April 22, 2011

You’re So Vain, You Probably Think Your Blog is About You

Do you have a blog? What is is about?

With a nod to Carly Simon’s Number One Hit “You’re So Vain” back in ’72 (aahh..the good ol’ days!), if your blog is about you and your company, you’re missing the boat. By a long shot.

At first blush, you’d think the purpose of a blog would be to tell the world about yourself and your company. After all, isn’t that what you see on other company blogs? A raft of press releases, horn-tooting and ‘wow, look at us!’ crap.

Who wants to read that? Do you?

If this blog was all about ME (Tim Patterson, @tradeshowguy, Interpretive Exhibits), how would that help you? How would it solve your everyday problems of trying to market to your target audience at tradeshows, events and conferences?

It wouldn’t. Because what WE/ME are going through likely is not what YOU are going through. Oh, sure, we might find a few areas of common ground, but if all I did on this blog was toot my horn, you wouldn’t bother to come back. Not to say you should NEVER toot your own horn, just be aware of not over-doing it. Your blog is about your readers, not you. When researching a recent presentation on blogging, I looked for exhibit company blogs just to see what they were blogging about. MOST of them were self-congratulatory and PR-laden. In other words, boring and bland.

And the goal of a blog is to get people to come back.

You do that by offering information, insight, and (hopefully) solutions to issues and problems your audience is facing.

If your audience, for instance, is marketing at a tradeshow and want to use QR Codes or set up a SCVNGR smart-phone game, you’d want to find a blog that’s explored that.

If your readers chime in on a problem that you’re written about, it’s a good sign that they’re interested. Write more about that topic. Do some research, talk to experts, compile evidence. Show what works and what doesn’t.

For example, I was interested in QR Codes, so I contacted a company that used them. Found out a bunch, read a lot, spent time figuring out how they work. And blogged about it a few times.

As a result, some poor misguided fools now think I’m a QR Code expert! HA! Well, that’s they’re problem. Just this week I’ve been interviewed by two people who saw me as an expert source on QR Codes for tradeshow marketing, thanks to a recent blog post.

Last week, I was contacted by two companies that asked if they could re-publish my QR Code blog posts and QR Code Tradeshow Marketing Guide.

All because saw a hot topic that the readers of this blog were interested in, did a little research, made some personal observations and blogged about it. And as a result, I’ve gathered a lot of information about QR Codes. Perhaps I’m at least a pseudo-expert.

So if all you’re writing about on your company’s blog is your latest widget, or how the CEO got an award, or how you have a new shiny facility…face it, your audience doesn’t care.

Unless it’s about them.

April 14, 2011

Using Social Media to Reduce Your Tradeshow Carbon Footprint

After getting an email from Ewan MacDougall and his link to an interesting infographic on how tradeshows impact the environment, I got to thinking about how social media might help to mitigate some of those impacts.

Okay, it sounds like a good idea: using social media to reduce your impact on the environment while attending a tradeshow. But can we really make that idea work in a substantial way?

The most obvious ways would be to move most, if not all, of your tradeshow promotions to social media. Tweet it out, post Facebook updates and load videos onto YouTube and Facebook to promote your appearance at the show. It’s much more environmentally friendly than sending postcards or other mailers.

And of course, you can make documents such as brochures and other typical handouts available as a downloadable PDF. By incorporating the use of QR Codes, you can invite attendees to grab the documents easily through their smart phone. Just remember to optimize the landing page so they can actually READ it on their phone!

But what about other methods? Can Twitter be used for more than just a Tweetup or to send out promo messages? Sure, you can actually send out links to your downloadable PDFs and toot your own horn (tweet your horn?). You can also put up a sign inviting people to send out a tweet using an @ symbol and promise to send back a link to the downloadable brochures or documents. You can even set this up as an autoresponder to anyone who sends you a message using the Twitter @ symbol. The caveat here is to make sure that once the show is over to discontinue the autoresponder.

Facebook can also be used to post all of those documents (or at least links to them). Create a “Notes” page under your company profile listing the documents and invite people to “like” you – which then gives them access to the documents. In fact, your autoresponder Twitter reply could be used to invite people to “like” your Facebook page to grab the free brochures and other documents that you’d normally handout at the show.

The downside of using auto-reply tweets is that they’re so common and probably overused and are often ignored. So you’ll have to make sure that your sign promoting the free goodies encourages them to check their Twitter message in box.

There are some aspects of tradeshow marketing that are more difficult to reduce carbon usage. Travel, for instance. Hard to avoid flying if you’re traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to go to a 4-day show. But I know that some airlines allow you to check in via your smart phone. Using other apps, such as Yelp to find a good restaurant, or Skype to talk with people internationally for free, also helps reduce cost and time. Southwest was the first airline to release an iPhone app (in 2009) and many others followed suit.

There are also iPhone apps, such as SAP’s Carbon Tracker, that allow you to track every aspect of your business activities that relate to your carbon footprint. Simply by knowing your carbon impact, you’ll find ways to cut down. And as they say, every little bit helps!

April 6, 2011

Why do a Social Media Audit?

You’re tweeting, posting to Facebook, keep the blog up-to-date…but you have that nagging feeling that something’s missing. Perhaps you should have done a couple of extra blog posts before the last tradeshow. Could be your social media icons and branding on your company’s website aren’t big enough to be noticeable.

Something’s amiss, but you’re just not sure what.

Launch the social media audit!

There are a lot of good reasons to do a thorough social media audit. If you’ve never done one, your initial run-through should be as thorough as you can afford (time and/or money). After that, a yearly audit of the pertinent pieces, at minimum, should be done.

At minimum, your social media audit should include the following:

Strategy: identify visions, goals, desired outcomes. Choose your target market, platforms. listening/monitoring tools. Define internal policies and evaluate your assets.
Implementation: tools/platforms, community growth and development, training, potential partners, monitor and evaluate
Integration: organization website, blog, social media platforms, offline support (print, business cards, etc.)
Support: executive, funding for personnel, staff involvement

So yes – there’s a lot involved, so how do you accomplish all of this? Do you make it happen internally, or do you hire an outside expert to come in? Either way, it’ll take some time to accomplish a thorough and useful social media audit.

The process should start with interviews with the principals involved: the tweeters, bloggers and creators of video and other social media content. They’ll be able to give you a good sense of the overall reach and current shortfalls.

Surveys also work well. They offer all participants a chance to answer the same questions with the same methodology.
Event analysis: there’s a good chance that each participant in an organization’s social media initiatives have anecdotes about how something worked or didn’t work. Analyzying these events helps to see how communication works in real-life situations.
Communication flow: how is information exchanged between all parties? By taking a close look at how a company’s communication network works, it’s possible to reveal where blockages happen and show opportunities for untapped paths.
Observation: as part of the social media audit, you should spend time actually observing how each person interacts with the company’s community.

If you’ve been involved in social media for some time but still are trying to get a handle on what exactly you’re doing and how it’s affecting your marketing efforts, a social media audit is a solid place to start.

March 30, 2011

Creating a Social Media Editorial Calendar

In my communications with companies that spend a good amount of time ‘doing’ social media, it’s easy to see that most of the engagement is random, catch-as-catch-can; sporadic. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.

And I’m not entirely sure there should be. Social media, after all, IS random! You think of something to share and BANG it’s tweeted out! You see something, you react and retweet. Personal schedules change enough on a daily basis that finding a regular time to check in is a challenge for a lot of folks.

So the idea of a Social Media Editorial Calendar may seem counter-intuitive to creating active unscheduled engagement with your crowd on Twitter and Facebook.

However…

If you know that you’ll be at seven tradeshows this year, you can build a series of promotions around those appearances. If you know there are milestones or holidays on the calendar that your company can naturally tie into, it makes sense to set up a social media schedule in advance.

To me, the best way to do this is create a Social Media Editorial Calendar which outlines how the next year will look:

January 1: New Year’s Day (giveaways!)
January 8: Elvis’ birthday! (old-time rock and roll CDs up for grabs)
January 10 – 13: CES (promotions)
February 14: Valentine’s Day (more promotions)
February 29: Company product release (press releases, tweets, FB postings)

Etc…you get the idea. Build a few social media promotions around dates on the calendar, have your team members put together the various bits and pieces (giveaways, video shoots, product release notes) and build your social media schedule for cool posts and tweets.

Not only does this put you ahead of most of your competition, but you’ll breathe a sigh of relief after the schedule is set and assignments are made. At this point you KNOW what you’re committed to for the year. You KNOW what your company is doing on social media and you KNOW who’s going to do it.

Put your new year’s schedule together in the last quarter of the current year and you’ll be miles ahead when the new year kicks in.

photo credit: koadmunkee

March 25, 2011

Spatial Awareness at Exhibitions

Guest post by Abishag Wilson

When you are considering your new exhibition stand design team, be aware of the space that your stand will be used in and the space that is available for the rest of your product demonstration, and yourself.

Most importantly, you need to be aware of how you want your onlookers to interact with your stand. This will formulate the basis of your design.

Nonetheless, an exhibition stand has to be fairly flexible with space if you intend to use it for more than one event. Not all centers and pitches will have the same height in the ceiling, or necessarily be on a nice ‘straight’ when people walk by. Prepare for corner pitches just in case. Perhaps you may even have a 360 degree free-standing stall?

Think about all the pitch and plan accordingly.

Your bespoke stand should be able to cater for many events. For these reasons your stand should be portable – being made of many lightweight sections. Try visualizing individual items as being put in situ together, like Lego blocks, rather than comprising a fully formed stand.

Once you have thought about the pitch, consider the physical boundaries of the stand. Will it have walls and a ceiling, or will that make people feel claustrophobic? It can be intimidating if you ‘box in’ visitors to your stall.

If your stand is to have a roof, then you should consider introducing spotlighting insider or making it transparent so that naturally available light can fill your stand. No one is going to want to walk into a dark stand, it will look unprofessional, and look like camping gazebo.

Ask yourself if your viewers easily walk around your stand and/or in between the items and POS on show?

Free standing Point of Sales allow the visitor to walk around freely and should be tall enough that they do not block sight within your pitch, but not short enough to fall over either!

Chairs in a stall can have a similar effect. If your guests require a lengthy demonstration, then seating may be necessary – but do not let it look cluttered and clumsy.

Think about disabled users who may want to get around the stall also, the gaps between stands should be accessible enough to get a wheelchair through.

Avoid exposed cabling at all costs, it is not only a trip hazard but it is not visually pleasing to see. It could also be of risk to any younger visitors tempted to give the lead a pull and find out where it is attached to. Space will be reduced if you run cabling anywhere but a corner, if it is to be on show.

If you have an over-head display, it is prudent to think about whether it is targeting those on the ground around the stall or those further away who may be looking for your stand. Keep it at a sensible height that does not encroach on your customers by hanging ominously overhead.

Abishag Wilson is a freelance author who has vast knowledge on exhibition stand design . For more information she suggests you visit http://www.clipdisplay.com.

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What they're saying about Tradeshow Success...

"It's a great book, Tim. I've been doing trade shows for years and yet I never knew much about how to go buy or select an exhibit until I read your book. I highly recommend this to small to medium sized businesses looking to take their trade show marketing to the next level." - Anders Boulanger, CEO and Founder of the Infotainers

"Your book is really wonderful. Amanda in our Marketing Department saw it and said, “Oh, that’s really smart! It could be like a textbook for marketing students and professionals.” She’s right. It’s a really smart move for your brand. The content is great. I’m still trying to figure out if QR codes really do kill kittens : )" - Matt Cox, Vice President of Marketing, Bob's Red Mill

"When Tim asked me to read Tradeshow Success, I thought, “Oh crap! Does the world really need another prescriptive manual about tradeshow marketing?” Boy was I wrong. You are in for a treat. Tim takes the dark arts of tradeshow marketing and makes them accessible to anyone – whether you’re a novice to a tradeshow warrior. You’ll meet characters like Katie from Gotcha! Cookies ‘n’ Treats and Wally from Pharaoh, with engaging and entertaining stories about their tradeshow challenges. Social Media? Tim immerses you in the “whys and hows” of using LinkedIn, Twitter, Emails, etc. to drive attendees to your booth and boost your ROI. And that’s just one chapter! Design ideas, staff training tips, lead management, and more. It’s all there for you to enjoy, implement, and share." - Mel White, Classic Exhibits

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