May 4, 2011

Getting Started on Twitter

As a tradeshow marketer, you may be wondering how you can use Twitter to your advantage in your marketing scheme. After all, Twitter is the bomb, right? It’s at the top of everybody’s list of cool social media toys, right?

According to the latest stats, an average of 460,000 people start a new Twitter account each day. That’s about 167 million per year if the trend holds. With a current usage of just over 200 million, Twitter stands to double the number of accounts in less than 18 months.

So don’t tell me Twitter is for kids. These are adults and businesses getting involved.

But you’re still waiting to get started.

I understand. You don’t know exactly where to start. Or maybe you have a small following on your Twitter account and it’s just too much time and too confusing to try and get any traction out of Twitter.

First things first. If you don’t have an account get one.

Next, to get people to follow you, you have to do two things: 1) follow people and 2) advertise the fact that you’re on Twitter.

As to the first – follow people – you have to decide who to follow and why. If you start following people at random, and they’re unrelated to your industry or to your overall goals, you’ll dilute your Twitter stream with a bunch of unnecessary tweets. Now sure, a little of that’s okay. If you want to follow Charlie Sheen, help yourself! But Charlie probably won’t be of much help when it comes to finding valuable information about your industry.

Go to Google’s keyword tool and put in a few terms that relate to your industry. Search for those terms using Twitter. Follow those Twitter accounts that appear to be in your industry or realm.

Now make a list of companies that are either your direct competitors or are in your industry. Don’t limit yourself to the large and most obvious companies. Be sure to include those smaller and medium-sized companies, too.

Next, make a list of the most prominent people in your industry. Writers, authors, CEOs, marketers, advertisers, designers, creative people…the list can go on as long as you want it.

If you can’t easily find these people on Twitter, you may find them through LinkedIn. Often people will list their Twitter handles on LinkedIn.

These are all people and companies you should start following.

In my experience, about 75 – 80% of people that you follow will follow you back.

Now that you’ve gotten involved in Twitter, start to participate!

But…what to tweet? That sometimes is a hard choice. After all, you don’t want to be known for inane and useless tweets about what you had for breakfast (unless you’re eating a stunning b-fast in Maui or someplace unusual!).

So look to other tweets for ideas. Think about what you are interested in. Think about what your industry might be interested in. If you find a link to an interesting story of blog post, share it on Twitter.

If you see a fun or clever or useful post, re-tweet it. Reply to the author and thank them for sharing.

Find ways to interact. That’s what it’s all about.

The more time you spend there, the more comfortable you’ll be, the more you’ll understand how to interact and ultimately Twitter can and will become an extremely useful communication tool.

March 30, 2011

Creating a Social Media Editorial Calendar

In my communications with companies that spend a good amount of time ‘doing’ social media, it’s easy to see that most of the engagement is random, catch-as-catch-can; sporadic. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.

And I’m not entirely sure there should be. Social media, after all, IS random! You think of something to share and BANG it’s tweeted out! You see something, you react and retweet. Personal schedules change enough on a daily basis that finding a regular time to check in is a challenge for a lot of folks.

So the idea of a Social Media Editorial Calendar may seem counter-intuitive to creating active unscheduled engagement with your crowd on Twitter and Facebook.

However…

If you know that you’ll be at seven tradeshows this year, you can build a series of promotions around those appearances. If you know there are milestones or holidays on the calendar that your company can naturally tie into, it makes sense to set up a social media schedule in advance.

To me, the best way to do this is create a Social Media Editorial Calendar which outlines how the next year will look:

January 1: New Year’s Day (giveaways!)
January 8: Elvis’ birthday! (old-time rock and roll CDs up for grabs)
January 10 – 13: CES (promotions)
February 14: Valentine’s Day (more promotions)
February 29: Company product release (press releases, tweets, FB postings)

Etc…you get the idea. Build a few social media promotions around dates on the calendar, have your team members put together the various bits and pieces (giveaways, video shoots, product release notes) and build your social media schedule for cool posts and tweets.

Not only does this put you ahead of most of your competition, but you’ll breathe a sigh of relief after the schedule is set and assignments are made. At this point you KNOW what you’re committed to for the year. You KNOW what your company is doing on social media and you KNOW who’s going to do it.

Put your new year’s schedule together in the last quarter of the current year and you’ll be miles ahead when the new year kicks in.

photo credit: koadmunkee

March 16, 2011

Tradeshow QR Code Usage – A Few Brief Tips

At the Natural Products Expo West show earlier this month in Anaheim, I had the opportunity to scan several QR Codes that were displayed in booths, posters and banners. Some were prominently displayed in large form – maybe a foot square – and others as small as less than one inch on business cards. All in all, I saw perhaps twenty QR Codes. Since I became aware of QR Codes a year ago ago, and have blogged about them a couple of times, I was curious to see how business incorporated the goofy-looking symbol into their marketing efforts.

Here are a few thoughts on what worked and what didn’t:

First, it’s easy to generate a code and stick it on a banner or poster and invite people to scan it. However, the very act of scanning a QR Code should be extremely easy. I found a few codes that were not easy to scan because they were placed in odd locations. One was placed close to the floor, making it difficult to get the camera phone at a good enough angle to capture the QR Code.

Another code was so displayed so small that it was difficult to capture it on the phone. Yet another one was put up high – it was large, but behind a counter which was a barrier to getting a good shot of the code. Finally, one code looked incomplete, as if it was missing a part of it. I scanned it twice and my iPhone app said ‘no code scanned’ even though the guy in the booth insisted it was a good working QR Code. Um, sorry, no.

Best practice: put the QR Code in an easily accessible location, about 12″ x 12″ in size, with an invitation to “Scan Me!” right above the code. Put it at about head height with no barriers; print it in black ink on a white background. Smartphones need to be able to recognize the code so they can interpret it and take you to whatever information is contained within the QR Code. Include a Call To Action, such as “Scan me to Win!” (I just attended a webinar where the presenter suggested putting QR Codes in odd locations to make it more interesting to scan, such as temporary tattoos…not sure I agree with how practical or effective that would work in the real world!)

Optimized for QR Code — Make sure your QR Code URL landing page is optimized for the smartphone!

Once the code is scanned, the information is processed. Most often the code is a URL (although I’ve seen simple contact information), which spawns the phone’s web browser. Here’s where the marketing thought process tends to break down. Question: what device is used to scan the QR Code? Answer: a smartphone. Since that’s the case, wouldn’t you think it wise to have the web URL optimized for viewing on a smartphone? Of course.

But that’s not the case. Not a single QR Code that I scanned was optimized for a smartphone. Instead, the links all led to a typical HTML page that looks crappy and hard to read on a smartphone.

Best practice: make sure your web landing page is optimized for viewing on a smartphone. If you have a WordPress blog (like this), it’s easy to install a plug-in that displays the page optimized for a smartphone.

Finally, I scanned one QR Code that was prominently displayed at the entrance to the tradeshow hall. The link was BROKEN! Hard to say why: server could have been down; link not confirmed; entered wrong when the QR Code was set up. I did scan the link the next day and it was working correctly.

Best practice: TEST everything BEFORE the show. Double and triple-check that everything works as it should and looks right as it will be most likely be seen by your end user – the person who’s scanning the QR Code.

March 14, 2011

Have a Plan Even if it Changes Mid-Stream

No matter what your goals are at a tradeshow, whether you’re walking the floor or exhibiting, you probably won’t get far unless you have a plan (obviously that’s a given) – and are flexible enough to let the plan adapt and evolve as necessary.

This past week at Natural Products Expo West 2011 in Anaheim, my plan – as it originally stood – was to meet people, find out their problems and issues with their exhibits or marketing approach, and have a brief conversation that left me an opening to follow up later with a specific reason. This is the ninth time I’ve been to the show (we have eight client booths there), so my plan is based on what’s generally worked in the past.

As someone just walking the floor, I’m prohibited from offering my services or trying to sell something at the show. That’s the way it should be. After all, I’m NOT an exhibitor. Only exhibitors who have paid those high space rental fees have the right to blatantly sell their products.

EMAB-Expowest — Earth Mama Angel Baby at Expo West 2011

But I can certainly engage people in conversations and see where they lead. More often than not the best way to leave the door open for someone to hear from me is to invite them to subscribe to my monthly tradeshow marketing newsletter. Easy enough to do – I simply ask as I’m ready to leave if they mind if I put them on the list. Only once did someone say no – and that was because they weren’t the right person in the company, so the newsletter would have been of no use to them.

And I value not only my time, but the exhibitor’s time, too. I want to be in and out of a booth in about 90-180 seconds, which means that I strive to be precise with the encounter. It’s the same for an exhibitor, by the way: you should try and keep your engagement time with attendees at a bare minimum. Enough to qualify or disqualify them and to gather pertinent information should they be potential clients.

I started the show with a list of exhibitors and booth numbers that had promoted themselves on Twitter – some 75 at least, along with their Twitter handles. Knowing that it would take fully two days to cover the show and talk to that many booths (along with several others that I randomly stopped at for one reason or another), I figured I had would my hands full.

Turns out the ‘Twitter’ greeting was very engaging to almost everyone I met:

“Hi, I’m curious who your company Twitterer is? Or would that be ‘Tweeter’? I’m Tradeshowguy, I saw your booth number on Twitter and someone tweeted out an invitation to come by!”

It was a bit of a goofy intro that created smiles and broke down barriers. Often I was quickly subjected to what is commonly referred to in sales as an “information dump” where a bunch of product information is dumped on you before the speaker has even bothered to qualify you. I’d just smile and let them go on. Sometimes it turned out to be pretty interesting stuff. Other times…not so much.

(By the way, I found it interesting that over half a dozen people I met throughout the show had heard of me; they were looking for tradeshow marketing tips before heading to Expo West and found this blog. Definitely a nice ego stroke…)

Then we’d chat about Twitter and social media and how they used it to promote their company at the show. If the opportunity arose and they showed interest, I’d mention that I regularly speak about, consult and teach social media. By then, I’m about ready to wrap it up. If they’re active on Facebook or Twitter, often I’d offer to take their picture and post it on Facebook immediately (always a big hit – who doesn’t like having their picture posted on Facebook?…apparently, no one). Finally, I’d suggest they subscribe to the email newsletter. Again – almost everyone took me up on it…which means they’ll be hearing from me once a month. The key: stay on someone’s radar regularly and you increase your chances for a future sale.

The real evolution of my approach happened when I discovered that not only did people love to get their photos on Facebook, but they loved to talk about Twitter – even those that didn’t use or understand what it could do for them. The natural curiosity of the social media phenomenon was a conversation starter every time – much more than I originally thought it would. So I made a point of beginning almost all conversations with that.

How do you approach your tradeshow marketing? What’s your plan? Are you able to adapt and evolve the plan as necessary? Do you need several people to implement the plan, or are you just walking the floor of a show trying to make connections that could turn into future business?

Whatever your situation, make a plan, follow it, and let it evolve as necessary.

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Tradeshow marketing

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