Interview with Jim Ferolo, Creative Director of Float Mobile Learning. We talked a bit about what Float Mobile does – and then narrowed the discussion to an iPad app they recently released called Rabble Browser, which is aimed at helping an audience interact with a speaker at an event – and vice versa.
Tim Patterson discusses the creation and usage of meeting mobile apps with Geri Bell, Account Executive with EProDirect.com.
Here’s where to reach Geri:
A year ago at Expo West I scanned about 20 QR Codes to see how they worked and to see how companies were using the technology.
The results were disappointing. Not a single QR Code hit on all aspects of user-friendly usability. They fell into one of the follow categories: didn’t work at all (1); didn’t scan at all because they were too small, too far away (too high) or looked weird because they were on an uneven surface (temporary tattoos) (about 15 of them); or the URL landing page wasn’t optimized for a smart phone (the remainder).
This year at Expo West I wasn’t as scan-happy, but I did find that many more QR Codes did work, and did exactly what they intended. Not all, but many. Out of about a dozen
codes I scanned, all of them worked (they took me to a landing page), and about half of the landing pages were optimized for viewing in a smart phone.
Some notable examples: Gud, from Burt’s Bees and Ciao Bello (see screen shots). Both had nice looking landing pages, which were easy to navigate, and very inviting. Both accomplished their purposes of providing a good answer to the question: why should I scan this QR Code.
Check out the Kindle version of my QR Code Tradeshow Marketing Guide here (cheap!) if you want to know how to make these puppies work right.
Social media is great for drawing people to your event, whether you’re tweeting from your booth with a contest, posting to your Facebook page or blogging.
But using social media to help people connect while at the event is easy, too. It just takes a little thought and planning, and using the right tools.
I just signed up to attend Chris Gillebeau’s World Domination Summit in Portland this July. During the process of signing up and confirming payment, I had the option of sharing some limited personal and business information so that other like-minded people can find me and perhaps connect before the event. I presume the thinking would be is that it would lead you to want to connect in person at the site. This approach seems perfectly set-up to help keep you engaged in the event a good 175 days before it kick off, and positions you to connect with people before the event. I’m curious to see what else the organizers will do to foster connectivity in the next few months, as the event gets closer.
Another way to create engagement is to offer some sort of game or activity. SCVNGR is a game about doing challenges at places, which makes it perfectly suited for events. By checking into a series of places and doing an activity, you can earn rewards (if it’s set up that way), as well as network with other people playing the same game. By setting up some kind of reward for an activity, you encourage participation.
Involve those back at home or the office. By sharing hashtags, photos and videos – even live video streaming at chosen times – you are opening the conference or show to those who were unable to attend in person. Granted, you won’t get the same kind of engagement as you will with attendees, but it’s like offering a lifeline to ‘what’s new’ and happening’ at the event to those who aren’t attending.
Foursquare is a useful tool to share tips and comments about event speakers, exhibitors and products. It also helps people find other attendees and share tips on the best restaurants of nightclubs. And by monitoring the conversations on Foursquare and Twitter, organizers can quickly step in to address concerns, solve problems or use the comments to guide a better experience with the things that are working particularly well.
It makes sense to drum up as much interest before an event as possible, even prior to any official promotion launch. In fact, social media is ideally suited for just this task. By putting a blog post or video together, for instance, on what is coming at the event (even though it may be months away), and driving traffic to that blog post or video through social media, you’ve already primed the pump to whet people’s appetites for the event.
Also, by searching for and keeping tabs on Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups and discussion boards and Twitter accounts you can slowly expand your reach and build momentum. One key to this effort is to uncover which of the social media platforms your audience hangs out at the most. You should be able to do this through searching for hashtags on Twitter, groups on LinkedIn and association or event pages on Facebook and examining the number of people involved and the level of engagement by those people.
Depending on the size of the event, you should consider building a small event-related blog. WordPress blogs are easy to set up and customize and domains are about $10 a year. If you’re the promoter, this is mandatory so you have a landing spot online for information related to your show. Here’s where you’ll include all pertinent info, including cost, times, dates, contact info, how to purchase a space, etc.
If you’re an exhibitor, it’s still a very useful piece of your pre-show promotion. It’s easy to share blog posts on Twitter, Facebook and relevant LinkedIn groups, and a blog legitimizes your platform more than just a Facebook event listing.
But don’t forget the Facebook listing, either. It’s easy to set up, and easy to invite people. Don’t invite everyone – although Facebook gives you this capability – because it’s a waste of time. People across the country or in another country don’t care and people who can’t relate to your event won’t bother to respond. So pick and choose.
Set up a LinkedIn event page as well. Here you can only invite 50 people once the event listing is created, but this is good in that it forces you to choose carefully who to invite. Focus on those who might actually come and benefit from the event.
During the Event
Not every exhibitor is working hard on social media to engage show visitors, although at times it seems like that. Still, you can make your efforts stand out by offering great value in your booth, such as high-profile guests, demonstrations, high-value giveaways or downloads and other enticements.
Be sure you know what the standard hashtag for the event is. While there is no official repository of hastags (that I know of) since they come and go quickly, a medium to large event should have a hashtag that is getting used by exhibitors and attendees. Once you determine what the hashtag is, use it in every single event-related tweet.
During the event, someone from your staff can be in charge of creating content for either your blog or for other social media platforms, such as Twitter or Facebook. This might also include videos for YouTube or Facebook, which might include testimonials, demonstrations of products or explanations of services.
If you’re able, set up a Twitter board. It’s easy enough to put up a large flat screen hooked up to a laptop that displays real-time tweets using the show’s hashtag. This does a couple of things: first it shows people that you’re on the cutting edge (although not so much as a year or two ago), and secondly, it gives people a reason to tweet about your booth and your company, just so they can see their tweet show up in real time. Believe me, it happens!
Be sure to shoot a LOT of video. The more you shoot, the more you have to share after the show. As the weeks and months go on, if you can still offer pertinent information via your social media outlets, you’ll continue to stay in your prospects’ minds. Even if you don’t shoot much extra video, use information from the show (comments, insights, etc) to create more blog and Facebook posts.
This is just a start – no doubt you can find more ways to promote your tradeshow, event or conference using social media. If you think of something I didn’t mention, be sure to add it in the comment section below!
Okay, this is gonna sound like an ad for Hootsuite. But it’s not. Well, it’s not intended that way!
But the more I play around with Hootsuite, the more I find it’s a terrific tool for managing your social media efforts at tradeshows and events.
First, everything is in one place. And I mean everything! You can load up several accounts from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Ping.fm and others. You’re able to set up several members of your team with access to the dashboard, making it easy for them to schedule tweets or posts ahead of time. This is a great tool when you consider the chaos of the tradeshow floor, and you know that you’ll want to be able to take care of people in the booth as well as mix in the occasional live tweet or Facebook posting with your scheduled tweets or posts.
Let’s say you’re planning a tradeshow appearance. You can schedule various activities in your booth, such as guest appearances, product promos, demonstrations, etc., and set up tweets and posts ahead of time. It takes some time to put it all into place, but once you’re at the show, you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that all of those tweets and Facebook postings are going to show up at their scheduled time. And if something changes in mid-stream, such as guest getting caught in traffic and having to delay his appearance, it’s easy to log on to Hootsuite and make the changes in the scheduled posts.
When Hootsuite first came out, I grabbed a free account, and bounced back and forth between that and Tweetdeck (I wouldn’t count Tweetdeck out yet – I hear Twitter purchased the software and is working to add more capabilities to it). Then I drifted away. But now I’m back, and as I mentioned, the more I use it the better it gets. The coders behind Hootsuite keep adding more bells and whistles, making it more useful all the time. In fact, there’s so much there that I probably won’t ever use all of its capabilities.
As an event manager, your biggest social media advantage is the ability to get ahead of the curve on being able to set up pre-scheduled tweets and posts. This software is the best at doing that, and it’s web-based so you don’t have to download and install anything.
And don’t forget the mobile platform. There’s a Hootsuite app (which I rarely use because I prefer the web approach) that is also available if you prefer to do it from your smartphone.
Have I said enough? I could go on, but you might think I’m trying to suck up to the dudes at Hootsuite. Naah, it’s just a cool tool.
Hootsuite is available in both a free and premium version. The premium version, for just a few bucks a month, offers ore detailed analytics and deeper tools – well worth the modest monthly cost.
Let’s break those down a bit more, okay?
1. Be involved.
Makes sense. If you’re going to use social media in your event and tradeshow marketing – and you should – you’ll have to be involved. That means checking in on your Facebook and Twitter feeds regularly, following and ‘liking’ people and businesses that are related in some way. It means engaging regularly with Twitter followers by offering good information, making your opinions known, and responding to tweets, questions and comments. Engagement!
2. Be Proactive.
Don’t just sit and wait for something to happen with your social media engagement. When you see a cool article that your audience might enjoy, share a link. When you have an opinion on something, write up a blog post (you DO have a blog, right?). When you go to an event, take photos and post them. When you stop at a booth, tell people who you are online and how to find you (this should be on your business card).
3. Keep an ear to the ground.
Your research and listening modules should be concise and easy to follow. If you’re not using a premium research tool, you should have Google Alerts set up on various industry brands, products and people. You should regularly search Twitter for keywords to see what conversations are going on. If you want to be in the know, you have to spend time learning what’s going on. There are tons of free and premium tools to help you do this.
4. Plan and execute event-related social media campaigns
Every show is unique and therefore every show should have a unique marketing plan for your social media engagement. You will have different people involved, different products to promote, and different targets to reach. Plans would include a variety of tweets, Facebook postings, videos and photos to be shot and produced, perhaps an editorial calendar of what information goes out when. Yes, it adds another layer to your entire tradeshow marketing plan, but it’s necessary if you want to get a handle on it and make it work effectively.
5. Track metrics of engagement
Plan on what metrics you’re going to track, how they’re going to be tracked and who’s going to do the tracking. Is it Facebook ‘likes’? Is it the number of people that show up in your booth in response to tweets? Is it pageviews on your blog? Video views on YouTube? Sales as a results of social media engagement? Before you can track metrics, know what’s important for your business and how you’re going to assemble the numbers.
6. Write up reports on results
After each show, it’ll be up to you to include a segment on your post-show report that reflects your social media engagement. It’s generally pretty straightforward stuff, but don’t discount the importance of the essence of the report: who did what, how it worked, what the results were (compared to expectations, if any), and what your recommendations are for the next show.
7. Stay informed on cutting edge technology
“Oh, no, there’s something NEW? Holy crap, I’m only starting to figure out the older stuff!” Yes, there’s always something new, especially in the fast-paced world of social media. Take smartphones, for example. Are your websites optimized for the mobile platform? Are you using QR Codes? If so, are you making sure that QR Code is doing what it’s supposed to do? What about Foursquare and SCVNGR?
By tracking a few blogs, you should be able to keep up on much of what’s new. My favorites are Mashable and Hubspot, but there are certainly others as well.
8. Use the technology that makes the most sense
Just because you CAN use a technology doesn’t mean you SHOULD. While it’s easy to say that you should stay with what you’re comfortable, I think it’s important to keep stretching your comfort zone. Don’t know how to set up a QR Code? Learn about them, and figure out if it’s something your market might react positively to. Not sure if video works in your industry? See what others are doing and assess your company’s capabilities and make a decision based on that assessment.
There will ALWAYS be new technology headed your way. You should at least be aware of it, what the implications might be and how you might potentially use it.
Adding social media to your other duties as tradeshow manager might make you pull your hair out, but the fact remains: your competition is working to do the same. Some are ahead of you, some are behind. The more comfortable you are with all of the tools and gadgets of social media, the better off you and your company will be.
photo credit: RobeRt Vega
A nice look at mobile event apps with Geri Bell of e-ProDirect and EproMeetingApps, a company that specializes in hospitality marketing and technology solutions.
Check out ePro Direct’s websites:
A few months ago I took a look at ways you can use iPads at tradeshows. Several bloggers chimed in with apps and ideas that were are worth a look. Given the exploding popularity of iPads once the iPad 2 came out in March of this year, perhaps its time to take another look.
Classic Exhibits of Portland is stepping into the hardware side of the iPad tradeshow discussion by making various bits of hardware, including counter inserts, swivel stands and other frames. Get a look here (yes, we’re a dealer – if you want an iPad mounting unit from Classic, give me a call or drop a line!)…
Roger Lewis at Alliance Tech looks at many ways iPads can be used, including (but not limited to): product demos, lead retrieval, surveys, electronic marketing and social media. Check his post here.
The National Conference Center Blog chimed in with a few ideas for iPad usage here, including building navigation and white-boarding.
And if you’re considering using iPads at tradeshows, make sure you don’t do a few things, like not confirming you have wi-fi access (and more). This list thanks to FatStax Apps.
Lou Bartizan of Bartizan Connects recently posted a slideshow at Slideshare.net on ways to use the iPad at tradeshows. Check it out here:
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.
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.
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.
