Archive for July, 2008
10 reasons to use NING for marketing events
To ning or not to ning; seems to be the question buzzing around the Blogosphere recently. There have been a lot of valid arguments about it being too restricting and hence less useful. I agree that you can’t simply expect it to work for everyone. The good news, however, is that Ning can definitely work well for event marketers, if used properly. Here are ten reasons why event marketers shouldn’t just walk away from Ning.
1- Super simple and quick to setup: Unlike other event pages, Ning can take as little as 10 minutes to setup the entire page. You can customize the look and feel however you want it to be. It’s as simple as picking and choosing themes, colors and fonts that you think will work best for the site.
2- Easy to add multiple events: Once your site is setup, adding events against calendar dates is a simple one step process. The members and visitors to the site will be able to look at the upcoming events and can refer to the inbuilt calendar for the activities taking place.
3- Single platform for all community members: While a lot of people argue that you should disperse your communication across multiple mediums, it’s actually sometimes useful to have a single platform for a specific audience set. For example, if you build a Ning page for your existing community, customers and past clients then it’s good to have a single place to get them all together. My customers or prospects on email can’t get to know those on Facebook or Twitter and vice versa. Often, the first time that they meet is at actual events that I organize. Ning can allow all the community members to network on the same platform without getting bogged down by restrictions and memberships.
4- Reduces time to update members: Whenever I have a quick and important update to make, related to an event status, I just have to add it to Ning and can rest assured that the community members will see it. I won’t necessarily have to go to each of the different social media sites individually to notify the different sub groups of community members that I have. Event managers and marketers are mostly in a hurry, and this is a sure shot way to save time.
5- Easy integration with other mediums: Ning offers the ability to add videos from Youtube, photos from Flickr, Posts from your Blogs, and content from other mediums such as Facebook Pages. This cross integration helps to build a single platform for content coming in from multiple channels. So if you already have photos of your events or blog posts etc, you can share them on Ning with the entire community easily.
6- Rich content: The ability to add multimedia content like videos, sound files and pictures makes the page incredibly rich and interesting. If you’ve just had an event, you can upload its video footage along with sound files of the presenters and pictures of the audience. People who were at the event will find it thrilling to go over the content, and those who couldn’t make it will see just how much they missed out on.
7- Easy demonstration of credibility and proof: As event marketers, we often have to demonstrate credibility by displaying past experiences or case-studies. Nothing speaks better than pictures of successful events and post-event excitement straight from the audiences. Ning can capture all of that information for interested prospects to see and evaluate.
8- Newbie friendly: Some event marketers find it daunting to get their crowds to network online. While most people are great at events, they are less interested in using social media networks for collaborating with other people. Mostly, it’s because of the learning curves or behavioral adjustments (or restrictions) of certain apps like twitter etc. The good thing about Ning is that it is very easy to understand and get into even for non-techies.
9- Single-stop source for all events: For people interesting in finding out the status or schedule of your events, they can simply check out the Ning page to see the latest activities. Prospects are more likely to catch on to the vibes when they see a lot of things going on concurrently on the site.
10- Multiple conversations: You can use the inbuilt forums to run multiple conversation threads with different sub-groups of your community (e.g. a sub-group of events targeting a reunion). This allows other people to know what kind of activities are taking place, without interfering with the discussions in the individual threads. This is a great place for getting feedbacks, having competitions, brainstorming on event ideas, sharing stories from previous events, filling out surveys, etc.
All in all, I’d say, do check it out yourself to see how you can use it as a community space. Don’t restrict it to a single event’s page, but make it into a place where you can share all of your events with your community.
Send out Video Invitations for your events
Most people watch movies based on the anticipation built by trailers. Hollywood has mastered the art of building hype and curiosity, even for movies that end up being a waste of time and money. The trailers hit on the right emotional triggers - they give out just enough info about the movie to make us want to see it - they hide the information that adds novelty for the movie-watching experience - they copy write the words and choose the tone for maximum impact. All in all, the sneak peeks actually help us make our go-no-go decisions. Some public places have kiosks for downloading trailers, ring tones of movies. Here’s there rationale:
“We want to push for new and innovative channels to reach our movie-goers, to give them ways to interact with our movies before and after they enjoy the films on the big screen,” - Fox Co-Director Marketing
If not that, then a striking 54% of movie-goers watch trailers online.
Up until a few years ago, events were a stark contrast. You’d have posters, invitations, telephone calls and all, but no real “pull” factor. The pull is usually a play at the emotions using visuals, sound, music, tone, words and images. Today, with the help of social media, you can actually create quick, short and powerful videos for your event invitations. They can make private event invitations more personal and public events more interesting. They can add that human to human connection that you want your audiences to feel.
There’s no limit to the ideas that you can explore while preparing the video invitations. If you are planning a reunion party of some sort, you can have a musical collage and slide show of photos, video clips all streamed together into a wonderful video. If you are planning a new year’s party, you can put together the best moments of the year and add an emotionally rich narration to it. Some video making tools don’t even require a lot of technical expertise to put together a good piece.
Your video invitations can end with a link to your RSVP process. If you’re using special RSVP tools like MyInvites, you can add their link right into the text description of the video invitation.
Here’s a quick interesting video invitation for you to enjoy (its decisively made in a handy-cam home video style):
Event marketers catching up to twitter using Twitzu
While some people are finding it extremely difficult to understand what to do with twitter, others are coming up with actually good use-cases. I was wondering why people aren’t using twitter as a quick and informal RSVP system for their private gigs, turns out Twitzu makes it even easier.
Twitzu is an application with which allows you to create event pages for your events, whether it’s a small meetup or a massive party; and send the invitation to your Twitter followers. The real value is that people from your community or social groups can actually RSVP immediately with just a click. All they have to do is click the yellow RSVP button and you’ll get a notification.
Personally, I think Twitzu can work better for smaller scale events and meetups, provided that your contacts are Twitter users. Some people ask why they can’t just send out the message via Twitter. Well they can if they want to, the benefit Twitzu adds is that you can have a simple event page with the details of the event and venue. And it also has that auto RSVP processing built into it which is a great time-saver. So, if you can’t fit the entire invitation in 160 characters and spend the time to process the replies, use Twitzu instead.
Another good thing is that it shows a list of all of the people attending. So if someone you have invited is curious to find out who else is coming, he or she can simply look at the event page to find out. How much simpler can it get. They can even send twitter messages to other attendees to discuss plans for attending.
Does this remind you of little kids in a classroom passing along notes on a small piece of paper - hushed and secretly, “going to the game?”, “who else is coming?”, “Jane’s going to be there as well”. I don’t mean to mock at Twitter - all I’m saying is that building systems that people are already used to or familiar with in real life is the way to go with social apps.
The less you ask people to shift away from how they like to work, the more the customer-base you will have. Twitter, apparently, isn’t all too different from real-life, and hence using it for sending invites is just a natural next step for our events.
Gaining visibility for your event pages
Getting the event pages up is much simpler than getting attention to it. If you have been building communities and networking properly, then you’d have long lists and followings. But for those people who don’t have such followings, its often difficult to get noticed in the crowd.
Immediate and instant attention in the online world helps get your rankings and visitor numbers up by a mark. Consistency in quality content and social networking is going to be your best bet, but if you want to try out some quick spikes in traffic then link baiting is another option.
What that means is simply to make content meant to spread and add your website link to the description. Nobody likes corporate issued content, so you’ll have to use your personal profiles to do this. I don’t recommend creating spamming or pointless content, but just something which may be interesting or useful for your targeted audiences. You can create videos and picture mashups. If you have an animator you can get some snazzy flash animations made. Anything that can hit the right chords in the viewer can become a potentially viral video. Play on the emotional triggers we’ve discussed before. If its something which makes them think, or something that makes them feel special, or something that makes them laugh - they might pass it on to their friends… The idea is to get people to notice you. Some of the viewers of the content may actually visit your site to find out more about you - and thats when you close your sales cycle. Get them to sign-up or opt-in or buy tickets or tell their friends.
If your content is good, other people may start promoting it for you. There is nothing better than free promotion. If someone big and popular talks about it - you’ll get the attention of their followings as well. So these are good targets to have for your content.
When creating the content, don’t just put something without proper research. See what kinds of content works. Find out who is already active in your niches communities. Who identifies viral videos most. Who has bigger followings. What kind of content makes it to the top.
Heres an interesting video to watch:
Event Planning - How to outsource part of your work
Why Outsource? I’m sure all of you must have heard of Thomas Friedman’s famous “The World is Flat” book. I find it strange when I still see people working 20 hour days (literally!) trying to keep up with all of the different threads in their event plans. Its strange because they can actually get the same work done in a better way (through specialized professionals) without having to have complete control over every single aspect of their launch. You can get a personal assistant to manage your schedules and appointments. You can get a sales person to get to resellers or sponsors. You can hire a SEO expert to optimize your event page and website. You can get writers to send out your blog posts or email campaigns. All you have to do is the high-level strategic work and people management 
oDesk as an outsourcing platform: I understand that its difficult to rely on other people for the work when the success of your events depend on it to be completed on time and quality. Thats why, some of outsourcing platforms have incredible ways in which you can monitor the work that is being done by your contractor live - as it happens. Also, you can choose to only pay for the work that is accepted and according to your requirements. One such website is oDesk.com. They have these little controls in place to make sure you don’t have to spend an extra cent without getting the right value from it. All you have to do is set up an account and put up a job opening. Interested service providers will contact you by bidding for the project. You can pick and choose or interview them as you like. You can also search their database for good matches and invite them to place a bid.
Elance as an outsourcing platform: Another great site, which I have also used, is Elance.com. Elance has a huge network of service providers from all kinds of areas of expertise. You’ll find both companies and individuals there and will be able to hire them based on their interviews, past experiences, feedback scores, and so on. The risk of hiring the wrong folks is mitigated by going through their portfolios and profiles thoroughly. Weak providers can be identified and avoided easily. Again, all you have to do is set up an account and get going.
Other outsourcing sites: There are countless other outsourcing sites as well that are propping up all around us. Many of them are gaining momentum. If you are in the UK, then you’d want to check out peopleperhour.com as well. This will just give you an edge if you are looking for on-site workers as well. Then there is also another site called guru.com - I haven’t used it myself, but they seem to have a big provider database as well.
Payment Processes: Your payment methods can vary based on your preferences. Some of the outsourcing websites have built-in third party services of paypal or moneybookers. Otherwise, you also have the option of using your credit cards or bank accounts. Security is taken care of to the utmost extent, so you don’t have to worry about that.
Post launch photo sharing
(image source: camerahobby.com)
Events don’t just end there - often times the post-event phase is the most active part for the audiences. “Did you know that..?”, “And this happened..” “It was so cool..”. Fact is, you’ll be launching more events later on, so this post-event activity is important for your business. Its at this point that most event planners get a chance to breathe and feel a natural high. The buzz and excitement doesn’t end there, it amplifies.
One small but important strategy is to use photos of the event. Tag all of the names in the photos that you know and add them to different photo sharing sites such as flickr and photobucket. When people discover their own photos of those of their friends, they will feel a bond with your event’s brand as well. They will feel important.
Secondly, add photos to your event pages that people can come back for and discuss. Have interactive sessions on votings for coolest/lamest/funniest photos. Get a fashion expert to run a commentary on the best dressed people in the event. Photo sharing helps people bond together. If you can create the right emotions in them whenever they think back about your event, chances are they will come again to your next event and will probably also get some other friends along.
Another great tool designed specifically for events is Pictoma. It allows you to create events by filling out a form and share pictures against the event with the attendees/friends. Others can add pictures against that event as well. They can also order online albums or printouts of the photos. Another similar site, Pix-Yu, allows you to add photos against an event, share it across multiple social networking sites and get paid for the number of times your pictures are viewed.
If you had an event page in facebook, then you can directly add the photos to Facebook without having to upload on other photo sharing sites. However, if you want to increase the outreach of the photos then use PictureSync to send the photos to different photo sharing sites in one single step. These sites have made it incredibly simple to share pictures with your audiences and prospective customers. People love sharing and spreading things that they like to their friends, so if your photos catch their fancy, chances are you’ll get some nice spreading around as well. A lot of people search for photos online. Make sure you tag your photos properly so that they are easy to find based on your desired keywords.
If your photos are location based, e.g. an event in Austin, TX, then use the geotagging tool to get the map and location of the event as well. In popular events like the CES shows, people often take photos from their cameras and phones and upload them immediately (during the event) to their blogs and to content sharing sites. Imagine if people were putting pictures of your event online while it is going on - imagine them twittering about it to their friends who couldn’t make it. Imagine what impact this would have on your event’s brand.
Its all possible if you can manage to create the right kind of buzz. Later on, you can also create fancy mashups and slideshows from the event pictures. If you put them together in a nice, melodic, emotional (or funny) way, those slideshows may actually spread virally. Who knows? And if they do, imagine what kinds of traffic will be directed to your event pages or website. Its not impossible. Its just a single tool used wisely.
Social commentary - who do we listen to
There is a marketing strategy that is often used around us and can be incredibly effective if executed properly. First build trust, credibility and reputation with your lists of prospects using social media networking sites like facebook, linkedin and others of their like. Blogging is also a great tool for communicating with the audiences and telling them your perspective on things. Through your blog, you can give them free content, information and tips up to a point where they feel enlightened. If you are marketing an event, you give them enough information about what to do without diving into how to do it.
When they learn something from you that they didn’t quite know about, they will invariably look up to you and follow you. Once you have their trust you can up-sell them a course on the ‘how to go about it’ part. If they are sure that you are indeed someone who knows what you’re talking about, they will be less hesitant in doubting your abilities. And you should be knowledgeable in whatever it is that you’re selling - you can’t and shouldn’t ever risk losing your customers by fooling them into buying below-par material from you.
If done well, you can even get them onto an expensive subscription course or seminar that steps them through executing what needs to be done. All of these are revolving door strategies of relaunches that we have discussed earlier in our Launch strategies blog here. Business is about getting the most out of your products, services or events, so why wait around? Social media is a powerful tool in our hands that shouldn’t be put to waste. Can you think of innovative ways of marketing your events online using Facebook? How about Twitter? Think about it.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a world where everyone coexists as a social tribe? Thats the internet for you. Have you ever wondered how online networks often represent the tiniest niches and topic areas that you never even thought existed? Have you ever wondered how amazing it is to be able to say something, and be heard (or read) all over the world through the internet in less than a second?
If social commentary is about the cream rising to the top, allowing early adopters and thought leaders to lead groups who still lead their tribes in a self regulated filtering manner. What kind of a tribal system would this be? Now, not everyone in society is web savvy enough to exploit what is already happening, so the changes social media has upon us may not be as apparent to some as they are to others.
BUT I have always wondered how the future of social media will take shape? How will things turn around this time? Will they be any different from what they have already achieved so far. What happens when my small kids grow into adults and each of them have been trained onto the internet as kids so the entire population lives like this. What implications would this have for event managers or promoters? Should you start working on strategies of promoting virtual events on second life? What will it do to the traditional education process? Who will we listen to? Do industries continue to become less valuable by spending per capital whilst companies who best harness new technology & their ability to process information (Google) continue to get richer?
Social networks - Have the hunted become the hunters
Why do some marketers still shy away from social networks?
Its funny how things can take such a flip turn in just a few years. I have seen how marketing concepts have transitioned along with the evolving internet. The greatest difference in the emergence of social media as a marketing medium is that 5-10 years ago marketers would be the ones with the lists. Marketing would be a one-way communication of messages from companies to consumers. They would work off a database of customers to find ways of penetrating them. TVCs, Radio Ads, Publications, Direct mail, Cold calling etc were all a core part of all marketing activities. The impact of the Ads was difficult to gauge.
Google search engines have turned the hunted into the hunters. Consumers now work off a list of merchants or providers and through a substantial supply of information to choose from. They decide who to listen to, trust and buy from. They are more empowered and in many ways less gullible. More access to information makes them wiser and better decision-makers.
This information gets to them via search engines and community based platforms. Search engines run algorithms to parse through information and show it to the consumers. On the other hand, community based platforms are enabled by elements of social interaction. Humans (not machines) filter content based on preferences and popularity. It is us who sort the information to protect our networks from poor choices.
Its the hunted who now have the power - the merchants must win over the prey if they want the prey to endorse whatever they are peddling & invite their social network to embrace it. To some naive marketers these facts represent a nightmare, which it is not. If you use social media effectively and not for spamming, a marketers cost of sales can drop considerably. Not only that, we now have the power to leverage mob-effects, community shifts, emotional linkages - all using simple social networking strategies.
If you are event marketers or promoters you can now directly interact with your audiences and get a direct feel for their thoughts and opinions. You can get early feedback. You can involve them in planning the different dynamics of the event. You can create groups and communities around your event to help build hype and excitement. You can let evangelists and fans promote your event for you. You can allow your prospective audiences to blog about your event. You can enable live twittering at the event. You can allow them to share photos of the after its over to build lasting memories and nostalgia.
Get creative.
Measuring event branding through online social interaction
I find it amusing whenever I come across big healthy organizations stingy when it comes to investing money in social media marketing through online social interaction. I guess, they fail to see it as an investment rather than a cost for their event branding strategies.
(On branding: a smart marketer once told me that branding is just a word used by advertising agencies to justify a budget. That great products brand themselves & thats all there is to it. Thats another post though).
I came across one such company recently that has outsourced a project to a team for developing, conceptualizing and writing a corporate blog for their upcoming annual expo event. Their blog was conceptualized in a manner to invite thought leaders and industry experts to participate in it as a rich community. I visited their site and was happy to see lots of activities, regular postings, participatory comments, etc.
These people informally told me their concerns about the fact that they have no real way to measure the impact on event branding quantitatively for this project. I was both shocked and amused to hear them say this. Shocked because somehow it seemed like they didn’t care about the community that was being formed around the blog - or the enthusiasts that were being born. Amused because, I knew that they don’t know any better. Social media marketing is far different from traditional media, my friends. I think I’ll also write a post on how adapting social media requires a complete mindset shift, to stop myself from going out on a tangent here.
If you find yourself in a similar situation where you want to measure the impact of all of the tools that you are using then here is some honest advice.
Measuring the benefit to your brand via social interactions, communities and social networking is difficult to put down on numbers. However, it can be calculated based on a combination of both qualitative and quantitative measures such as: increase in your list numbers, increase in your ticket demands, increase in audience traffic, participation levels in your blog posts, increase in sharing and bookmarking of your sites, development of evangalists, increase in page rankings, increase in exposure to industry bloggers, increase in authority of the blog rankings, decrease in your involvement to keep your blogs afloat. These are all rich online social interactions. Some of these directly effect your bottom line figures, where as others are going to be more subtle and may go unnoticed.
Please don’t start counting the number of times your event brand name has been written or talked about as a measure for the success of such social media marketing projects. Be realistic in how you factor in different elements of event branding when deciding whether or not your money is being well spent.
Stay on the watch with Google news alerts
Behind the tens and thousands of blog subscriptions and email sign-ups - we tend to forget how immensely useful services like Google Alert can be. Its almost like a robot doing your routine Google searches for you.
I would recommend Google Alerts to all of you. Go in and put a watch on events that are taking place, the latest event marketing trends and also on your competitors businesses. Google aggregates the news (blogs, sites, news sites, etc) and emails them to you. Anything that can influence your plans, event, contingencies, budgets, clients, vendors should be kept a careful watch on.
Its a must-have for researching and event planning phases. At first I thought I would have emails flooding my account which I’ll never get around to read and would eventually have to keep archiving them in my gmail account as they come. To my surprise, it was just the opposite. They do not flood you. They do not intrude you. They always get back with good results.
Its my personal research robot, and I love it.
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