Tradeshow Marketing Expert & Dynamic Public Speaker/Trainer

May 24, 2012

10 Reasons to Share Content from Your Tradeshow Appearance

It seems like I’ve been doing a lot of list-making lately. Here’s another one!

Branding: the content you share defines your company. Think before you tweet!
Networking: share content that highlights or involves people from other companies. Take photos of booth visitors, tag them in the photos and watch them share with their followers.
Interactivity: by sharing content and responding to comments and questions, you’ve begun to see interactivity, which leads to…
Engagement: a step above simple interactivity (which may be almost meaningless), engagement is more personal and responsive.
Organic spread (your content could go viral): a good piece of content gets legs, no matter who it comes from. Can you create, either purposefully or accidentally, a piece of content that spreads throughout the social media system? If it happens, pay close attention to the type of content it is, and see if you can determine why it spread. Then try to recreate something that does the same.
Social proof: if your followers like your material and share it, now you’re exposed to potential new people who may not have previously known you existed. But because they saw it from one of their trusted sources, now you’ve suddenly a trusted source.
Humanize your company: by becoming human to your market, you become more attractive to them, generally speaking.
Caring: by sharing you’re showing that you care about others.
Reciprocation: if you share something that focuses another person, company or product (it may complement something you’re doing so it makes sense to highlight it), those people will feel compelled to do the same for you vie reciprocation.
Sharing drives traffic to your booth. And your blog. And your Facebook page, Twitter page, YouTube channel, etc.

May 22, 2012

Goal Setting for Tradeshow Social Media Marketing

Do you have a set of clearly defined, easily measurable goals for each of your tradeshows regarding your social media marketing efforts?

If not, here’s where to start.

First set down your show objectives.

What metric are you most interested n moving during your tradeshows when it relates to social media? Yes, you want to move the sales needle, but as you add on social media components, you are putting more people into the potential sales funnel.

There are myriad tools available for tracking your social media interaction, but your measurements should be driven more by what you want to learn.

Need to know how many visitors you had this year compared with last?

Want to find out if people respond to a series of tweets inviting them to your booth to get a great deal, meet a famous person or win a contest?

Need to know how many people see those photographs you posted on your Facebook page from the show, to gauge interest in your products or services?

Once you determine what you want to learn, start focusing on the various ways social media lets you do that in the realm of event marketing.

Some of the metrics you might be interested in:

Facebook page ‘likes’ – perhaps not as good as adding someone to an email marketing list, but by having them as a Facebook friend they are giving you permission to engage with them.
Booth traffic. If you have a rough count of booth visitors from last year’s show, you can compare to what you get this year. If not, start counting anyway – it’s a good metric to have.
Direct response visitors, which will come from contests or other come-ons sent out via Twitter or Facebook.
Getting more followers on Twitter. If you have show-goers following you on Twitter, chances are they’ll come to next year’s show as well, which means it’ll be easier to find and track them to your booth.
QR Code responses. If you invite people to download documents or sign up for a newsletter, track the number of people that have used the code. Compare the percentage that actually followed through on your offer.
Blog post views
Photo views
Video views and possible click-throughs from your YouTube channel to a specific landing page.
Want to take a survey in the booth? Here’s a great opportunity to do a little market research. Just make sure to ask respondents how they interact with you online (or if they do at all). Offer a small reward for taking the survey. Capture contact information – at least a name and email so you can follow up. Put them on a newsletter if you publish one.
Length of Facebook thread, to show you how much a particular topic or post resonates with your audience (of course, it might be the responses that they’re responding to, not your original post!).
Impressions and other opportunities-to-see you.

And of course the sales information that you should be tracking from show to show:

Number of leads
Number of registrations for demos (or other)
Number of appointments made
Number of proposals delivered
Number of sales
Amount of sales
Average amount of each sale
Comparison of different shows and year-to-year same show results

Yes, there are a lot of moving parts and your particular goals will of course be unique to your company and product or service. The more you are able to track social media metrics and compare those numbers with the more traditional sales tracking metrics and see how they work together (or not), the more informed you’ll be and the better positioned you’ll be to adjust your direction or jump in a new direction when the signs point that way.

photo credit: 401K

May 15, 2012

Ernest Hemingway Would Have Loved Twitter

Do you find that trying to learn social media is confusing, confounding and generally flummoxes you? Do you wish for a time when you didn’t have to worry about whether you needed to buy a book a Kindle, or download a PDF or just get the hardback version?

Don’t feel lonely or left out. There are thousands – probably millions – in the same boat as you.

Look at it this way. History has left some of our most famous folks in the same boat. Benjamin Franklin never sent out a tweet. Alexander Hamilton never checked in to his favorite watering hole with Foursquare. Franklin D Roosevelt never used a credit card. Jonas Salk never used a Pentium II computer.

So if they never had to deal with a Facebook update status, why should you, right? If Ansel Adams never had to post his latest shots to Flickr, why should you?

Actually, I think a lot of those historical figures would have felt right at home. Imagine John Lennon hanging out on Twitter. Think of what Ben Franklin would have done with his Facebook page. Picture Pablo Picasso showing off his latest artworks using Instagram.

The thing is…it’s all been done before. Everything got shared before. It just was done using different sharing methods. Social media gives you a new method to do the same old stuff, on a much wider scale.

One senior citizen executive was heard to say once, “I’m too old to learn social media.” Actually, no, you’re not too old. You’re too lazy. There are senior citizens doing social media every day and loving it. Just like there are young people who don’t give a hang about it. If you don’t want to do it, admit it. Just don’t say that you’re too old, or too busy, or too distracted, or too whatever.

Ernest Hemingway would have loved Twitter, after he got through making jokes about it. The 140-character limit would have fit his writing approach perfectly. Of course, most of his tweets would probably have been crap, as he put it:

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Ernest Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

But hey, he did come up with some masterpieces along the way. As we all will.

May 7, 2012

Should You Create An App For Your Tradeshow Appearance?

With the proliferation of smartphone and tablet apps and the declining difficulty of creating them, is it time to create an app for your own company for your upcoming tradeshow appearance?

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. There are numerous online tools that make creating an app easier than it used to be. And with more and more of the web’s connectivity moving to stand-alone apps, your clients and prospects may find a lot of value in the app.

Admittedly, I’ve never seen a company app built specifically for a tradeshow appearance, or for the tradeshow side of a company’s marketing efforts.

So what information could you put in your app? Here’s a short list to get your brain working (no doubt you can add more!):

Yearly tradeshow schedule
Product information
Set appointment for interview or demo
Submit request for information or contact
Booth number and hours
Company information
Links to demo videos
Links to podcast interview
Client testimonials

Creating an app is not that complicated, but there are several steps to making it happen. If you have tech-savvy people in your company, you may be able to create it in-house.

But generally you’ll have to hire an app developer through ELance.com or another site. Get recommendations, or take a look at what the developers have done in the past.

First, appoint a point person that can see the development of the app through the entire process.

Determine what you want in the app. This may take several discussions with the various company elements, including sales, marketing, tech team, etc.

Find a possible developer or two, describe the scope of work as best as possible, and then negotiate the price.

There is a lot that can go in an app and it’ll be tempting to want to put as much as possible into it. But you’re probably better off keeping it as simple and useful as possible.

An app for your own company for a tradeshow appearance? Why not? It’ll give you an edge over your competition among those people in your market that have downloaded your app – especially if your competitors don’t have an app, and you have a very useful and user-friendly app.

May 2, 2012

7 Things Your Social Media Consultant Won’t Tell you

Considering hiring a social media consultant to get your tweeting, Facebook posting and YouTubing ramped up, but don’t know where to start? Just because someone calls themselves an expert doesn’t mean they really are the best choice for you. So let’s look at

a few things that your potential social media consultant likely won’t tell you:

Don’t always start with Facebook. Just because everyone and their mom is on Facebook doesn’t mean your company should be there. It doesn’t mean it SHOULDN’T be there, either. After all, many of your competitors and much of your potential market are hanging out there. But depending on your strategy and goals, perhaps Facebook isn’t the place to start. Perhaps LinkedIn is. Or Twitter. Or a good set of information videos packed with keywords on YouTube is more appropriate for your business. Truth be told, a good social media consultant will help you examine your market, identify potential target areas, solidify social media goals and then move into the implementation phase – whatever that may be.
Look to connect, not to promote. Even big companies spend a lot of time answering questions on their blogs, replying to tweets and responding to comments and questions on Facebook. Promotions are okay – and in fact if done right can be a big boost for your bottom line. But you should plan on spending a majority of your time simply engaging with those that follow you.
Setting up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest are not ‘embracing social media.’ Building a big list on Twitter is not social media engagement. Sending hundreds of people to ‘like’ you on Facebook is not social media engagement. Oh, sure, it’s good to have people that are connected with you – but unless you are giving them some sort of value on a regular basis you’re wasting your time and theirs. It’s all about the content you share and the conversations you start (and continue).
High-level social media engagement doesn’t require high-level expertise. No, it doesn’t. It really requires common sense and continual work. Everyone is capable of working and understanding social media. And if someone tells you they’re too old for social media, you’re free to steal my line (which I’m sure I borrowed): “No, you’re not too old. You’re too lazy.”
There is no such thing as a “social media expert.” Anyone can hang a shingle and call themselves “experts.” However, a true student of social media recognizes that expertise is gained through hard work, constant education, and yes, learning how to do things right by first doing them wrong. Which means that no matter how much they know, there’s always something new to learn….which means that being an “expert” is really impossible.
While a social media consultant can help you get started, ultimately it’s up to you and your company. Which means that not only will you and your marketing team have to learn and understand all of the nuances of social media engagement, your whole company will ultimately become involved. Not everyone in a company should be representing your company online, but every department should have a representative that engages with your social media outlets. Someone up the ladder must also take the lead and the responsibility for leading the effort.
Social media is really just another aspect of doing the same things you’ve always been doing: generating revenue through great marketing and excellent customer service. You know, the way you’ve been trying to do since the company began. Social media is just a different avenue for executing those plans, generating leads, giving great customer service and touching those people where they live.

photo credit: Purblind

April 24, 2012

Last Day of Ski Season

Yes, it was the last day of ski season a few days ago here in Oregon at the ski resort I frequent, so I thought I should make note of it:

April 20, 2012

Why Your Company Should Consider Blogging

If you’ve been doing tradeshow marketing for years, and you’re edging into social media, good for you. Companies that work intelligently to drive traffic to their tradeshow booths are showing some great results.

But do you have a blog? If so, are you using it to its full effectiveness? If not, why not? Perhaps you should consider blogging. The presence of an active, engaging blog can make the difference between closing a deal or not, all other things being equal.

Here are some reasons to consider blogging:

It’s a marketing tool that’s much easier to maintain than a newsletter. You can add and change it at any time.
You want to influence people in your market.
You want to be seen as a thought leader or industry leader.
You have an expertise and you want to share.
You like engaging in debate with strangers, who can often become friends and perhaps even clients.
It helps you get found online. Blogs are search-engine friendly.
Blogs can bring your team together. As an example, the 300-employee company Hubspot in Boston invites any employee to contribute to the blog, which allows them to have several posts a day offering a number of viewpoints and various useful information.
Blogging forces you to stay sharp. By continually coming up with material you’re always learning and sharing what you learn. As a result, you become smarter and more well-known for knowing more than most people in your industry.
As a result of blogging people will ask you questions, which leads to you learning even more.
Creating great content leads to sales. Seriously. When you create great content, you create trust, which brings in people that are interested in your content. Those people often become business leads, and leads often become sales.
Creating content leads to comments and discussions. Those comments allow you to learn from readers to find out exactly what they’re interested in. It also gives you insight in to the pain points they’re experiencing. And in a sales call, knowing those pain points and how to solve them leads to sales.

So what about tradeshows, events and conferences? How can blogging help in your event marketing? Let’s take a look.

By having a blog platform, you are able to share more information about what happened at the event in real time.
As the date of the show gets closer, your blog is a platform for sharing what you’ll be doing at the show. Classic Exhibits’ lead-in to their appearance at Exhibitor this year was a perfect example. Their regular blog readers saw the various videos they posted that teased their Exhibitor appearance.
A blog is a perfect platform for posting multi-media from the event: audio, video and photos. This is a great place to interview happy clients and post those video clips on your blog, which become power testimonials for your product or service.
Once the show is over, your blog is a place to do continual follow-ups. Material that you compiled at the show can be spun out on your blog over the next few months.

Yet, in spite of all of these great reasons to blog, make no mistake: blogging isn’t easy, and there’s not necessarily a direct payoff from all of the effort that goes into a blog. However, an active blog can be a powerful tool and is often the difference between making a sale or not when going head to head with a competitor who is not blogging.

(photo by Annie Moles, courtesy commons.wikimedia.org)

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All posts by: Tim Patterson

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