Event Launch Strategies

Blogging is one of the most defining inventions of our time. While there are thousands of blogs that are just used as personal journals or ways to rant and vent; useful and meaningful blogs have a strong presence as well.

It’s amazing how different people hold separate opinions, have individual preferences, perceive things differently, have their own ways of expression, and think with unique mindsets. It’s amazing how much variety there is in human personalities. It’s amazing how societal and other external factors influence our perspectives. It’s amazing how two poets would always come up with different lines, even if they are writing on a similar topic. Human psyche and behavior amazes me. I have heard that close to 50% of all searches in Google are new word combinations or phrase structures which is astounding if you consider the number of searches each day.

That’s when the power of blogs as a means of transferring one person’s thoughts, experiences, opinions, knowledge to the rest of the world at a just a click of button becomes so immense. It’s a remarkable medium of conveying messages to your audiences in a meaningful, personalized and rich manner. This is why whenever I come across someone who shrugs and says “oh I don’t know about blogging for my business, I’m not much of a writer”, I just can’t help but feel bad for them. You’re selling to people online, you are putting up online advertisements and banners in different websites, but you can’t blog?

I often question the thought process behind such an attitude of working online, do these people honestly think they can compete online today with little more than a product, service and a sales pitch? If you can’t write, hire someone to write it for you. If you’re busy, get someone else involved. But if there’s ONE sure way of communicating directly with your audiences and customers in an open channel that builds a list of names into a community of buyers, it’s through blogging. It tells a story, paints the inside picture, creates a personalized feel and introduces people who may never, ever meet you to who you are and what you or your company stands for. If someone isn’t getting the least thrilled by reading your blog, he/ she’s probably not your target market or your blog is not providing value or insight to them.

One of the best approaches of starting blogs is finding your own special niche and focusing on it until you become an authority in that area. Authoritative blogs command a higher presence level and have greater number of followers (readers). If you are marketing events, then writing about the events in the pre-launch phase, is one of the best ways of keeping your prospects in the loop, all the while raising the hype levels. Through your blogs you can link them off to your social networks and vice versa. There are a number blogging tools and services that you can use. WordPress.com is definitely one of the better options out there.

The blogosphere is fascinating - on the one-hand it is an open environment of people sharing interesting ideas between micro-mediums of influence, and on the other blog-based business are making bloggers increasingly more political in how they interact with others.

The best analogy for blogging I have heard is that it’s no different to a dinner party where all the guests are knowledgeable on a particular topic. Throughout the evening conversations, comments, reports, statements, stories and lessons would be traded. As the night wore on, it would become evident to all those present that the knowledge base and more importantly the ability to articulate this knowledge was not equal across all participants. In fact it would be most probable that one or two of the parties at the table will have established themselves as unrivalled authorities on certain subject matter.

I heard another good analogy of how to blog from Dave Taylor who said “you look at the blogging community like it’s a university campus.” If you want to get a lot of people to come to your party you don’t advertise it. You don’t walk into another party that’s pumping and ask the guests to leave and come to your party. They are already at the happening party, why would they want to leave it to go to yours unless all the cool people are going with you. You would attend all the other hot parties and slowly get to know the most popular people there. Once you know them all and they trust you, all you need to do is suggest a party and invite them all. If you do, everyone will want to come to your party. The same applies to your blog. You can’t just visit a top bloggers site and make a comment attempting to lure the traffic away from his blog to yours. You have to gradually build rapport with their community and back it up with consistently good quality content. Investing time to build good quality posts will increase your chances of getting other respected bloggers in your industry to visit it. Frequent visits and participation from industry leaders can lead to attracting a larger crowd to your blog posts, thus increasing your traffic. Just like a campus party, it would take time.

Blogging is, in my view, a very large dinner party that spans the world and it never ends. In a dinner party you give toasts that are heard by all the people present, and at times you engage specific people in direct conversations, or while talking you refer to an attendee’s comic anecdotes. In quite a similar way, there are thousands of blogs all across the globe with content published regularly - the grand blogosphere. Then we have hundreds of thousands of readers reading these blogs and participating in them. Some bloggers are given more attention by these readers because of the quality of their content. The most popular amongst them are called the A-list bloggers and are followed by massive audiences. These people are heavy influencers and trend initiators. Generally, when you look around, you see bloggers linking to other bloggers in their blog posts or engaging in direct conversations with their readers etc. All of this cross linking, conversations, and constructive discussions are like a dinner party. The only difference is that this dinner party is online and has no geographical boundaries and the conversations are being recorded.

So if you have an event you’d like to promote, what is the best way to get other bloggers and influencers to engage into a conversation with you about it? You have to be in a conversation in order to be considered an authoritarian contributor to it, right?

Here are a few tips:

* Don’t be anonymous to a blogger - get to know them. Bloggers don’t like being used as a promotion tool. You can’t make that as a premise of knowing them. Most bloggers write because they want to meet interesting people and share ideas with them, they too are looking for conversations with other bloggers who can challenge them and their views. So to begin with try to establish a relationship with bloggers you respect by participating as a commenter and also otherwise.

* Make it easy for the blogger to research you. Bloggers have a lot of demand on their attention from people trying to get in touch with them. They will try to make very quick decisions on whether or not they want to get to know you. So make sure you are active enough in social media that it is easy to discover who you really are. Consistency in your online activities will help other bloggers form quick opinions on who you are and if they want to enter into a conversation with you or not. Remember, cream always rises to the top if it’s in the bottle.

* Request, don’t ask. Even if you know a blogger well, don’t ask or expect them to talk about your event or product. What you want to focus on is just talking to your friend, the blogger, and talking about your new product to that friend alone. Whether that person chooses to share it onwards with his friends or community is entirely his or her choice.

* Make life easy for the blogger. Again, bloggers have very limited attention to give to your product, so if there is a set-up time involved in them getting into your product (for example, maybe people need to sign up and set up their profiles to use it) try to spend the time to do that for them. Other bloggers will appreciate that and then pay a little more attention to what actually matters.

* Refer to interesting incidents from the blog. Each blog has interesting incidents happening in it - E.g. maybe they wrote about something that was controversial and there was a big debate on the topic in the comments. Only people who follow that blog would actually remember such things, and if you can refer to one of those incidents (maybe to show which side of the fence you stand) the blogger would appreciate that and understand that you are not just an anonymous one-time visitor.

* Refer to the bloggers thesis. Every blogger talks about a particular subject, and every blogger has a core set of beliefs related to that subject. Maybe that bloggers has a particular definition of conversational marketing. Maybe he or she has invented terms they use frequently in posts. Only people who follow a blog frequently would understand this. When you are communicating with another blogger, make sure you touch on those important parts and give your position on them. This would also help him or her treat you like a regular reader.

* Feel free to polarize, but make sure you can. If you also have a blog, feel free to take something that another blogger wrote and polarize yourself against it by arguing a point against his argument. But do this only if you really have something to say, because doing this will not only give you a critical eye from that blogger, but also his or her audience. If you survive their critical analysis of your counter-argument, though, you will win to earn their respect in future interactions.

Most importantly, though, remember that the aim is for all your interactions in the social media space to create additional value to the overall sharing of thought. Don’t be evil, and play fair, and people will be fair to you when you need them to be.

Earlier last week, I was having a conversation with some people about blogging, and was surprised to see that most people still consider it a cost rather than an investment.

I agree that random blogs with unauthentic or irrelevant content are pointless. But if you are doing business, you need to have a strong blog presence, and here’s how:

1- You need to have a personal voice for your business that people can relate to, communicate with and understand. One of the best ways of doing that is with a good content blog. For authority blogs you have to provide value and insight, instead of following the crowd. Your posts should be authentic, original and unique. That’s the best way for you to make a mark on the niche and get a following. Whatever business you are in, make sure you have a good voice for your community.

2- It’s a platform for you to connect with people. Once you have people reading you, try to engage them in conversation. Get them as involved and connected with you via the blog as possible. An active community is one that spreads the most. If you are an event manager, cover your events or engage your audiences in activities through the blog.

3- You can also use your blog as an effective messaging board. Turn it into a key source for your company information. Use it for answering questions or giving clarifications. Use it for announcements and updates. Use it for publishing case studies of your clients.

4- When you are connecting with other bloggers, try to give away links or look for points of synergy. It’s good to be open and friendly with the blogosphere at large. This helps to make your blog stronger and more visible to potential readers.

5- Make sure your content is relevant to your niche and that you keep posting to it frequently. This is where good resource allocation skills come into play. Don’t think that you have to do everything yourself - get over your inhibitions and get a team onboard. Did you really think Donald Trump writes blog posts himself?

6- Set realistic expectations and goals for the blog. Your blog has to have a long term plan and shouldn’t be sporadic or spontaneous. Know exactly what your goals are (whether it’s something measurable like direct increase in traffic or something un-measurable like brand awareness).

7- Have a good feedback mechanism in place. Get hold of a good trackbacking software and actively engage in comments and responses. This is as important as writing the posts itself, so make sure you can schedule dedicated hours to it.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Today’s tip! Every marketing campaign starts with keyword research. If you’re serious about earning money online you’re first investment should be a great keyword research tool.

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