April 23, 2010

9 Tips to Put a Social Spin on Your Trade Show Marketing

The following is a guest post by Dennis Nixon, Sales Manager at Smash Hit Displays

In the days leading up to an exciting trade show attendees are likely tweeting about it, Facebooking about it, and blogging about it too. You’re likely doing the same as a trade show marketer, right? So take advantage of it! Integrating social media marketing into your trade show marketing before, during and after the main event can be the difference between having a successful trade show booth, and an unsuccessful one.

The world of social media and blogging can be quite an overwhelming one, but never fear. I’ve put together a list of 10 tips to help you put a social media spin on your trade show marketing efforts.

Twitter Search

Did you know: every single conversation on Twitter (except those from people who have private Twitter streams) can be searched via Twitter search? Simply type in the name of the trade show you’ll have a booth at and you’ll quickly see others talking about the same event. Make sure to vary your keywords, and soon you’ll find a plethora of data to start prospecting prior to the event.

Twitter Lists

If you’re an avid tweeter than you likely know about Twitter lists. These can be a great way to compile a list of potential attendees, whom you can follow during the trade show. What will they be saying at the event? Where will they be having dinner or after-trade show events? Stay up to date. You don’t even have to actually ‘follow’ the users to put them in a list. AND you can keep the list private if you don’t want your competition finding all the users you spent time finding. In addition, don’t forget about the value of using Twitter for traffic, discussed in the recent post: “Are You using Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Blog and Event?” on this blog.

Facebook Search

When you’re logged into Facebook you have access to their huge internal (and external for that matter) search engine. View all results for a specific term, people associated with that term, page associated with that term, groups, posts by everyone, posts by friends, etc… This can give you back results for many users going to the trade show, thinking about going, or just associated with it.

Facebook Groups and Pages

Using the search function detailed above, you can find groups and pages of prospects interested in the trade show you’re attending. This can be extremely helpful to start a conversation with prospects and tell them about your booth, where you’ll be located, and the fun stuff you’ll be giving away/doing at the event.

Use Flowtown

Have a prospects e-mail address but not sure if they are using social media? You HAVE to check out FlowTown. With this website you can upload your prospects e-mail addresses (before, during or after the event) and get information such as name, age, gender, occupation, location AND all the social networks that person is on.

Contests on Social Networks

Some trade show marketers suggest utilizing contests on social networks to help you spread the word about the trade show you’ll be at, in addition to getting a bit of notoriety and branding your business. Tell your fans and followers that you’ll be at the next big event, and the first five people to retweet or repost about it will get a prize when they show up to the event. There are so many ways you can spin a simple contest before and during the trade show, the possibilities are endless.

LinkedIn

You’re likely using LinkedIn, heck millions are. But are you utilizing it to help with your trade show marketing? Tell your connections about your upcoming event, ask them to help you spread the word, or even connect with prospects after the event takes place. There’s so much you can do with LinkedIn, you just need to think outside the box.

LinkedIn Groups

If the event planner for the trade show you’re is good they’ll have set up a LinkedIn group. Use this opportunity to start connecting with prospects and chatting them up. Connect with others, help spread the word about the event, and afterward discuss what was learned or how it can apply to their future endeavors.

Blogger Outreach

Connecting with bloggers that are going to events is extremely important. They’re already tapping into the vein of your industry, so why not utilize their current reader base? Try securing a guest blogging spot, schmoozing them when they’re at the event, and staying in contact afterwards. You never know the types of connections you’ll be able to make over a few drinks.

If you still aren’t convinced that social media can work for you (or that others are using it), check out Tradeshow Insights post “Social Media and Tradeshow Marketing Results”, where respondents to a poll stated that a whopping 31% have already incorporated social media into their exhibit marketing!

Have you used social media in your trade show marketing before, during and after the event? What successes have you had with it?

About the Author: Dennis Nixon is the Sales Manager at Smash Hit Displays, a company providing trade show displays and booths to vendors throughout the United States.

April 2, 2010

Book Review: “Rock the World (With Your Online Presence)” – What it means to connect with a ‘super-connector’

When I connected with author Mike O’Neil a few weeks back he asked me to connect with him on LinkedIn. I soon learned that he does this with everybody.

“All right,” said Mike, “before you accept the inviation, go to your home page on LinkedIn. Now, click on ‘Contacts’ and then ‘Network Statistics.’ Look at what you’ve got in your connections list.”

I did. It looked like this:

“Now, go ahead and accept my invitation. Then wait a few moments and refresh your page.”

So I did. It looked like this:

Given that Mike has 27,000+ connections on LinkedIn, it was easy to see why my network statistics took a huge jump. Shortly after, I connected with Lori Ruff, Mike’s co-author on ‘Rock The World with Your Online Presence,’ a book dedicated solely to, uh, pimping out your LinkedIn profile.

Later that day I added a connection to Lori Ruff, co-author of the ‘Rock the World’ book:

I mean, really jazzing it up so that you can be FOUND and recognized for what you do and what you’re best at.

So now that I’ve read the book and am starting to implement a few of the ideas for the profile, I am seeing the network grow and seeing more people finding me. I get responses and e-mails to responses on questions posted at discussions, for instance.

In a sense, the book is too good. It has so much usable ideas in it geared directly toward improving your LinkedIn profile that it can be overwhelming. That was my first sense while reading the book. My second sense is that the amount of things I can do and people I can connect with just by making a knockout LinkedIn profile is amazing.

When you read the book, use it. Go over your profile with a fine-tooth comb and make the adjustments and revisions in your profile that Mike and Lori suggest. See what happens. My guess is you’ll start to see how LinkedIn can powerfully impact your online networking, whether for new business leads, job leads, or other networking connections.

Get the book. You’ll be glad you did:

Rock The World with your Online Presence: Your Ticket to a Multi-Platinum LinkedIn Profile (Volume 1)

January 27, 2010

Marketing a Local Event with Social Media: A Case Study

Need to lift declining attendance at a regional or local tradeshow? You might take a tip or two from what Jill Harrison, the Manager of Public Relations and Image Development at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce did.

When I asked for stories in a HARO request last year, Jill chimed in with a great story on how they brought more people to the show – and kept the buzz going during the event for attendees and those that couldn’t be there in person. Let’s let her tell it:

Here at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, we use social media heavily for our twice annual tradeshow called SchmoozaPalooza. There are two main ways we use it: 1) to drive event attendance and 2) to update followers during the actual event.

Our event, called “Business After Hours”, had declining attendance. We decided to re-brand it (and call it SchmoozaPalooza) and spread the word in a new way – through social media. We set up profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace and Facebook. We started by attracting “friends” before we tried to sell or promote anything. We figured out what our followers were interested in, and informed them on a variety of events, not just about SchmoozaPalooza. This helped us build credibility. After a period of time, we began to promote SchmoozaPalooza. The closer to the event we got, the more we promoted it. By the time the event drew near, we had 102 followers on Twitter, 441 friends on Linkedin, 209 friends on Plaxo, 117 friends on MySpace, and 568 friends on Facebook.

During the actual event, we encouraged our attendees to “tweet” what they were doing, what was happening and what they thought. A large TV screen in the front and back of the event showed the scrolling “tweets” to passersby.

After the event when we did our evaluation, we saw that attendance had nearly quadrupled – from 200 to 725. Our revenue doubled. The best part is that we can utilize these friend groups in the future. Social media helped us reach a whole new audience.

Certainly using Social Media to draw more visitors to an event can be done – but it doesn’t happen over night and it does take planning and execution.

I like that Jill and her team had a plan and spent some time building credibility before they started to promote SchmoozaPalooza, then built on the promotions as they got closer. I disagree with Seth Godin’s take that putting up a tradeshow booth is an event and not a process. Getting people to your show or to your booth is an ongoing process that goes from show to show and builds on past experiences and promotions.

For your next tradeshow (whether you’re organizing the show or just putting up a booth at the show), take a hard look at Social Media and see what it can do for you. Learn from other experiences and look to create your own experiences. Then build on them.

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