Did you send out a Tweet too soon? Now what? Our friends at BNET discuss the potential problem of what might happen when information gets out via social networks before your company wants it out. Should you delete a tweet or a Facebook posting? What happens if someone thinks you’ve got something to hide?
Depending on what your company’s involvement is in social media, there are a number of approaches you can take to moving forward during the first quarter of 2011. And that’s the KEY: MOVING FORWARD from wherever you are at this moment. With the forward motion of all things social media, if you sit still you’ll get further and further behind!
If your company is NOT doing anything with social media:
If you’re at the very beginning, you’ll have to start somewhere. Starting anywhere is better than not starting at all. Ask around the office, and look for your company’s own ‘digital native.’ This is the person that’s already online with social media. They’re already on Facebook and Twitter. They may be posting fun videos on YouTube or Facebook. Perhaps they’ve got a LinkedIn account. They’re adept at discussing and moving around in the social media world.
Once you find that person, sit down with your marketing manager and the company owner (presuming you’re a small or medium-sized company and have easy access to these people) and discuss the following steps:
At this point, you’re really doing a full assessment of where the company is in social media. Find out what your strengths are, where the holes are in your knowledge and determine the best way to fill those gaps. Here is where you’ll also be appointing someone (or two or three) that have the capabilities to lead the company’s social media efforts.
From here, look to what how you can start to create a community, stay in touch with them and provide them with information, content and response to their feedback.
Then, start: get the Facebook and Twitter accounts going, check in daily, put up links on your website to direct people to the new social media outposts. At the outset, once the accounts are set-up (should take a very short amount of time), the initial involvement might be a few minutes a day. As you see more of your community finding you, you’ll have more opportunity to ask questions, look for feedback and find ways to respond to their comments and questions.
If your company IS ALREADY involved in social media…but you feel there’s a LOT more you could be doing:
GET CREATIVE: If you’re past the first few baby steps described above, this is where you can start to get creative with your postings. Take note of what other companies that ‘get’ social media do. Riff off of their efforts. Come up with ways to creatively produce short videos that show the human side of your company, such as this one from gDiapers that was a video birthday present where employees described what they liked about their boss Kim.
VIDEO is a great tool to share how-to’s, information, what-ifs and much more. It’s an invaluable tool to humanize your company. How can you be creative with your videos?
EVENT CALENDAR: Create an event calendar that outlines your company’s 2011 event schedule. Determine which of the events is the most important, and focus on putting together a significant social media effort into connecting with your community around that event. Don’t ignore the other events; but by choosing a ‘most significant’ event, your social media efforts will fall in line. If you choose to, for instance, do a lot of giveaways via Twitter at the big show, plan on supplementing your other shows with smaller Twitter giveaways. If you’re planning a Tweetup at the big show, think about putting together smaller Tweetups at your smaller shows.
LISTEN: Consider digging deeper with your listening tools. The more you listen to what’s being said online about your products, company and competition, the quick you can respond to issues that arise. Tools such as Radian6, Jive Software, Hubspot and more offer access to deep, real-time conversations around the important things in your world. Some are free, some are paid, but all can help lift the lid a little more on what people really think.
RESPOND: When you come across a conversation that relates to your product or service offerings, step in. David Meerman Scott, in his newest book “Real-Time Marketing and PR,” tells the tale of a company that saw a comment from someone who was not happy with the non-response from a company on a request for quote for a telephone system. The company politely stepped in offering to help on any questions or to offer a quote. Long story short: they sold a $250,000 phone system be responding to a tweet and asking if they could help. So yes, this stuff does happen. It is important and it shows that by responding to an issue in real-time, good things can happen.
BLOG: If you’re not blogging yet, this is an opportune time to figure out how your company can use a blog to stand out in the crowded marketplace. Blogging is not a casual commitment; it requires consistent time, energy and thought, and there’s likely no immediate payoff. But a blog is the best online tool to position your company as a leader in your field, share ideas, create community, and stake out ground.
If your company is neck-deep in social media:
If you’re already doing great things with social media, you probably have a good sense of how you got here, and perhaps where to go from here.
CONTINUE LISTENING: look at different tools that can help you uncover conversations that you previously didn’t hear about. Look at new tools. Keep your ear to the ground. Read blogs on social media such as the Social Media Examiner and Mashable.
BUILD YOUR NETWORK: The wider and deeper your personal and professional network, the more opportunities that will arise out of that network. You’ll find new knowledge, timely information and quicker access to new tools.
ENHANCE YOUR PRESENCE: Since you’re already blogging and you’re on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and perhaps other social media outpost, ask yourself: how can we enhance the connectivity of these tools? What can we do to show our community who we really are? What can we do to reach more of them? Do we share more of ourselves? Do we offer more how-to’s and tutorials? Do we do more webinars? Do we bring in experts in the field and interview them? Do we step up to a higher level of video production? No matter where you are, there is always room for improvement. How can you improve either in incremental steps or in a big leap?
Social media is many things. It’s a great learning tool. It’s an amazing real-time connectivity tool. It’s hard work; it’s fun. It’s unlike anything the world has seen up until this century and it’s changing the nature of business. It is leading to transparency in more company activities. It empowers consumers to gather information from unlimited sources before they commit a dollar to a purchase.
Social media is perfect for the event world. Events are inherently social. Business is social. By learning how to effectively use the social media tools at your disposal, you’re moving a step ahead of your competition and a step closer to creating a valuable community that will help support your business.
If you’re online and involved in social media, you’ll soon run into the question: how to manage those online relationships? After all, you don’t really KNOW these people that you’re connected to. You don’t HANG OUT with them on weekends. You don’t PARTY with them.
But they’re still in your life. Sort of. Your digital life, anyway.
It’s an interesting question, and there’s no one answer. But I did run across a slide show from Heidi Miller that addresses the question. I didn’t get to see or hear her presentation, but the slides will give you a lot to think about:
When speaking in Jacksonville at the EDPA’s annual conference earlier this month, I asked for a show of hands to see how many bloggers were in the audience.
A few hands went up. I expected more. Many more. Not sure why…maybe my expectations are unrealistic. Or maybe it’s that I’ve seen the value in having an active blog. It keeps your mind sharp, it keeps you in front of a growing audience, and it it lets people know who you are and what your expertise is.
Yet many companies simply don’t consider blogging as a valuable marketing tool. Here’s how I see blogging in terms of helping promote a tradeshow appearance or to enhance a tradeshow marketing schedule.
Having said all of that, blogging is not to be taken lightly. It’s a significant committment in terms of time and energy. And if you are going to set up a blog for your company, it’s important to make sure that you have new material showing up regularly, whether it’s every week, three times a week or just a couple of times a month.
But once you’ve made the committment and the process of blogging becomes part of your routine, you’ll discover that it’s a great outlet for all sorts of things. You can post slides from a presentation, videos from your company, how-to’s and informational tidbits that educate and illuminate your audience.
It also allows you and your company to gain more visibility within your industry and target audience.
Blogging isn’t the end-all and be-all of online presence, but it’s a valuable marketing and positioning tool.
If you’re not blogging yet, you should seriously consider it!
The latest Tradeshow Marketing Tips newsletter is a ‘short-list’ of our favorite social media resources.
There are places to get started blogging, photo-sharing, doing online social media research, and more. You’ll find video-sharing sites, web conferencing, event promotion sites and things that we’ve used over and over—along with a few items that we’re just learning about. If you have a resource to share – please do! Just leave a comment on this post…and thanks!
Download the newsletter with the latest list and get past newsletters here.
I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, but I am. A bit.
As I mingled before the keynotes at the EDPA Access 2010 annual conference last week in Jacksonville, Florida, I talked with a lot of people. Of course, since my badge shouted ‘SPEAKER’ it was a natural topic to discuss what I was speaking about (social media), and to inquire about the state of social media in their business.
Social media has been a ‘thing’ for a few years now. Back in ’07 it was commonly referred to as “Web 2.0” but that name has faded in favor of “social media.”
And still most folks I talked to are barely involved.
I understand, to a degree. There are obstacles: lack of knowledge, lack of time, lack of manpower, lack of resources.
And even though I met one person who proudly told me that they had turned an intern into a full-time Social Media Marketing Manager six months ago, I was a bit surprised that so few exhibit companies seem to be involved in social media.
There’s a lot to be gained by getting started now:
And if you don’t start now, it’s a pretty sure thing that a lot of your competitors are starting or are already involved. They’re blogging: helping customers and potential customers solve problems, find answers to questions and positioning their company as the go-to expert. They’re Tweeting: driving traffic, finding new blog readers and potential customers. They’re on Facebook: creating event listings, sharing photos of exhibit builds and set-ups, client functions and much more.
It really doesn’t take much. I’ve found it’s not that hard to work those valuable social media activities into a regular workday without much problem.
And besides, you don’t have to jump in all at once. Talk with your staff, find out their level of interest. Do you have a ‘digital native?’ – someone who is adept at moving around in social media? They’re a likely person to take the lead for your company.
Work your way up to one of the social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Start somewhere. Start anywhere.
Check out webinars on this blog about social media and blogging.
Ask questions. I’m always available to chat and would love to help you out.
But really: if you don’t get there soon, you’ll be behind. Very far behind.
And I don’t think you’ll want to play catch up when the game is already in the fourth quarter and the other teams are leading 100 – 0.
photo credit: Kristoffer M.C.
In the wake of the presentation I gave last week at the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association Access 2010 conference, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about what it takes to build community.
In the event industry, it’s my opinion that social media is an extremely useful tool to promote shows, create and connect with communities, and foster deeper connections while attending shows.
It seems that in one sense the social media world is just getting started with connecting at events. But with each new story, I sense that the ‘connecting’ is getting more involved and the ‘connectors’ are becoming more adept at the connecting.
And then this morning Paul Castain’s timely blog post on ‘How to Build an Online Community!’ shows up. Paul is a terrific connector and has built a large online community, and in this exquisitely useful post he shares what has worked for him.
If you’re looking to build a community around a specific event, there are some slight adjustments I’d make to his overall plan (which has a lot of great ideas).
If you’re attending a tradeshow, one suggestion might be to create a specific ‘virtual tradeshow website’ just for that show. It’s an approach that would make sense for those larger expo shows you attend, but likely wouldn’t be worth the investment of time or money for small, local or regional shows. Derek Mehraban of InGenex Digital Marketing shares his story in a recent TradeshowGuy Blog podcast.
If you choose not to create a virtual tradeshow website, make sure that you’re online with a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. If you have a good presence on LinkedIn, include that as well.
Don’t forget the media: connect with industry bloggers and trade publications ahead of time. Let them know what new products or services you’ll be unveiling at the show. The press are attracted to new and shiny objects, so if you can offer something new you have a much better chance of getting some press mentions.
In the run-up to the show, collect your in-house list of clients, friends, acquaintances and prospects. Send out an e-mail blast a couple of months ahead of time asking people to ‘like’ your Facebook page, and follow you on Twitter and YouTube (if you have a YouTube channel).
With the show a month or so away, send another email reminder asking people to connect with you online. At this point, it would be appropriate to include a link to a short video about what they might expect at the show or a blog post promoting your appearance. Remember, you’ll get more response if you slant the article or video to ‘what’s in it for THEM’ and try not to make it so much about YOU.
Keep publishing: videos, blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates/photos, etc. During your planning, be sure to use a tool such as Hootsuite.com that allows you to schedule posts ahead of time. This will free up your show time to focus on the actual show, interacting with folks and sending out real-time tweets or posts (“just met @clientXYS at the show!”). Make a point of mentioning people by name or Twitter handle so they’ll feel loved.
With a couple of weeks to go, invite people to your booth (if you’re exhibiting), or to connect with you at a Tweet-up or other meeting. Find opportunities to connect face-to-face.
During these face-to-face meetings, collect business cards or other contact info. Schmooze! It’s fun!
During the show, try and shoot some timely videos, such as testimonials, customer or visitor interviews and post a few of them. Hold back a few for posting after the show.
Once the show is over, do a wrap-up or two. Post a few videos. Send out a thank-you e-mail with links back to your show follow-ups. Send physical thank you notes to those folks that you felt you made a great connection with – and those that you’d like to make a better connection with. A cool tool for card follow-ups is SendOutCards.com (yes, that’s an affiliate link).
As Paul points out, it’s great to have all of those online platforms, but the key is to keep engaged. INTERACT with those folks in your community. Respond to their questions. Reach out with an offline thank-you or phone call. Give content away with no strings attached. Find out what your community’s ‘pain points’ are and work to resolve them. Work to move those online connections to an offline relationship or friendship.
When it comes to building a community around a tradeshow, keep in mind that those folks you’re connecting with will become more active during show time. Work to leverage those folks to stay connected with you via Facebook or your newsletter.
You’ll find that the first show will likely fall short of your expectations. Don’t worry. Social media connections take time. Keep at it. From my observation, as exhibitors and organizers keep at it, each show becomes more successful than the last and the connections get deeper and wider.
With social media connections, you’re in for the long haul. Or you’re likely not in at all.
Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography
Due to popular demand (okay, I had a couple of people ask if these items would be available and for some unknown reason I’m able to accommodate them), here are the slides and the slightly edited live audio recording of the recent presentation I made on social media at the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association annual conference. This was in early December in Jacksonville, Florida. I had a damn good time. I hope you enjoy this.
Note: you should be able to listen to this in ‘real-time’ and follow along with the slides. The presentation is about 45 minutes (with Q&A) and there are 90 slides so you’ll be clicking through, on average, about two slides per minute.
PS. If you listen closely to my advice about blogging, you’ll notice that I’m breaking my own rule with this post.
The International Manufacturing and Technology Show is a bi-yearly affair that attracts 80,000+ attendees and thousands of exhibitors to Chicago’s McCormick Place every other September. This year saw an explosion in the use of social media to enhance the experience for attendees and for those folks who would like to have attended but were unable to.
Monica Haley is the Marketing Communications Manager for AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology – and was part of a small team that coordinated the social media marketing effort at this year’s expo.
Social media proved to be an extremely useful catalyst to drive engagement at the show. The numbers of people posting content from the last show in 2008 jumped significantly, according to Haley. In ’08 there were only 50 people at the show who joined in posting content on Facebook or Twitter and other networks; this year the confirmed number was over 350.
The social media effort started with a strategy planning session. Out of that session grew a plan for using social media on many platforms throughout the show, including scheduled blog posts, many of which were solicited from speakers and other industry voices. The intent with the pre-show blogging was to offer unique content with a thread back to the show.
They also scheduled Facebook posts and Twitter tweets before hand using Hootsuite with a plan to offer ‘live’ ongoing posts off-the-cuff as they happened during the show.
They set up a separate social media/blogging areas where attendees could watch the Twitter Roll with the hashtag #IMTS on a large flatscreen TV, as well as plug in and log-on with laptops to engage (if they weren’t already doing that with a smartphone).
As an additional tool, Haley and her crew used SCVNGR for booth check-in (a location-based service somewhat similar to Foursquare and Gowalla), a mechanism to push people around the show who were willing to participate; it got people to the corners of the show and provided another aspect of experience to the show. She says it helped people that couldn’t come to the show feel a part. Haley says they first looked at using Foursquare but it proved to be unwieldy for the task.
SCVNGR is a location-based service game played on smartphones, which was utilized to bring people to various booths looking for specific items.
Having the social media in places helps facilitate movement of the people at the show, and helps engage people who aren’t able to attend. “One of the biggest benefits of social media is humanizing the people behind the scenes,” said Haley.
Looking ahead, Haley says in 2012 (and likely for the European version next year) they’ll be looking to engage online attendees in many ways. If successful, she feels the show could draw another 20,000 virtual attendees.
If you have a blog, do you look at your visitor stats to see what’s popular and what’s not?
While I don’t obsess with stats, I’m curious enough to take a look every few weeks. I’m interested most in what types of posts and content draw the most views, which (theoretically) helps guide me to create more posts on those topics.
So, the top five most viewed separate posts of the past quarter:
1. Is Foursquare the Next Killer App for Tradeshow Marketing?
2. Why the Beatles Were the Greatest Marketing Models of Their Time (and what you can learn from them)
3. Social Media at Tradeshows: 10 Keys to Engagement
It doesn’t surprise me that social media and tradeshow marketing are the three of the top four posts. Social media is exploding; many folks are still trying to get a handle on it, and the interest is extremely high. Expect to see more. Not only does it make sense for me to provide more of social media-related posts for you, dear reader, but I have a damn high interest in the subject.
As for the ‘Beatles as Marketing Models’ post, I think I can attribute much of that traffic to the heavy influx of organic traffic that came through search engine referrals with people searching for ‘beatles marketing,’ ‘beatles boots,’ ‘marketing the beatles’ and similar terms. Another lesson: if you want some good organic traffic it doesn’t hurt to invoke the name of a very popular rock band!
The top five ranking of the ‘Keen Tale’ post sort of surprised me, given that the article was posted on March 4th, over 8 months ago. Again, much of that traffic came as a result of good keyword SEO: ‘Keen warranty’ received more traffic in the past quarter than any other search term (with the exceptions of the Beatles combinations). If you recall the post, it had to do with my experience interacting with Keen shoes in Portland when I had an issue with one of their shoes (which was satisfactorily concluded). If you’re blogging (and you should be!), this is a good demonstration that even older posts can get a lot of views and bring people to your blog.
Beyond those top five posts, the single page promoting the Blogging 101 webinar from August garnered the most views – three times more views, in fact, than the top individual post. Of course, it was being promoted that in conjunction with Classic Exhibits, who sent a handful of e-mail blasts to their contact list. It also was promoted heavily throughout our social media world, so again it’s no surprise that there were that many views. The Blogging 101 webinar was a success; I may look to do more similar webinars in 2011 as I plan out what I’d like to do over the next year.
Another high-traffic page is the Tradeshow Marketing Newsletter. Definitely feel-good for me, since I love to see more and more people grabbing the newsletter. While the 2-page PDF edition is available for download, I also send out a monthly e-mail with links back to other posts, along with comments and other goodies.
If readership over the last few months is any indication of what you’ll find the next few months, expect more of the same: social media/tradeshow/event marketing, posts at least 2 – 3 times a week if not more…and who knows…the occasional Beatle reference!
(photo by Mike Licht)
