September 11, 2013

Five ways to use social media at your next trade show event

The following is a guest post by Amanda of It’s Blogworthy.

Several years ago, trade shows were a completely different type of event. Vendors spent time face-to-face with clients, but after clients moved to the next booth, the interaction was essentially over. Marketers at trade show events worked tirelessly to bring customers in to their company’s area with giveaways, door prizes and specialty items.

In the past few years, trade shows have become an interactive event that begins before the show starts and doesn’t end until far after the booths have been packed up. Although marketers still use traditional materials (free pen, anyone?) social media has allowed them to connect with clients and potential clients in a whole new way. Will you be attending a trade show soon? Download the best apps for trade shows and check out these five ideas for making the most of social media at your next trade show.

Promote your attendance before the trade show begins on Facebook to build excitement about the event. Encourage customers who will be attending the event to visit your awesome Nimlok booth, and use your social channels to engage with them before you set foot at the event. Create a Facebook event and invite your customers, which can help you see what kind of traffic your booth might have. Use questions and polls to gauge interest. During the event, post up-to-the-minute pictures and behind-the-scenes shots of your booth, and don’t forget to post a post-event wrap-up.

Use Twitter to connect with your customers and other vendors using the official hashtag for the event. You can use this hashtag to judge social media interest in the event and seek out your target audience. Twiter is a great way to break the ice before the event and establish friendly relationships with potential customers, which may encourage them to stop by your booth when they arrive. Twitter is also a great way to connect with reporters, media outlets and influencers who will be covering the event; you may be able to spread news about promotions or company news through these channels.
If you have products that can be demoed – or an especially charismatic sales rep who will be attending the trade show – YouTube can be a great marketing tool before your trade show, during and after. Think about creating a series of videos hyping up your booth and sharing it through your social media channels and on the official hashtag for your event. At the trade show, take a quick video of your booth in action, or short interviews with individuals who stop by your booth (especially if he or she has a large social media network and may re-share your content.) YouTube makes it easy to create fun, informative videos and get them out to your audience quickly.
Create a Foursquare listing for your booth and encourage people to check in when they stop by. Foursquare may not be utilized by an extremely wide audience, but for the tech crowd, “mayorships” and badges can be highly sought-after social media rewards. Also, offer a prize for checking in to encourage the use of this channel with your audience.
Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare are all fun ways to enhance your trade show experience, but LinkedIn may be the way to close the deal with new clients or customers. Encourage them to join your company’s LinkedIn page to learn more about your business and connect on a professional level. You can also use your LinkedIn channel to promote professional development seminars or speaking engagements during the trade show event.

About the author: Amanda is a social media manager for a health care organization by day and a blogger and freelance writer by night. She’s also a mom to an amazing 2 year-old boy and wife to a great guy who indulges all her celebrity gossip. Amanda loves coffee, fashion, social media, and cats (not always in that order.) Her work has been published on family.com and blogher.com. Visit Amanda’s blog, It’s Blogworthy or follow her on Twitter and Google+.

July 9, 2013

What’s the World Domination Summit? Nothing Short of a World-Class Event

So how do they do it? How do the volunteer organizers of World Domination Summit pull off a top-notch, world-class event – including tripling the attendance in the past year?

Perhaps we should start with what in the world IS the World Domination Summit? While you’re likely to get a few thousand answers when you ask the attendees, to my mind the event is a gathering of creative, innovative, entrepreneurial-minded folks from dozens of countries that takes place over a long weekend in Portland, Oregon every July. It just wrapped up its third year. Yup, its third year.

Author Don Miller onstage at World Domination Summit (photo credit: Armosa Studios)

Year one – 2011 – saw almost 500 people gather for two days of speakers, workshops and casual networking meet-ups. 2012 that number doubled to about 1000. This year, the attendance was 2800, filling the historic Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland for two days of presentations along with several other smaller workshops and meet-ups where attendees got to listen to and interact with authors, speakers, literary agents, entrepreneurs and other creative folks.

And every one of them seemed to be in a damn good mood all weekend long!

The event was started a few years ago by author and blogger and world traveler Chris Guillebeau, who had been mulling over the idea of gathering some of his blog readers together for a couple of days of listening to interesting speakers, exchanging information and learning. He hoped he’d get 50 people – and ended up selling out almost 500 tickets, with demand for much more.

After the first year – in which he admits he lost around $20K – he realized he needed to get a little more organized on how to actually run a successful event. Well, the event was successful from the attendee’s standpoint, but when the organizers lose twenty grand, something has to change.

As the preparation and organization for year two of WDS wound down, they realized they’d have about $100,000 left over. What to do with the money? After all, the idea was not to make a profit (although they didn’t want to lose any), but to help people out in their endeavors. It was decided to give the money back to the attendees, and at the end of the event each person got an envelope with a $100 bill and a note urging them to put the ‘funds to good use. Start a project, surprise someone, or do something entirely different – it’s up to you.’

Of course, there’s a large social media component to the event, with an online searchable database so you can connect with and learn about other attendees, as well as overt promotion of the event hashtag #wds2013. Loads of tweets and events, packed with thousands of photos, showed up continuously throughout the weekend. As I’ve observed many times before, events and social media fit together like hand and glove – they’re made for each other.

Many attendees have posted photos on their Flickr accounts, including this cool collection from Mike Rohde, which gives a good representation of the event through his creative note-taking.

Now that the third year of WDS is over, what made it such a successful event?

From my vantage point as a twice-attendee (2012 and 2013), I think there are two keys: first, it’s absolutely non-corporate in any way shape or form. There are no logos anywhere (except WDS), and no mentions of any underwriters. I admit I really appreciate that aspect. Second, it comes off as a genuinely helpful gathering of like-minded people who simply love getting together.

At the Saturday morning keynote from presentation expert Nancy Duarte, I sat next to a woman named Vicki and asked her why she came. “I’m addicted to inspiration,” was her response. I’ve been reflecting on that ever since. Addicted to inspiration. We all want and need inspiration – and the World Domination Summit gives it – in spades.

The speaker line-up ranges from well-known authors, writers and radio host to not-so-well known people who simply have a great story to tell. In between there are interesting highlights of attendee stories, the Unconventional Race, lunch meet-ups, indie-movie screenings, yoga breaks, wide-ranging workshops and much more – all topped off by a private party in downtown Portland at Pioneer Square, which got passers-by wondering just what the hell was going on behind the fences!

At one of the gatherings, entrepreneurial expert Andrew Warner interviewed Chris and they spent time discussing the money aspect of the event. Surprisingly (or not), there are no secrets. As Chris said, there are 2800 people attending, most of whom paid about $500 – do the math (it’s around $1.3M gross). But as he said, renting the halls, producing the various pieces of swag, offering catering for mid-morning snacks, renting Pioneer Courthouse Square et al – it all adds up. The event was expensive to produce – and all of the speakers are non-paid volunteers (what wasn’t clear is if their travel and lodging were paid for; I’d be curious to know that).

In other words – the World Domination Summit is unique in a true sense of the word: there’s nothing quite like it in the world. Attendees feel like they’re ‘in’ on something that no one else is.

Takeaways:

Be unique – do something that is unlike anything else.
Don’t taint it with corporate sponsorships, which ultimately take away from the uniqueness.
Offer a wide variety of speakers.
Surround the event with mini-gatherings to spur more networking.
Have a great sense of humor about how everything works – and be ready for things to go sideways.
Be open about all aspects of the event.

Check out the complete set of #WDS2013 photos provided by event organizers here.

March 26, 2013

How GoPro Dominates Using Social Media and Tradeshow Marketing

I first encountered GoPro at the 2009 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market show in Salt Lake City. Nick Woodman was making a spectacle of himself. About once an hour, he would get on top of a platform and start yelling at the top of his lungs. He would exhort visitors to check out the brand-new product – a small HD camera that captured crazy video with a wideangle lens. It was small enough to strap to a helmet, chest, end of a ski pole, wherever.

Trying to get your hands on a GoPro camera at Outdoor Retailer Winter Market 2013

During these hourly exhortation’s Nick would regale his audience with examples of how great his product, the GoPro camera – and how it captures extreme sports videos – is. It also engaged eager visitors with the chance of winning one.

The story of GoPro is one that happened very quickly. It didn’t take long for the combination of trade shows, social media, and virtually giving away the store every single day to create a rabid following.

If you follow GoPro on Facebook, you’ll notice that they give away everything they make to one person every single day. I’ve signed up hundreds of times and never won. But it doesn’t keep me from signing up again and again and again. That’s how much I’d like to get my hands on their latest and great HD sports-action toy.

Early in 2013, Nick Woodman, the CEO and main figurehead of GoPro was featured on the cover of Inc. magazine. The story was about how he had grown the company to a multi-million dollar enterprise and created a new camera niche virtually out of nothing. The company had done it with a great product that is groundbreaking, and the combination of tradeshow marketing, social media and pure moxie.

Since I saw them at the 2009 outdoor retailer when a market in salt Lake city, I’ve been a big fan of GoPro. They offered $100 off of a camera if you purchased at that time and a coupon for discount on a future purchase when their new HD camera came out. I bought one of their early cameras and have had fun with it ever since.

In January 2013 I attended Outdoor Retailer Winter Market and it didn’t take me long to find the GoPro trade show booth. It wasn’t large compared to many other booths at the show, about 30 x 30, but it was plastered with a dozen or so large screen video monitors. As you enter the booth you were given a chance to sign up and possibly win a new HD camera. They also indicated that with the sign up, you would be emailed a coupon for a $100 discount on their new HD camera. So in effect, they’re giving you a chance to win something and they’re capturing your information so they can stay in contact with you.

I talked to one of the girls working the booth and discovered that Nick was not there, but it didn’t matter by this point because the company was too big for Nick to go to every tradeshow. GoPro has quickly proven itself to be a serious player in the camera industry, and has been called ‘the fastest growing company in the world.’

Several times a day a GoPro booth staffer stands up to give away T-shirts, swag and of course that coveted GoPro HD model camera. Hundreds of people yelled, screamed, waved arms and otherwise made fools of themselves hoping their name would get called.

Go Pro’s custom tradeshow booth matched their brand’s look, feel and style. It looked a bit brash and with the multiple video screens your eyes were drawn to action, action, action as the sports action videos played in an endless loop.

Suffice it to say that with the combination of savvy social media, aggressive trade show marketing and a groundbreaking product, GoPro dominates their niche. They certainly have new competitors – with any new product that carves out a big share of the market, someone will come in and try to catch to the leader. And someone may yet catch up with GoPro. But GoPro’s excellent marketing – including tradeshow marketing – is proving to be all they need right now to be the leader of the pack.

Check out the Inc article.

Then check out the selection of videos.

Click here to grab my Tradeshow Follow-up Checklist

March 14, 2013

Expo West 2013 Re-Cap

(Warning: self-promotional blog post. Not recommended more than once or twice a year…)

It was my 11^th year at Expo West as a representative of a company that provides exhibit booths for exhibitors.

First: 11 years? Kidding, right?

No. The first booth client I had way back in 2003 was Kettle Foods of Salem, Oregon, which lead to doing a booth for Nancy’s Yogurt / Springfield Dairy, Natracare, Hyland’s Homeopathic, gDiapers and many others.

Besides having to basically eat your way through the day with the glut of food samples, I spent time meeting exhibitors and making connections.

And making sure that my new projects were working.

The two new booths my company, Communication One Exhibits had this year were from Bob’s Red Mill and gDiapers. The Bob’s Red Mill was a custom 30’ x 30’ booth, designed by Greg Garrett Designs of Vancouver and fabricated by Classic Exhibits. It was a stunner and was definitely well-received by the company – including Bob Moore, who called it ‘impressive’ – and show visitors. The exhibit had three structures – a main company info-display area, a product display area and – in a new move for Bob’s Red Mill – a food sampling station. The main structure was capped with a 4’ cupola high atop a structure that echoed their mill store in Milwaukie, Oregon. Either end of the main structure had 52” video screens that continuously showed informative videos.

Bob has a great way of making an entrance. Bring along a Dixieland band! Check out the video from Day One:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8aFhxjan0w

The other booth was at the other end of the scale. gDiapers, of Portland, Oregon, is a company that offers reusable diaper covers with disposable inserts. Years ago, when I was VP of Sales and Marketing for Interpretive Exhibits, we designed and constructed a 20’ in-line booth for gDiapers that had plenty of display space, slat wall and a fabric banner across the top. As their clientele needs evolved, so did the company’s desire for a simpler display that was easier to set up. So with the help of Portland’s Boothster, we designed and built a 10’ inline booth that had a small display area and a large 10’ fabric back wall, along with cardboard chairs and cardboard tube-constructed counter with wrap-around graphic. The booth looked great and gDiapers loved it!

Yes, I blog about social media and tradeshow and event marketing, but my company Communication One Exhibits has a ton of great capabilities to design and fabricate tradeshow booths to suit any need.

Let me now step off of my soapbox…thank you verry much for your time!

January 25, 2013

7 Surefire Ways to Energize Social Media at Tradeshows #5 – Try New Things

See previous posts in this series: Basics, Look at What Others are Doing, Don’t Publish Selfish Content, Don’t Just Push Stuff Out and Build Relationships.

Yes, you MUST try new things. One of the coolest ‘experiments’ I’ve run across for pre-show marketing was done by Griffin Technologies of Nashville (described here on the Classic Exhibits blog).

In a nutshell, Griffin refurbished a VW camper van, set up a website to dump a bunch of fun content on, then headed off to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, all while continuing to blog and post videos to the blog. By the time they arrived at the show, hundreds of people were waiting for them – as successful a pre-show marketing experiment as I’ve seen in ages.

So, yes, you must try new things. Experiment. Remember that what worked last year may not this year. This goes back to those idea that you may adapt or copy that we discussed in an earlier segment of this series.

Ask yourself – what do my customers want? Is there any way to use that knowledge to crate a buzz? Do your products or services have an element that you can exploit that other companies can’t? What can you use to get their attention?
Don’t be afraid to try a new angle on an old promotion. Put a twist on another company’s successful social media promotion. Experiment, experiment, experiment!

How can you get their attention? By looking at how others have succeeded at getting attention gives you a clue to how you can try to get attention as well. Don’t be afraid to take a chance on a promotion, whether it’s old or new. If it feels like it fits your product, service and company, it’s probably worth a shot.

Recap:

Try new things
Experiment
What worked last year may not work this year
What do customers want?
What will get their attention?

photo credit: yugenro

December 28, 2012

7 Surefire Ways to Re-Energize Your Social Media Engagement at Tradeshows: The Basics

I’ll be serving up a 45-minute presentation January 25^th at the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City on “7 Surefire Ways to Re-Energize Your Social Media Engagement at Tradeshows” so I thought I’d blog a bit in the next month leading up to the presentation. Not only does it let you see a bit of what I’ll be speaking about (and may get you to attend if you’re going to the show), but it also helps me to crystalize my thoughts for the presentation!

As the title of the presentation suggests, there are perhaps at least 7 Surefire Ways to Re-Energize Your Social Media Engagement at Tradeshows. However, before getting to all of those seven ways, let’s start with the basics:

First, your company should do a…

Social Media Audit

A social media audit can be an informal look at your social media engagement, which will take only a few hours and no money. Or it can be an in-depth report from A-Z on what your company is doing on social media, so that even the most casual observer can see everything that’s going on.

Here are the main three things you want your social media audit to do:

Come out with a clear understanding of your goals: what do you hope to accomplish with your use of social media (be specific)
Itemize inventory current efforts: where are you now? Blog, FB, etc and are they all interconnected.
Identify resources for expansion: Do you have the wherewithal to take what you’re doing now, expand upon it to reach your goals (digital natives, blog, content creators, identification of those that have the time and expertise to follow up on your plan and to meet your target deadlines and how much time)

Download your free social media audit template here (PDF; no opt-in required)

Social Media Policy

A good workable Social Media Company Policy should be more than just what your employees are doing on the job. That’s important, but you should also consider a policy for when they’re allowed to engage in social media, time involved, who can do it, etc; IN most cases, personal interaction should be confined to breaks and lunch. But your policy should also apply to what they can do privately. How can they use your name? When do they represent you and when do they not? Social media is always on and your company’s reputation is a 24-hour consideration. The way that your associates talk about their employment and about your products is out there in cyberspace forever. Your policy should look at how you deal with that discussion. You can’t trample on peoples first amendment rights, but you can control your company brand.

Finally, the policy should be two-pronged: 1) what Can they do and what are they expected to do as employees? And 2) it should make an effort to control what’s important with your brand when they’re away from the office.

Learn to Listen

One of the most important things people can do with social media, and one that I think they do the least often, is to ‘take the temperature’ of their clientele and potential market. Most people seem to believe that social media is a place to go and beat their chests and show how great they are. But that’s only half of what you can do with social media. The other half is the research you can do to uncover facts and tidbits and other information about your market. Social media gives you an invaluable tool for determining where your market is, what its pain points are and which of those pain points have needs that are not being met with existing products. Then you can determine how your products can alleviate that pain, or even give you an idea for a new product.

Up next in this series: #1: Look at what others are doing.

photo credit: keela84

November 7, 2012

Bringing Home the Bacon

In the swirl of the tradeshow marketing soup, you’re working to create a potent mix of trained staff, an awesome-looking and appropriately-functional booth, interactivity, social media engagement. When all is said and done, the ONLY important thing at most shows is: bringing home the bacon.

When you get back to the office, the big question that determines the success or failure of your tradeshow marketing effort is this: did you get enough warm and hot leads to justify the expense of going to the tradeshow and planning to go again next year? Because if you haven’t, there’s something missing. But what?

When you examine the various and disparate elements that go into a successful tradeshow marketing experience, you may be reminded of the famous question attributed to Henry Ford: “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted, but which half?”

Make no mistake, if you can’t identify the wasted parts of your tradeshow marketing efforts, you’ll continue to leak dollars and leads and return from shows with half-empty cups of leads.

It behooves you to examine all of the elements of your tradeshow marketing to determine where the inefficiencies lie:

Tradeshow booth ‘look and feel’ and function: does your booth draw the right people and once they get there, is it set up to handle them properly?
Booth graphics: do your graphics qualify and disqualify visitors as they arrive?
Tradeshow staff training: what’s the level of knowledge of staffers on your products and services and are they properly trained in how to interact with visitors in the chaotic environment of a tradeshow?
Are you attending shows that offer the best market for your products and services?
Social media marketing: do your SM marketing staffers understand social media and the art of engagement?

By hitting all cylinders properly, you’re actually doing two things: one, you’re putting a much more effective tradeshow marketing machine on the tradeshow floor, and two, you’re positioning your company at a much higher level than most of your competitors.

Given the stakes at risk and the amount of money you’re investing in your tradeshow marketing, I have one question for you:

Why wouldn’t you want to do all of these things properly and with excellence to significantly increase the odds of bringing home the bacon?

If you’re not willing to do that, perhaps you are not yet ready for tradeshow marketing.

Oh, and if you want to know where the inspiration for the title for this post came from…

October 30, 2012

10 Things Zombies Can Teach Us about Tradeshow Marketing

Thanks to a recent post on tradeshow-exhibiting Zombies published here on the Tradeshow Guy Blog, Mel White, VP of Business Development for Classic Exhibits, was suitably inspired to come up with a Top Ten List on what we can all learn from zombies. Thanks for sharing, Mel!

Single-minded Focus. You may not appreciate their all-consuming desire to eat your flesh, but they are committed to the task. They let nothing get in their way, except an ax to the brain. Your next trade show will be wildly successful, if you make it a priority, not an afterthought.
Teamwork. Zombies travel in packs, like ravenous hyenas. That teamwork ensures them a much higher percentage of kills. There’s a reason “We killed it” signifies success. By working together, those poor doe-eyed attendees don’t stand a chance.
Appearance Matters. You never forget your first impression of a zombie: filthy clothing, rotting flesh, vacuous stare, and rancid halitosis (that alone is enough to make you hurl). It’s sad but true. We judge people by their appearance. Your company spent considerable money to participate so shine your shoes, press your shirt, and dry clean that blazer.
Lights, Motion, and Noise. The undead and the living are both attracted to lights, motion, and noise. As much as we try . . . we can’t resist it. When planning your booth, ask yourself this, “Will my exhibit attract 200% more zombies than my competitors?” If the answer is “No!” then you need to get creative (or consider a ceremonious human sacrifice ever day).
Intelligence. Zombies love brains and so should you. Being smart about your trade show marketing means you understand that trade shows are not the same as print ads, videos, brochures, or traditional sales calls. Trade shows are opportunities to attract new customers and strengthen existing relationships.
Fresh Meat. Ever notice that zombies won’t eat other zombies. They like their meals fresh. Fresh ideas and innovation, particularly during a weak economy, propel one company forward while leaving another one struggling to survive. Trade show attendees go for two reasons: to find solutions to existing problems and/or discover innovations that will strengthen their operations or bottom line.
Know Your Customer. In zombie-speak, we are customers. Good customers freak-out and get eaten. Bad customers ram a metal rod through a zombie’s skull. You want good customers, just without the “getting eaten” part. Good customers become good customers because we understand them and tailor our product or service to meet their needs.
Preparation Matters. Zombies don’t need a trade show toolkit or an exhibitors handbook or an exhibit designer, they are 100% prepared the moment they go from living to undead. You’re not so lucky. You won’t succeed without thorough pre-show, show, and post-show preparation.
Without Customers, What’s the Point? Wandering aimlessly is pointless, even to a mindless zombie. Zombies crave excitement. When a living, breathing human enters its proximity, it switches from listless to high alert. Serious exhibitors react similarly, albeit without the growling and moaning. We’ve all seen exhibitors who appear annoyed or resentful when an attendee enters their booth, interrupting their game of Angry Birds. What’s the point if it’s not about customers?
There’s No Cure. Once a zombie always a zombie. If you love trade shows and are serious about trade show marketing, there’s no antidote. It’s in your blood. No matter how hard you fight it, once bitten, it’s incurable.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf from Flickr.

October 15, 2012

4 Ways to Avoid Tradeshow Exhibiting Zombies

As a tradeshow manager, one of the worst things you will ever face is a booth staff that has become, well, zombies part way through the tradeshow. If you leave the booth and come back to find your staff spending time discussing politics or gossiping about business (disengagement), or if you see things disappear (employee theft), ignoring visitors (wtf? – visitors are why they’re there!), you’ve got a Zombie Apocalypse!

Zombies in your tradeshow booth don’t actually walk around chewing on your tradeshow booth or looking to dismember visitors, but with active disengagement your booth staff might as well be zombies for all the good they’re doing your company.

So, here are 4 ways to avoid Tradeshow Exhibiting Zombies.

Make sure your staff is trained. Nothing’s worse than untrained staff, expect perhaps an uninformed staff. If your staff doesn’t have the skills to interact positively with visitors or know how to answer questions, they might as well be the walking dead.

Marketing goal buy-in. If your booth staff has only the bare information on why they’re there (pick up a paycheck!), you’re doing your company a disfavor. Your booth staff, from the lowliest temp employee to the highest ranked engineer or member of management, should know exactly WHY you’re at the show, WHAT the goals are, and HOW to attain those goals. If they SEE the goal and BELIEVE in what you’re doing, chances are very good they’ll have BUY-IN and will participate with energy and enthusiasm. If so, they’re emotionally engaged. In not, they might as well be…you get the point.

Communication. Your Zombie Apocalypse is only a motion or two away if you aren’t able to communicate effectively and in a timely manner. If that means you’re tweeting about a prize giveaway or posting great deals on Facebook that will spur visitors to rush to your booth, but don’t tell all of the staff, those promotions may fall flat on its face.

Show them you appreciate them. Yup, sometimes the hardest thing for some folks is to say THANK YOU for a job well done. If your tradeshow succeeds and your staff did a stellar job, be sure to recognize them for it. Often the recognition can be nothing more than a pat on the back in front of the staff, but it can also mean that you’re buying them a nice dinner on the last night of the show and telling them as a group that you couldn’t do it without them. Whatever form of recognition you choose, you must be sincere and believable.

Follow these guidelines and the Zombie Apocalypse will likely bypass your company and instead devour your competition!

photo credit: possan

August 2, 2012

7 Ways Your Social Media Tradeshow Marketing Sucks

On, no! Not another list post! But they’re so fun to write! Not only that, but putting thoughts into a numerical list makes it much easier to digest.

Here are a few ways that you may be coming up short, er, uh, sucking…at your social media tradeshow marketing.

You’re not taking and sharing photos. People love photos and love to spread them around. Next time at the tradeshow booth, have your smart phone handy, or a digital camera. Take photos of visitors, get their names, post on Facebook, or if you have a lot, put ’em up on Flickr. Then share them throughout your social network.
You’re not consistently tweeting. Just one tweet about your special tradeshow booth guest or author isn’t enough. Get it out several times a day. Post ahead of time by a few days. Use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets.
You’re not shooting video and sharing it. Videos can be extremely useful, especially if you’re shooting videos of customers talking about how your products can help them (testimonials). Don’t worry about professional quality. Just keep it short and to the point – two minutes or less – and you should be fine.
You’re not mentioning anything about your tradeshow appearance on your blog. Yes, your blog isn’t supposed to be rife with tons of posts about your company. It’s not a place for press releases and company awards your CEO just won. It’s for helping readers solve problems and answer questions and gain insight into your industry and products. But there’s nothing wrong with mentioning upcoming events you’ll be involved in, especially if there’s an opportunity for visitors to get questions answered or see how your products and services can solve problems.
You’re spending too much time reading goofball posts and not actually creating good content. In other words, it sucks because you’re allowing it to be a time-suck. Be thoughtful and conscientious about your approach to social media marketing and the time you spend, and you’ll do a lot better.
Thinking that each tweet, Facebook post or video that you post will translate to a sale. Social media and sales will probably never converge the way that marketers and sales teams wish they would. But if they understood how social media could build a tribe of followers and like-minded people, those connections may eventually ring the cash register. Not only that, it can create a tribe of people that will go to bat for you and help spread the word about your product or service. Face it; social media connections are generally fairly weak. Believing that each ‘like’ on your page means you’ve just gained a great friend or customer is wishful thinking. Instead, think of it as an introduction during a busy party. Once that introduction is made, look for common ground, offer useful information, respond to questions and engage without looking like a stalker. And DON’T try a hard sell – if you do, those casual connections will vanish.
You’re not involved at all. Yes, it would be easy to write off social media as a weak marketing effort. If you do, though, you’re letting a terrific opportunity to meet and greet with no pressure slip through your fingers. Instead, look at social media as a way to continue to make connections, and even though they’re weak at the beginning, if you are a real person behind a brand, those connections will strengthen as you spend time working them.

photo credit: CUhomepage

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Event Marketing

Social Media Audit

Social Media Policy

Learn to Listen