At the beginning of 2016 I set myself a goodreads challenge to read at least 30 books this year. 

I'm well on track, mixing the books between business-related ones around marketing, PR, strategy, and fictional novels. 

In addition, I've also noticed a trend towards books on personal development and particularly Leadership and Emotional Intelligence or the ability to recognise, understand and manage our own emotions and recognise, understand and influence those of others. 

I've written about these topics on a few occasions throughout the year so you might have also noticed that passion of mine. 

Keeping up with my books challenge and staying faithful to my latest passion, I finished two books on Emotional Intelligence last month: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Emotional Intelligence: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Emotions and Raising your EQ by Ian Tuhovsky.

As much as I loved Daniel Goleman's insights, his work mainly covered the theory behind Emotional Intelligence (which is definitely needed and is the first stepping stone), I felt I was ready for more practice. This is why I picked the last two books as they were heavily focused on applying those learnings. 

I've found some of the exercises that were suggested in them particularly useful and relevant to my current state within my personal and professional life. 

Today I'm going to tell you a story about customer experience and how customer experience can make or break your brand. 

Last week on Wednesday, I was getting excited to fly over to Frankfurt to speak at a HubSpot User Group event organised by one of my partner agencies. I was supposed to present about Inbound PR so of course I couldn't wait!

I woke up early in the morning to start packing for this quick trip and catch my flight at 12.30pm. 

I make myself a cup of coffee, turn on the laptop to check my emails quickly and as I always proactively do, I went to Dublin Airport's website to see whether my flight would have any delays just so that I am aware of changes, if at all any. 

I saw something else, though. 

Traditional PR is dead. 

That's one of the key learnings from my Inbound PR talk at INBOUND16. 

The old way of mass mailing press releases to journalists to write good things about your brand and getting some positive coverage is gone. It's outbound and it doesn't work. (Although it still happens. Sad face.)

I'm not saying that PR isn't relevant anymore. Far from it. It's become even more important in a digital economy where basically everybody can have a massive voice and influence other people's decisions. 

So you still need Earned media but getting it today is different than some 10-20 years ago. 

Here's where influencer marketing comes in - it's the latest buzzword and for me, it's just modern PR done right with influencers that are not just journalists but bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers etc. 

But is it right for you? I'd say yes. 

Influencer marketing is right for any business that wants to generate WOM and have others share positive experiences with the brand, products or services. 

How do you figure out if that's for you? I have a really nice infographic from Shane Barker to help here. 

With 19,500 attendees, INBOUND16 was again a fantastic event for marketing, sales and communications professionals as well as agency people. 

The four days were packed with sessions and networking opportunities.

Last year, I learned a lot about the agency business and what my agency partners from HubSpot were struggling with or excelling at. I came out of the conference with eight key takeaways for agencies. 

This year, I felt like the week had three main big themes that were visible in one way or another throughout all talks and conversations with other people attending.

I want to cover these with you this week. Let's get started.

3 Big Key Learnings from #INBOUND16

Last week was one of the best weeks of my life. 

A huge part in that played my talk at the biggest inbound conference in the world with 19,000 marketing, communications and sales professionals: INBOUND in Boston. 

I spoke about my concept Inbound PR that I developed last year and I've been working on since. 

Heading up the stage in front of a fully packed room with 300 people coming from a PR or a marketing background was extremely gratifying and exciting.  

The best part was the feedback afterward with a lot of people coming over to me right at the end of the talk to chat or ask questions or later connecting on LinkedIn and requesting meetings. 

There were also a lot of people positively tweeting during or after. Here's my favourite: 

The Inbound PR session by @IliyanaStareva is the sleeper hit of #INBOUND16. @HubSpot: heads up. Iliyana's framework is going to be BIG.

— Jonathan Michael (@JonathanMichael) November 10, 2016

For me, all that interest and social sharing are the ultimate confirmation that the concept is needed. 

I'm hoping by now you've become curious about the talk and if you weren't there, don't worry! I've got the slides right here for you to take a look.