferences again.

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