Archive for May, 2008
Using “article marketing” to build credibility
While article marketing may work for building credibility over time, it shouldn’t be used for one-time event promotions. In the current internet world, there is an onslaught of online content and it becomes difficult to parse through and find valid information. If you are an event manager or promoter by profession, you would want to first build credibility before expecting people to hire you or attend your events. This is a natural process also followed offline, where consultants give away free advice for gaining authority.
I would personally discourage people to write articles just to improve their search rankings or to guide traffic to their websites. While good articles lead readers to your business (through contact information or website links), it is imperative to make sure that your intentions are clear. The bonus is that if you can get insightful articles out for free distribution (through different websites) it is likely to get you credibility and clients. So I’m not advising you to dismiss it completely, but to write wisely.
We talked earlier on how to build relationships with your community, writing informative articles to people who are already interested in hearing you is one such way to invest in that relationship.
Find the right places to write to, expand the reader exposure via RSS and then put your writing skills at work. If you want, you can hire people to do the writing bit for you on freelance platforms, such as oDesk or Elance.
Marketing events by micro-blogging
What is micro-blogging: Micro-blogs are mini posts or updates that can directly be sent to blogs. There are a number of services for micro-blogging, like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace also have micro-blogging features in them, called status updates.
Microblogging appeals to people because it is immediate and because they can send the updates through portable mediums as well, thus making it more accessible. You can send messages as text, video or audio. You can also use cell-phones to send and receive updates.
Micro-blogging your events: For events, I would say, one of the most valuable things is how you can give live updates of your plans or of the events themselves as they unfold. So those readers listening in from home, will know just how remarkable the event is. If your updates are combined with Google maps, the experience will be even better. Takes me back to the time when we used to send videos, feedbacks, thoughts and thanks only the day after the event, once everything was well over. This was only a few years back. Now, it’s amazing how we can give minute by minute updates to people all across the globe. Even if our community isn’t present at the site of an event, our bond still grows, because they know exactly what we’re about. We once had an inauguration that we were twittering about on an hourly basis. After a while we started to receive messages from curious readers; “has the ribbon been cut?”, “does anyone like the new painting additions?”, etc. Needless to say, I was ecstatic.
It’s all about balance: So, while micro-blogging can be great, if it is not done properly it can also be intrusive. You have to differentiate between two mental reactions; “that’s good to know“ versus “who cares“. Use the right mental triggers to make sure you give something of value, rather than inane pushy updates. Remember, an over dosage of any social marketing tool can have a negative marketing effect as well, so its all about striking a comfortable balance.
Service Options: I would suggest you to explore different micro-blogging services before getting started on it. Some of them may seem more valuable and relevant to the event planning business. For example, Pownce offers additional things like file-sharing and event invitations on top of their micro-blogging service. So, you can send your electronic invitations or tickets through it to your community. Similarly, you can use Twitter to keep informing your audiences about the traffic situations on route to your events. This again, is a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Find your customers: You can interlink this with the other social marketing tools that you are using and then target your event audiences. For example if your service is for frequent travelers and are launching an event for them to meet, socialize and avail discounts; you can put a watch on twitter updates to find people who travel a lot. If a twitter user is traveling, he or she would surely put that in. If this is your target market, then it’s a good idea to be right there Twittering too.
Are wikis useful for planning events?
We have already discussed the benefits of building relationships with your customers through social media marketing. Here are some quick steps that you can follow to see how you can leverage wikis in planning and managing your events.
Is your event something in which multiple stakeholders can get together to do any of the following:
1- Planning the details of the event collaboratively: e.g. a one dish party, a group camp etc
2- Sharing knowledge, facts or any other information related to the event: e.g. mountain gearing tips before a mountain hike
If so, then wikis are a great platform where your community can discuss and share ideas. You will notice that when people believe in something, they start to take ownership of their work. In active communities, wiki pages evolve beautifully and have a self-balancing system. If someone puts in junk content, someone from the community will automatically remove or correct it.
Interactive planning helps great for coming up with good ideas instead of feeling like you are just bouncing ideas off a wall. The great thing about human communication is that one thought/opinion leads to another to another, as a planner, always learn to value these thoughts as early hints and signs of how to go about your project.
You can not just force people to use a wiki when there isn’t a clear need for it. I would suggest that you sit down and map out the event planning and marketing process on a sheet of paper, and then identify areas and nodes that can benefit from having a wiki. The objective of the wiki itself should be very clear to you as a planner and to the community as contributors. If you are planning the first community driven marathon race, then the input of the community in the planning stages becomes important. Similarly, you should already know what kind of information or knowledge will benefit the marathon as an end product of the wiki. Of-course, the wiki can then be used as an after-launch tool for sharing photos, details on the winners, feedback etc. Your wiki will become successful once everyone involved understands the purpose of using it well.
It is important for the community to feel that they collaboratively own the wiki. People become imaginative and creative only when they know that they have some level of control in building up the wikis or coming with interesting ideas. So, make sure you make it as neutral as possible.
Although wikis grow organically, you can build some basic structure initially so that the rest of the community can follow suit. In this way, you can make sure that it is organized so that you can keep getting valuable information out of it. Also, you can ensure that it is easy to navigate for new-comers and not techy people. There a number of free and paid wikis that you can search from to get started.
Facebook 2 - Expanding your network
Networking on Facebook can be broken down into two initial steps:
1- Finding existing friends
2- Joining groups
Finding friends: Once you have your profile all nicely set up. Look for people that you already know from your past or present life that are on facebook. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think they fit your market segments - the bigger your network the better it will be. So, get down to some serious people hunting. Remember not to add people that you don’t already know or they may report you as spammers.
A few great ways to find your friends are:
1- get Facebook to check addresses from your email account to see if anyone has a Facebook profile. (this can be done automatically, in the “find friends” section)
2- search for people from your schools and colleges based on your years of graduation. (this can be done using the “more ways to find friends” option at the bottom)
3- search for activities that you have been involved with to see if there any Facebook groups for them. This could be anything from childhood spacecamps to college sketching classes.
4- search for people using the search bar with their names. Make sure you’ve got the right person before sending them invites.
5- finally, go to the profiles of your Facebook friends and look at their friends network to see if you know anyone there.
Joining Groups: Once you have exhausted your ways of adding people that you know, the next step is to find people that you want on your page. These could be your target markets, your perfect audiences, possible future evangalists. Anyone. The way to do this is by finding groups that these people are in and joining those groups first. After having an active presence in the group, you can invite them to be on your friends lists. The best way for this would be to get them to add you instead. Some tips:
1- Make sure you join several networks instead of restricing yourself to just a handful. These groups should be chosen based on your targeted markets. To look for groups, simply select the “groups” section on your homepage, or you can browse through the groups recently joined by your friends to get a head start. Find those groups that are already active and have something going on all the time.
2- After joining, get a feel for the group first. Never start to promote yourself. Take time to participate, answer questions, get help, give help and build reputation and credibility amongst the group members.
3- Based on how well you participate, the members of the groups may want to start following your blogs or add you to their friend networks etc. Once you have this kind of following, you can announce events, find people to test your products, find people who can promote your products for you, get opinions and feedbacks and get a chance to really understand how your market behaves.
Event Planning - how to leverage social media to build hype
Using social media channels to market events is a great strategy for getting attention and building excitement around an event. It is a low-cost way to promote your events to a larger audience and build hype and fans. I tried some pre-launch marketing steps that helped me generate a lot of buzz around a live coffee talk-show at the New Port beach a while ago. I am sharing the steps with you:
Step 1: the social networking pages
It is important to understand and build the brand of your event first. What makes it different and unique? Why should people care to attend? After you have a fair idea about your brand, the first step is to create your event pages using social networking sites, like facebook, myspace, squidoo etc. A great example of this is how Tech Crunch markets their annual conferences on independent specially designed pages for the event. These pages go through a cycle of pre-launch information to live updates during launch to post-launch winner lineups. It’s a place where you can participate in the discussions, see who else is coming, review the startups that are going to pitch, and just get a feel for the buzzing activities around you.
The great thing about social media is that it is offers the flexibility to design the pages in community specific ways. The pages that you build for a official conference can be very different from the ones you make for a club party.
Step 2: building traffic
You can get traffic to your social pages directly or through referrals and links. The more the links your webpage gets, the better the search engine rankings. The better the search engine rankings, the more likely your potential customers or audiences will be able to find you. The traffic coming in from these secondary sources should not be undermined, since it brings in people who are more likely to be inclined towards being interested in what you are offering. Social media traffic can easily be managed through strategic marketing methods.
Step 3: communicating with your audiences
The more you can communicate with your audiences on a one-on-one level, the better your event will be. You will be able to gauge the audience’s expectations from the event, so that you can design and plan the event accordingly. A friend of mine was organizing a concert in Orange County once and realized later that the most active people in the county preferred a different taste in music. The great thing about the internet is that you can quickly and easily find this kind of information by interacting with prospective audiences directly.
Step 4: building hype and excitement
Although this seems like a simple step in the process, it isn’t. Webpages on social networking sites are only successful if they can perpetuate and grow. This can only happen if you have managed to build a large group of supporters or like-minded folks to spread the word about your event. Your brand story plays an important role here. If the story is exciting, “camp on the big bear lake”, “first ever fusion dance party”, “scary Halloween party close to the night safari”, “top ten jazz singers night”; the supporters will more likely spread it. If they can understand and build on your events brand story, they will spread it like it’s their own. That’s just the way it works. So, build hype, get people talking and launch right on the peak of their excitement. Bam.
Planning social marketing is more of a strategic thing, rather than just following best practices that worked for others. While these steps helped me manage a small event well, they may or may not work for all of your events, as is. However the underlying principles of interacting with your audience are things that I would strongly advocate, regardless of what specific steps you take to do so.
Using social media to market Concerts
I had heard about how using social media marketing tactics can massively increase the foot traffic to the concerts that we plan. We decided to give it a try for one of our concerts which turned into a raging success. We had people fly in from other cities and the event ended up with an active list of supporters who now want to turn it into a cult of concerts. I was able to compare the two approaches comprehensively and would like to share them with you.
Earlier, we spent only about 11-15% of the total budget on marketing our concerts, whereas the major chunk used to go to the artists and site preparations. Shows with multiple underground artists would end up with 40-50% budget allocated to getting the artists booked, accommodated and compensated. This left a measly 50% for everything else including ticketing, liaisons, production management, licensing and compliance to name a few. What we realized with social media is that we can greatly increase the outreach and promotions without increasing our budget at all. Online mediums like Facebook and other social groups allowed us to really get our targeted audience interested in the show – and soon enough we had them marketing the concert to their friends for free.
It was great seeing the excitement and suspense building up all by itself, while we focused on conceptualizing and planning the event details. Another great thing that we managed to do was get immediate feedback on the preferences and choices on the music itself, and schedule the artist bands accordingly. This was great not only for attracting the right crowd, but also for making the audience feel like they were part of planning the concert. That itself was invaluable to us. We ran out of tickets to sell!
An important thing to remember is that we didn’t just go online and started to promote the concert. We had a pre-launch period in which we first built a network of targeted audience, through which we communicated, connected and built a level of trust. This was a very important step in understanding the audience and forming a relationship and rapport with them.
There are a number of great social networking sites that you can use for planning your concerts. Do keep in mind that they have to be planned meticulously and with tact to get the best results. I am going to keep sharing my thoughts and experiences in managing and marketing all sorts of events successfully. Keep tuned in and feel free to ask for specific advice.
Great events - the community power
We’ve often talked about how we can make our events more successful, big or small, using online marketing methods. Although social marketing is great for driving traffic to your events, building pre-event hype; it still needs to be handled with tact. So, when you jump on this bandwagon, it is important to come with the right mindset and expectations.
Often when planning events, I’d think of myself as an attendee and plan everything from that perspective. Having a mindset which is consistent with the audience is very important in social marketing. Having the wrong expectations can result in damages to your reputation as an organizer or event manager.
Social marketing requires strategic planning. Just like a chess game can be mastered, this too can be used in a way that can make your events a huge success every time. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have to do things differently; you’ll just have to approach them differently, that’s all.
Always remember that the people you are marketing to are your “community”. They are a community of people supporting your services, attending your events and communicating directly with you. If you want more people to contact you for services, or manage their events, or attend the events you are managing and so on, then it is important to build initial trust and credibility first.
Secondly, you need to be an active part of the community itself. Participate with the audience, ask them questions, discuss ideas, share thoughts, request feedback. This communication helps people in opening themselves up to you and become more inclined to use your services or attend your parties later on. Also, it is the best way to get a feel for audience expectations and early feedbacks of your events. Credibility comes from sharing insight, discussing thoughts and adding value to conversations. When people start to respect your opinion as a good one, they will become more inclined to becoming your customers.
Is Facebook good for event managers?
This is a discussion in which I would like to hear your opinions and thoughts, more than share my own. I have seen how different organizers have made interesting groups in facebook for connecting with their existing clients, attracting new businesses or for networking with other professionals in their fields. Its great to see how facebook provides an environment which is conducive to building these relationships. In the comments, share your stories on how you think facebook benefits you to manage or market your events better.
Throughout my life, I have been studying and testing ways of how to effectively market events. I discovered soon enough that it all comes down to getting people excited about a thing and enabling them to build their own stories around it. Building evangelists. Evangelists are people who are sold on your service so much that they go around marketing it for you – for free! I found out about the “American Idol 2006 concert” through a fan even before it was announced. About the details of the “Macworld” through a fan. About a local “Eastern fusion dance party” through a fan. So if these fans are so good at marketing events to other people, imagine what they can do for your business.
Do you think Facebook allows you to build fans and spread excitement about your events? Let us know your thoughts.
Taking your events online
While planning events, the mediums to communicate with the prospects and audience has grown massively. A few years ago, event planners could never have dreamt of having such upfront and direct communication with the attendees before the events even took place. Today, not only is it possible, it is a highly recommended approach for planning your events.
Planning and marketing an event is about building the entire experience for all stakeholders involved. The better you can build a story around the event, the more the excitement and anticipation. It’s fascinating to see how different social mediums can be leveraged to communicate these stories to the targeted audiences to spread. This involvement and communication with your customers is so important now, that it can make or break your events. And since we all want to leave that good after-taste in everyone’s mouth and earn our well-deserved bragging rights, I strongly recommend trying your hand at these social mediums to your advantage. They pay off for events and parties that I plan, every time!
You can only understand its true value if you put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Imagine yourself in a raving crowd on superbowl, or in a pub at a local party, or at a conference launching the coolest gadgets, or at a countdown on time-square? When surrounded with people who share your interests, chances are that your excitement will amplify and become contagious.
Now imagine building an event with that kind of viral and contagious excitement even before it happens. Imagine the traffics it would generate to your local party, big conference, or whatever it is that you are planning. It has worked wonders for us, and I’m sure you can benefit a lot from it as well. Its time for you to think about how to build the right kind of stories around your events and how to effectively build a strong online community of fans.
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