Fork In The Road Blog

Events: Technology. Design. Strategy.

20 Tips in (Less Than) 20 Minutes: The Meeting Professional’s List for Promoting Yourself or Your Company on Social Media Channels

Last week, our local MPI Chapter produced its own version of the Learning Lounge developed for PCMA by our friends at Velvet Chainsaw. We called the program “Thinking Outside the Room: New Technologies for a Changing Industry.” It was orchestrated by the magical people at CornerstoneAV and I was invited to speak in one of the theaters about social media in the meetings industry. The audience consisted of both meeting planners and suppliers–mostly hoteliers. I don’t profess to be a social media expert myself. Like most everyone else, my knowledge on the subject is the culmination of many many hours of reading, listening and experimenting with social platforms. I do know about the mechanics of the meetings and trade show industry and how to apply social media principles to the marketing and promotion of event industry brands. Here are the “20 Tips in (Less Than) 20 Minutes” that I offered to session attendees last week.

  1. Develop a social media strategy. Even if all you do is scratch out a few bullet points onto a cocktail napkin, you need to decide ahead of time what your message is, what your goals are, who your audience is, and where your audience is.
  2. Follow your clients and prospects on social media channels. Create a list of the top 25 or 50 accounts (people) you want to have or keep as customers and follow them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or their blogs. The content they create will give you an idea about their needs and preferences so that you can be the person or company to come to the rescue when the time is right.
  3. Follow your competitors online. If they are doing nothing—you already have an immediate advantage. If they are doing something mediocre—you can do better. If they are doing a great job—you can do something equally brilliant or at least not anything like what they are doing.
  4. Look for someone needing help online and help them. It creates an impression among your followers that you are resourceful and builds “social capital.”
  5. Make sure your online profile is complete. Make it easy for your clients and prospects to reach you (include your telephone number and real email) and avoid being too clever or cryptic. I’d rather know that you can help me solve a problem than the fact that you love Maltese puppies and Good and Plenty candy.
  6. Select the best channels for your audience. Your customers may only be on Facebook or LinkedIn. Wherever they go, you should go.
  7. Spend two hours a day on social media tasks. Read your Alerts. Connect with 5 (valuable) people on LinkedIn. Read/send tweets. Jot down some bullet points for your blog. Post on your Facebook wall. Answer a question on Quora.
  8. Develop content continuously. Social media platforms don’t run themselves, your content powers them. Always be thinking about and/or working on your checklists, articles, blog posts, case studies, customer reviews/testimonials, and whatever else you can produce on a regular basis.
  9. Add social contact information for your clients and prospects to your sales and marketing database. Twitter handles, LinkedIn profile links, and Facebook company page URLs should be in the database alongside your customers’ names, addresses, and emails.
  10. Make yourself available to customers on social media channels. Let them know that they can tweet you, send you a message on Facebook, or mail you through LinkedIn.
  11. Put your social media contact information on your business cards. If you or your company are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or a blog site, let your clients know.
  12. Make sure your content is shareable. Put share buttons on your Website, emails, blog posts, and any content your produce to increase readership.
  13. Share. Don’t sell. This is the mantra of social media content. If you want friends, respect, followers, and clients don’t be the person always hawking your product. Instead, solve a problem, share a resource, or provide assistance.
  14. Place different content on each channel. Use Twitter for short quips and to share links. Use Facebook for contests. Use LinkedIn to demonstrate your thought leadership. Use your blog for informative how-to information.
  15. Create your own personal brand on social media channels (with a disclaimer..”these ideas are my own and not my employer’s…) if your company chooses not to pursue social media marketing.  Your brand is portable. Your following can land you another job some day.
  16. Find the new water coolers online and hang out there. The meetings industry has plenty: Engage365, Eventpeeps, #Eventprofs and #Meetingprofs on Twitter and tons of other groups on LinkedIn.
  17. Develop a personality online. I’m not saying find a gimmick. I’m just saying try to be memorable.
  18. Be deliberate about building your community. In addition to following your clients and prospects, try to be selective about the people you would like to have following you.
  19. Listen more than you “speak” online. This is solid Chris Brogan advice and it works.  Spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the implications of what you read and hear.
  20. Blend your social media efforts with traditional media if that works for you. The two channels–social and traditional–are not mutually exclusive.

The Takeaway: The platforms are changing constantly but the strategy is the same. Find your voice. Go where your clients and prospects are. Ask them to follow you. Dazzle them with your generosity and brilliance.

Pop Up Sessions and Unpanels Coming to a Conference Near You

Welcome to the world of the unexpected where restaurants, stores, and classrooms pop up overnight with the spontaneity of a pimple on prom night. While impromptu conference sessions have yet to appear in the traditional conference setting, there are signs that instant gatherings of like-minded people tipped off by the lightning fast transmission of messages over social media channels could be coming to a conference near you.

Here’s how a pop up session might look: Let’s say Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Seth Godin attend BlogWorld. Shortly before lunch they tweet to their followers that they will be in Room 2204 to talk to anyone who wants to listen about how they made millions of dollars blogging (or their biggest blogging blunders). The tweet (or Facebook post or text message) also informs readers that Ford Motor Company is providing lunch for everyone and a cherry red Ford Mustang car for the first person through the door (OK maybe just signed books from the speakers to the first 200 people). Who wouldn’t want to go?

Flash sessions, “unpanels,” and impromptu meetups are the logical next steps for conference producers looking for viral “sugar.” The fact that many conferences have tweetups (CES had over 1,000 people show up at their tweetup last January) demonstrates that attendees respond to informality. The flash mob phenomena, which gives the appearance that people just spontaneously start dancing together in the middle of a conference center foyer, garners YouTube love every time a new video appears. Pop up panels like the one with Jeremiah Owyang and friends on the future of content creation during SXSW was covered on a number of blogs. In fact, SXSW conference organizers presided over a number of instant initiatives: flash mobs, pop up stores, unpanels, and lots of user-generated publicity.

In addition to the yen to experiment, conference organizers would need to plan ahead of time to perfect the look and feel of spontaneity:

  • Non-programmed blocks of free time when attendees are available to attend
  • Speakers, topics, and incentives with broad appeal to attract followers
  • Forward-thinking and flexible sponsors to underwrite costs
  • Open spaces capable of accommodating large crowds

The Takeaway: With all the talk about unconferences, barcamps, and other self-organized gatherings, pop up conference sessions seem like a natural fit for organizers looking to breathe new life into an old format or attract the newly social hipsters who have outgrown the rave parties but still crave the excitement of the unexpected. They’re also a great way to get more followers using the conference’s social media platforms. Who knows, could pop up trade shows be next?

Day 3 of Trust Agents: Social Media Strategy NOT Tools

In the third of several video clips from the Q&A during the Women Tech Council meeting, Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss the use of strategy over tools and some other ideas for you to think about. Although Chris and Julien began responding to a question about the kinds of tools the younger generation is using (since the fastest growing age group on Facebook is 65+), they finished with comments on platforms, communities and social media strategy.

In the video clip, Julien recounts attending a party where the young guests played Chatroulette. His experience with specific tools reveals that, “the tools don’t really matter. The younger generation will use whatever is the most efficient, frictionless method they can to keep doing the same things they’ve always done just with wider audiences…The strategies and the principals are more important than the tools because the answer today might be irrelevant tomorrow,” he says.

Chris talks about how teens still text each other. “They don’t want more friends and they only want their friends to see what they are saying,” he says. As with Julien, Chris believes, “if you’re in marketing, think hard about spending money on a specific platform. You should be enamored with the community and not the platform.”

Trade show organizers, like many business owners, are struggling with developing social media strategies. Focusing on the objectives and not the tools is a challenge for many. However, exhibitions occupy a unique position in marketing genre. Their success is attributable to attributes that are most effective when deployed in a face-to-face setting. The objective of a social media strategy for exhibitions should be to use social media to enhance, highlight and capitalize on those unique characteristics before, during, and after the show. Consider these points:

Memorability: It was proven years ago by research from CEIR that face-to-face experiences are inherently more memorable than virtual ones. Extend the memorability of the exhibition by using social media channels and tools to chronicle a participant’s live experience and allow it to live online for them.

Tactile/sensory: Social media may not be able to duplicate the tactile and sensory experiences available at a live event but it can, through video or graphic representations, demonstrate and emulate these attributes in a way that reminds participants of the live experience.

Entertainment: Using social media channels to plan large-scale social activities such as flash mobs, Foursquare contests, and other interactive social games can activate engagement on the trade show floor.

Intimacy: Supporting the small and large “meetups” that the user community organizes independently by using the show’s social media channels to get the word out will help to foster the valuable one-on-one interactions that are unique to exhibitions and other face-to-face opportunities.

Inspiration: Provide support to capture, highlight and broadcast speaker content through social media channels before, during, and after the event.

Destinations: Part of the enjoyment in attending live events is experiencing the destination. Encourage local restaurants and area attractions to interact with participants over designated social media channels to provide information and services such as reservations, ticketing, prices, hours, menus, specials, and directions.

All under one roof: Use social media channels to highlight and facilitate the “smorgasbord” of time savings, product choices, new contacts, and information available in a single place.

The Takeaway: Online and offline channels can work together in much the same way as traditional marketing media. Although the tools will change, the strategy remains the same—to push the live experience to become the optimum marketing channel that it can be.

How is your social media strategy driving the live experience?

Day 2 of Trust Agents: How to Overcome Fear

In the second of several video clips from the Q&A during the Women Tech Council meeting, Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss how to overcome fear and some other ideas for you to think about. I love how they take on any question whether related to social media or not. These responses in particular helped me better understand Chris and Julien as people.

Julien recommends embracing the uncomfortable and teaching your mind to overcome certain things. He says to give in to the desires of your future self (the one that is already better than your present self) and make decisions based on him or her.

Chris breaks “fear” down in categories such as the business fear of having to let employees go because he didn’t make his numbers, not knowing how to do a job (the difference between men and women), and not having a college degree.

In the context of social media and face-to-face events, there is still a lot of uncertainty associated with bringing social networking platforms, technologies and methodologies into the marketing mix. There is fear around privacy, investment of time, costs, negative comments, loss of control, lack of expertise, exposure, difficulty measuring ROI, and the risk of failure in such a transparent environment. After all, not only were we put in the hot seat by the recession, some of us were burned beyond recognition (lost jobs, companies out of business, marketing strategies obsolete).

Here are some of observations about the event industry and how to use social media more effectively to overcome our fears.

Stop speculating. Organizations have been accustomed to short term returns. If you invest X amount of dollars in audience promotion or booth sales, you will get X number of attendees and exhibitors for this year’s event. Social media success requires a long-term, sustained, and creative investment of time, energy and money without the expectation of immediate return. It requires that someone in the organization be working the social media levers all day every day and never asking the question, “how long will this take?” Instead they should be asking the question, “what can I do to help my customers today?” The result will be less fear (it’s more comfortable to help), more loyalty.

Quit trying to force twenty pounds of old school sales and marketing into a five pound social media bag. I see event industry companies and show organizers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook every day selling their wares the old way on a new channel. I recently witnessed an individual on my #eventprofs Twitter “channel” being drummed out of there (by group consensus) because she was continuously selling her educational program and not contributing in any other way. There is an underlying mindset, philosophy, and liberalism of thought that underpins social media behavior. Organizations need to learn the rules of the road to prevent the much scarier scenario of driving off a cliff.

Stop the faux “I feel your pain” efforts. Over the years, I’ve written about exhibitor advisory boards and volunteer committees formed by organizations in an effort to get “feedback” from their customers. It’s a great idea on paper. In reality the same groups that allow these committees to “contribute” also restrict them from having any power to effect change. Second, the members of the committee are usually the large exhibitors, the biggest sponsors and the companies with the most “value” to the organization. They don’t necessarily represent the broader constituency.  Social media channels can empower customers, provide honest feedback, and represent a broad customer base more effectively than committees. When the community knows you have their back, they respond with increased loyalty.

Community first. Brand later. The reason why so many organizations are playing catch up in social media is that they are still trying to form a community around their brand. They soon learn that the only time their community members are jazzed about their brand is when they are at the show, being wined, dined and entertained. What about the rest of the year? Companies need to use social media strategies year round. Having a strong community helps companies overcome the fear of social media in so many ways–loyal, trusted customers ready and willing to offer honest feedback, promote their brand, and guide their continuous improvement is invaluable.

Be more human. (Yes I stole this from Chris Brogan). Be open to smaller group interaction. Stop marketing to thousands of people at once and try talking to only six people at once (I stole that from Mitch Joel). Maybe scale back the mega-events. Here’s what’s happening in the events industry. Attendees who are unhappy with boring speakers, the lack of personalization at large conferences, the same meeting formats over and over, and feeling like a number (thanks again Chris) are having tweetups, creating their own meetings (eventcamp) and burning up the Twittersphere talking about how to fix broken conferences and trade shows. Smart organizations will attempt to use social media to understand why this is happening and improve their own products.

Be very afraid. Be very afraid to overcome your fear? Yes. Here’s how. RD Whitney of Tarsus Online Media told me that one of the things that keeps him up at night is putting resources, time, and energy into creating a great event only to have the community siphoned off by some “guy” in his underwear at the kitchen table blogging about the same subject and getting people to listen. Wisely, RD uses social media to remain vigilant and ultimately mitigate his fear because either there isn’t anyone doing a better job than he is (the goal) or he figures out how to work with the underwear bloggers that have new and interesting ideas to support his community.

The Takeaway: In the end, these observations all point to the same mandate for overcoming the fear of social media–Listen, learn, and evolve or your customers will do it without you.

Are you afraid of anything?

Day 1 of Trust Agents: How to Fail/Succeed at Blogging

I had the pleasure (for the first time) of hearing the Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith together on the same stage during the Women Tech Council meeting last week. During the Q&A Session, I captured some video (I’m a writer not a videographer) on their responses to questions from the audience. These are relevant topics for the event industry as well as the business community in general. Here’s what they said about blogging failure and success and some other tidbits for you to think about.

In the video, Julien mentions a blog post he did about the “Six Pixels of Separation” blog by Mitch Joel (another excellent speaker at the conference). It illustrates Julien’s approach toward blogging and growing a large community. As the blog comments indicate, this approach isn’t for everyone but it’s something for event organizers and event technology developers to think about if “more qualified eyeballs” is a goal for your blogs.

Chris Brogan offers some more good advice in the video like:

  • Make sure you have a great “About Me” page
  • Use a real picture (no cartoons or Simpsons’ likenesses)
  • Be sure to include a call to action in your post
  • Make your posts “meaty” but brief
  • Don’t write about your products
  • Write about subjects that can help people

Here are some other things to think about:

Joyce McKee of the Lets Talk Trade Shows blog developed a Webinar called “Is There a Blog in Your Future?” It is an excellent tutorial on blogging. Joyce also recommends grading your blog using Alexa rankings and the free information you can get from grader.com. “My blog score was in the 30’s a while back and now is 95.26 – not bad!  And that was due to posting more frequently,” she says.

At Fork in the Road, I’ve learned a couple of helpful things about good content, increasing my search engine rankings, and what I have observed from really good blogs like Midcourse Corrections, Engage 365, Event Coup, Social Fishing, McCurry’s Corner, Interactive Meeting Technology, Corbin Ball’s Tech Talk, and several others and in our industry such as:

  • Don’t hire an intern to blog for you unless they are technically good writers AND know your industry. I would rather read great content than great writing.
  • If you’re going to moderate comments (which I highly recommend) be quick about approving the good ones. People that comment want to see the fruits of their labors right away.
  • Always comment back to those who comment on your blog. It’s a dialogue.
  • Tie your blog electronically into your Twitter and Face Book accounts so you get automatic updates there.
  • Interlink to other posts in your blog. Google really likes this.
  • Put Google Analytics code in your blog for a fun and free way to see whether you’re getting traction with your community.
  • Write for a particular audience. In the writing world, we call them “personas.” Create a typical reader profile (Joe is a 38 year-old event organizer who loves reading about social media but doesn’t have the expertise to put it into practice, etc.). Refer to your profile when you are writing. If Joe would find it interesting, it’s probably a winning post.
  • Don’t blog just to talk out loud and grab search engine love. Plan your posts. Make them relevant and add a little humor.

There is lot’s more content coming from the Trust Agents.What do you event industry bloggers think? What has worked for you?

Be Notified of New Posts via Email