March 21, 2011

Social Media is NEW! (No, it’s not…)

You’ve probably heard it a lot, and maybe even agree: Social media is NEW! It’s something that’s so brand-spanking new that it’s going to take you a lot of time and effort to figure it out! There are new tools, new toys, new ways of connecting. And since it’s NEW it’s gotta be confusing and confounding.

Nope, that’s not true. Social media has been around for quite awhile. Yes, some of the tools and toys are relatively new, but think about it: if you’ve been online for at least a decade you should be used to this stuff. I’ve been connecting with people online since before the Internet. You may remember a brief period of time in the early 90s – before the ‘net – when there were online community bulletin board systems (actually around from 1979 – 1995). These BBS’s would allow people to dial in to a central computer, share notes and programs. I remember having a conversation with a guy who introduced me to one of his BBS’s where he shared software. It would take two or three days to transfer a small software program from one computer to another via a dial-up connection.

But we were connected.

In fact, ‘instant chat’ was available as early as 1988, which was when IRC (internet relay chat) made its debut. It became a PC desktop feature with ICQ in 1996. Yes, we were sharing instant messages with smiley faces by the mid-90s.

Then came CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL (remember all those millions of CD’s you get in the mail hoping to get you to get on board with AOL?). And the web and email. Being from a radio background, my interest in those days was figuring out to share audio online. It wasn’t too tough, and shortly thereafter I was hosting (albeit briefly) a short comedy show online through a website I had figured out how to set up.

Yes, it was all pretty rudimentary in those days. But around 2004 podcasting came along and I jumped in with both feet.

Then around 2006 we all read about the new Web 2.0 where we’d all be interconnected. Except that we already were connected in so many ways.

Early in the decade lots of people were connecting using Friendster (founded 2002) and MySpace (2003).

Today with Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006), YouTube (2005) and LinkedIn (2003) generally regarded as the ‘big four’ of social networking, it’s not hard to realize that this stuff has been around for several years. And with our online connectivity reaching back a couple of decades, don’t believe anyone who says social media is “new” – it’s not.

What’s new is that the tentacles of social media are reaching further into small businesses, who are then trying to figure out how to implement these platforms into their marketing mix.

It takes some adjustment, admittedly. Often new people need to be brought on board, or current employees need to be re-purposed for some of their work day to ‘figure out’ how to use social media to reach their target market.

The good news is that there are unlimited resources available to help. If you’re the self-help type, you search blogs about social media marketing. If you’d rather hire consultants to teach you how to tie it all together, that’s appropriate as well. No matter how you approach it, there are myriad ways you can implement social media in your tradeshow or event marketing efforts.

But again – none of this is really new. If you think it is, you literally haven’t been paying attention. And you’re living in the past….around 1979.

If you still haven’t started using this “new” social media to reach your market, when do you plan to?

(image courtesy of Mentionablehonor and is used through Creative Commons)

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.

March 10, 2011

What’s the Use of Foursquare?

Last summer just a few weeks after I got iPhone I was on a road trip with a buddy. Every time we ate at a restaurant or teed up a golf ball at a golf club I’d whip out the iPhone and check in via Foursquare.

“What are you doing that?” he’d ask. And of course I’d show him the app, explain how it works, how I could become the mayor, etc.

“Yeah, but why? What’s the point?”

Uh..it’s fun! Right?

It’s something a lot of people struggle with. Foursquare, to their credit, is trying to find ways to make it more of an engaging platform than just a ‘check-in’ tool that leaves you asking questions about what to do next.

One complaint I’ve seen is that when you check in with Foursquare and have that information posted to your Facebook and Twitter feeds, all you’re really doing is cluttering the stream. And people don’t want to see the clutter.

Well, if you look at it that way, virtually ALL posts are clutter to one degree or another. I tend to check in, have the info post, and then watch the reaction – and I often get it. And isn’t reaction the whole point of sharing via social media?

If you search online it’s easy to find hundreds of blog posts that are foretelling the end of Foursquare because they can’t figure out what the hell they’re doing.

But you can also find a lot of great ways to use Foursquare (as well as some nice tips on how NOT to use the app). Check out this post from Lifehacker. One very useful idea is to create a separate account for checking into any location where you spend money and use Foursquare to track expenses.

Here’s another post from Geeksugar.com which shows you a handful of ways to use Foursquare.

They also have a fun slideshow on where NOT so check-in.

While Foursquare is not perfect – here’s Peter Shankman’s blog post on his trouble with Foursquare overseas – it still has a lot of interesting uses. Maybe not as much of a game as SVCNGR, but as LBS (location based services) go, it’s still the leader. And I expect it to remain the leader for the foreseeable future. Which in social media years, could be as long as six months or more!

February 25, 2011

Should you Outsource Your Social Media Marketing?

Doing social media right takes time and expertise, so should you outsource it?

Here are the basic arguments: by outsourcing social media you’re bringing in an expert that knows there way around the social media landscape and can get you up and running quickly. So from that aspect, it’s a good idea.

On the other hand, you should NOT outsource your social media marketing because nobody from outside your company knows the culture of your company like your own employees – and social media is a perfect platform to share your company’s culture with clients and prospects. So it’s worth it to take the time to have your own employees learn social media and do it all internally.

Both are valid viewpoints and both deserve consideration.

My viewpoint: in the short term, by hiring a professional you’re getting a lot of information quickly and putting your company’s brand into the social media marketplace in a short time. Beyond that, you’ll want an internal team to learn the ropes and eventually take over.

So how do you find a social media consultant that knows what they’re doing? Well, it makes sense that they’d have a strong social media presence. Check their blog (is it current? what to do they blog about?); follow them on Twitter and Facebook; see if they’re active on YouTube and have any of their key people listed on LinkedIn. Connect with them on some of these outposts and watch what they do. It won’t be long before you’re going to have a pretty good feel for how well they understand social media and engage their community.

Once you decide to get involved in social media, whether you do it in-house or bring in a pro, there are some basics that you must handle:

Make your company easy to find by including links on your website to your social network outposts
Put links in embedded e-mail signatures
Put links in all marketing materials and collateral
Put links on all press releases

According to Social Media Today, you should look to outsource a number of things and keep other things internal. For instance, a good consultant can assist in writing pre-scheduled content such as blog, Twitter and Facebook posts. She can also find and follow relevant friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook. Creating a branded landing page on Facebook and a branded Twitter background would also go to your agency.

But you should plan to schedule a few moments each day to interact with your Twitter and Facebook followers.

A social media consulting team should, if they do their job correctly, become obselete before too long.

Even though you may have an agency working with you to engage in social media, you still must make time to engage yourself. If you rarely visit your social media networks you may miss opportunities that only you would recognize. You might see a question on your Facebook or Twitter page that you are able to answer quickly that no one else in your company is equipped to handle.

You are the expert in your business. No one knows your job quite like you do.

Other considerations: budget, personnel, time. This all comes down to the old ‘time, money and energy’ equation. Every situation is different and only you know best.

February 21, 2011

Social Media is Useless

Or to expand a bit: social media for the sake of social media is useless. If the only thing you’re doing with social media is tweeting for fun, posting stuff on Facebook just to stuff some things into the cyber-ether, or goofing off with silly videos on YouTube, you’re most likely wasting your time.

However, if you’re doing useful things in social media, such as listening to the talk about your industry and products, responding quickly to comments and questions and reaching out to those who both praise or complain about your company – yes, you should keep doing that. Because you’re using social media in such a way that can actually impact your bottom line.

It’s the same if you’re getting involved in social media at tradeshows, events and conferences just for the sake of ‘being online’…you’re probably not getting much bang for your buck. If on the other hand, you are consciously communicating with clients and potential customers in such a way as to engage them thoughtfully, it can definitely impact your bottom line.

Let’s face it: social media is not free. Oh, sure the tools are generally free. Getting those Twitter and Facebook accounts just take a few moments, and there’s no monthly fee to have those accounts. But you are spending TIME to tweet and post on Facebook. And TIME is MONEY. If your employees are engaging in social media on your company’s behalf and doing it on the clock, yes, it costs money. So they’d damn well better be doing something useful.

Which is where most companies tend to let the negative potential of social media keep them from doing anything. The trouble is, those companies that are operating on fear are going to be so late to the party that they might as well not bother to show up. They might as well go back to using the telephone, fax machine and cold calling as their only methods of sales communication.

It’s all about TRUST. If you don’t trust your employees to engage with your online community in a thoughtful and positive way, chances are they WON’T do it! However, if you’re letting your employees get involved in social media because you feel they know your company better than some highly-paid consultant, and you TRUST them to represent the company in a positive light, good things happen.

They share stories about why they love working there. They help customers and prospects to solve problems and leave them wanting and willing to tell friends and acquaintances about the great experience they had.

In a tradeshow setting, social media can be used to not only bring people to your tradeshow booth, but to wholly engage them while they’re at your booth – and get them to share that great experience with their community, making you look like the stars you are. Shoot videos of them raving about your product, share photos of them on Facebook or your blog, tweet out that ‘so-and-so just stopped by the booth!’

Using social media to show off your customers is a great way to make them feel loved and wanted. If you can do that successfully, you have created a customer that will naturally bring you more customers…without even trying.

January 17, 2011

7 Social Media Things to do That Your Competition is Probably Forgetting

In the marketing game, staying ahead of your competition is a key to being top of mind to your market. With social media adding yet another facet to your marketing mix, it gets harder and harder to keep track of all of the moving parts.

That’s where being on top of your game and using great tools to make things easier come in handy. Really handy. It puts you a step or two above your competition. They’ll find out sooner or later what you’re doing. By then, hopefully you’ll have moved yet another step or two ahead.

1. Respond in Real-Time

Want to be instantly notified when someone sends you a tweet so you can be sure to get back to them right away if necessary? Set up your smart phone to ping or beep you with a Twitter app. This lets you respond in real-time, which positions you in their mind of being extremely responsive. They feel wanted and loved.

2. Blog Regularly

Show your readers and potential clients that you understand their pain. In the blog you offer solutions, how-to’s, interviews with experts (written/audio/video), industry news and comments and more. By doing so, you’re making the blog attractive to readers. By posting regularly, you’re making it worth their while to come back and visit. If the content is top-notch, you’re making it a ‘don’t-miss’ read.

3. Make Your Facebook Page Work For You

Yeah, pretty much everybody has a Facebook page now. Companies are planting their businesses on Facebook. You should be, too. If you’re not, get it done. If you’re already there, explore how you can make your Facebook page a valuable resource for your readers. Make sure your blog posts are showing up automatically by setting up an RSS feed into your Facebook company page. Offer prizes, special deals, and fresh content (audio/video/written) on your Facebook page that they can’t get anywhere else. Find ways to increase your Facebook fanbase such as these.

4. Stay Educated

Reading great social media websites, such as the Social Media Examiner. Always full of useful resources, insight and tools, the SME helps anyone who’s interested in moving ahead of their competitor. Great stuff, including a recent post on how you can improve your blog by following top tips from top bloggers.

5. Go Mobile

Your audience is mobile. You should be mobile. Smartphones help keep people connected. If you have one, it helps you understand how your market interacts with your online outposts. You can see what they see: how your blog and website looks on a smartphone, how to interact, check-in, post updates, photos and more – all while on the run in an increasingly mobile and active world.

6. Be Active at Shows

Yes, you’re tweeting and posting on Facebook. Maybe even doing a few videos. Can you step up even further and create a virtual tradeshow website? Can you plan on bringing even more heavy-hitters in the industry into your booth to interview on live streaming Internet TV? Don’t bite off more than you can chew…but take a really close look at what you’re capable of. And if you need help, hire it.

7. Have Fun!

Really…are you having fun? Is your competition? If you’re regularly beating them I suspect you’re having more fun than them!

photo credit: brad montgomery

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