Social media
Vote for your fav app at the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards
Mashable’s 2nd Annual Open Web Awards will be open for voting between Nov 16th to Dec 5th. Make sure you go and vote for your favorite applications there. If you have your own app, nomination time is running out. Get going and get your product’s name up as well.
Last year’s judges choice awards went to many including Facebook, Flock, Mahola and Youtube amongst others.
“Social Traffic” - Why this book topic:
“Social Traffic” - Event Marketing in a New Media Scape
Why this topic:
In 1958 Licklider saw universal networking as a potential unifying human revolution, which many years later resulted in the creation of the web. Till 2000, all we needed was a website to be considered ‘on the web’. The definition and usage of the internet has changed so drastically since then, that it’s imperative to think about it in terms of your “complete” web presence - which includes your profiles, followings, social networks, life streaming, blogs and much more. People, who aren’t part of this new social media landscape, are in essence, not really considered ‘online’ at all.
According to a research, as of today; it’s a fact that approximately 73% of online users read blogs. It’s a fact that 57% internet users are on social networking sites. It’s a fact that Facebook just recently hit their 100 million user landmark within months. It’s a fact that people are tuning in to Youtube more than mainstream TV with approximately 83% internet users having viewed online videos. Almost 40% of all the people on the internet subscribe to RSS feeds. On an average 16,500 tweets (twitter) are sent each hour. Most astoundingly, there is a massive shift in company brands when 36% of internet users claim to think more positively about companies with blogs. Should these stats matter to us as business owners, event managers or marketers? I just want to achieve one goal today - make you understand that being ‘present online’ and building a powerful business network isn’t as difficult as it seems. In fact, the principle ideology for online success in today’s world is much closer to your offline mind set than most exponents of online networking can see.
If I can convince any of you to take the leap, to take what you do naturally offline, online…then everything that I’ve done so far in my career would become worth it.
With its huge potential, Web 2.0 has opened up gateways for businesses. There are more than 400,000 entrepreneurs and developers on the Facebook platform - And this is just a SINGLE social networking site. Imagine if you tap into several, how big and profitable it can be for you. The key is to channel the intelligence and savvy of the collected group and make your space a user-friendly place for people to meet, connect and share. Online event marketing also has a huge potential now, more so than ever before, thanks to Web 2.0 techniques. People are no longer an audience who are “just a witness to the event taking place on stage” but are actually a part of planning and promoting it. Your audiences, customers or markets have the most influence in making your events or launches a huge success. Social media has taken things to the next level and the division between “you” and “them” has blurred and “we” has emerged. This book is about channelizing this force to your advantage.
Welcome to Social Traffic - Event anchored Marketing in the New Media Scape.
Book launches Wednesday November 5th. You Can Sign Up Here.
I hope you enjoy the book, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Al Gore started a massive chain reaction
With the stock markets seeing four year lows and the wallstreet mess - it’s interesting to see how it had little effect on the great movement triggered by AlGore a few years back. The movement of ‘awareness’, as I like to call it.
Last Saturday, hundreds and thousands of people gathered together at the same time in 50 states to attend 670 concurrent events to demand Green Jobs. Talk about a massive event roll.
Their message: “Hey Washington - It is time to repower America with clean and green jobs!”
This caught my attention for multiple reasons. First of all, it demonstrated how much of a snowball was unleashed with the release of “The inconvenient truth”. There are Facebook groups on the “WE” campaign with thousands of members from across the world, collaborating together to help make little changes.
Secondly, they knew this is the time for action; when highup officials are making strategic decisions on how to handle, restructure and re-stabalize the economy.
Thirdly, 670 collaborative simultaneous events in 50 states!!! Need I say more?
According to Cathy Zoi; “More people need to understand that our ticket to economic recovery is a transition to 100% clean energy — a transition that will not only create millions of new jobs for families across the country but will enhance national security and reduce global warming pollution.”
In the midst of unpredictability and chaos, the people who really believe in a cause don’t falter. Hats off to them!
“Social Traffic” - Have You Been Getting Any Lately?
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Are we listening to our customers?
In an industry embroiled in acute competition, profits and losses, event marketers have to stay on top of all new marketing strategies. We’ve seen and experienced the shift from the traditional marketing skills to the new gorilla techniques. Why? Because we want to deliver the best and get the best return out of it. However, the rat race does not merely end on being in the run. It’s about acing the race.
Understand your potential customers. Keep in view the culture, heritage and habits of your target market. What are they interested in? Rather than applying the same formula, come up with something innovative that appeals to the aesthetics of your customer. Thanks to the internet, you don’t have to travel around the world for this. All you have to do is utilize the power of social media to your advantage. Post articles, interact with the natives of the places. Have a one-on-one interaction with them. Websites such as Sosauce will give you an insight to learning the culture and heritage of the places you aim to execute your event.
Empower your customers, don’t force them. Use straightforward words in your advertisements - intricate vocabulary would never impress your target market. Your language should be conversational and engaging. Viral marketing and word of mouth will help you a lot in influencing your customers by empowering them. Empower people to say their say – to share their ideas – the have a positive impact on your events - to be part of your promotional campaigns.
Use endorsements by influential people, particularly the ones that have a good reputation amongst your “target market”. Through these endorsements you will be able to play on the psyche of your customer. It would get them involved. It would make your event sound more like an experience; an experience of a lifetime.
Make sure your website delivers what the customers want. Irrelevant content can “shoo” away your customer. I would re-iterate the point I made earlier on, that understand your customer. Don’t bore your customer with what does not concern him. Provide some thing unique for him. Exclusivity and surprise would boost up your target market’s volume. In today’s world – you don’t even need a website to launch an event; you can build event pages and link them up with other social networking sites.
Stay pragmatic – listen to feedback. Don’t get carried away with the idea of being innovation to the point that you start earning negative publicity. Also never make the mistake of ignoring the feedback you are getting. What your customers say is always of pivotal importance. Use tools like Google Alerts to stay updated with regards to the feedback you are getting.
Remember, you have to be the one above; you have to stay at the forefront of the event marketing curve. So don’t hesitate to take up challenges.
Some additional words of the wise - read Seth’s thoughts on listening.
Google News is ensuring a 100% digital future
So when everything else is going digital, and readership stats of paper newspapers were decreasing - we had this thing in the back of our minds that it might not go away completely. We’d still need to access old papers in libraries, right? Wrong.
Google News just announced an update to its Google News Archive that it will store electronic text and scanned newspapers of the past.
This is great for researchers, who will then be able to ’search’ through actual historical newspaper data while working on their projects and papers. However, keep in mind that all of this content will take time to load up and integrate. So, only time will tell how well this initiative goes for Google.
Great things ahead!
Platform integrations - Facebook + There.com
Will has a nicely detailed post on there.com’s “Facing There” application that strategically integrates the experience of there.com users onto their social networks on facebook. It is an interesting way of extending the experience of their users a step beyond by synergizing with one of the more popular social networking platforms. This is also a good case to evaluate how people are planning virtual events on there.com and sharing the event details on their facebook pages. Does this level of syndication, synergies and cross-platform interactions help enhance user experience?
There.com recently launched a Facebook application, Facing There. Facing There’s app design, launch and roadmap are part of There.com’s strategy for operating in a world where their users have to manage participating in a growing number of social graphs.Michael explicitly cited the exploding number of social graphs online, and we discussed his company’s strategic decision making on how to partner with Facebook and MySpace versus compete with them. These large social networks do not have support for avatar based interaction, the core of There.com’s user experience. Facing There is an explicit attempt to allow users to take their There.com experience and make it a part of their social networking experience.
You can read the complete post here.
Who builds online products?
We do, of course. Do we? Despite the growing number of online consumers? Despite the easy interaction that we can have with them? Despite the platforms that we can use to collaborate with them during the development of our product?
If you can involve end-users into your development process somehow by early stage testing or feedback mechanisms, the value of your product is sure to increase manifold. Its equivalent to investing in heavy research. Its a better position to identify usability and UX design issues. Its the best way to get prospects on board and get them excited about the venture so that they can spread it from there.
So, who really builds online products? We come up with ideas. We hire resources. We get the business models and launch plans setup. But who really builds the products?
We need to learn to allow ourselves to stoop low. We need to allow ourselves to stop and listen. We need to learn to allow ourselves to put our ideas aside and give others ideas some weightage. We need to learn to allow ourselves to understand what is best for the people who will eventually use our products. What do they want. How do they like to work? What do they currently do? What are their frustrations? What are their aspirations?
Who builds online products? The engineers who design it? The developers who code it? The designers who lay it out? The copywriters who sell it? OR The users who will use it? Add that special ingredient to your product development cycle and you’re sure to hit the right needs and make it big.
Dont presume, assume or come up with baseless needs. DONT estimate. Be specific. Talk to people. Understand them. Implement what you learn from your customers into the solutions that your products are marketed to solve.
Who builds online products? The internet more so than any other medium has meant that we all do, we collaborate in carrying our collective endeavors forward at a rate that is 7 times faster in online businesses than it is in off line business.
If building products or services for any online economy you must understand trends and you have to rely on feedback through ongoing conversations with your audience. If you don’t, the chances of ever getting online products that your customers need, when they need it, are very slim.
Social media and Ethics
Markets today are better informed, smarter and they demand quality services. You cant fool them into buying into substandard stuff. You shouldn’t. Your consumers should be longterm community members and should feel like an active part of your organization. The more they are kept in the loop, the better decisions they can make - they more they will trust you.
I’ve seen people malpractice in internet marketing, thinking that they’ll get away with it - which they don’t. The interesting thing about social media is that people don’t forget and they hardly ever forgive anyone if they feel like they have been cheated in any way, most of the communication is on record so is easy to remember and pass on to others. One bad move can spread far and beyond and soon enough everyone will want to stay away from you. Being true to yourself and your network is the only way to go here.
The best way to do that is to have products and services that are actually worth talking about and soon they’ll spread by themselves via WOM. The social networking effect, if you get traction is flabbergasting yet real - and can not be faked. It has to happen naturally, if your stuff really is good then you can rest assured that there will be a stir. If it is not, then bring it to par first.
Traditional monologue advertising has less than 30% effect on people. People want to have real conversations with real interaction even if its online, they want brands that have things to offer of real value and they want social proof that what ever they spend their money on represents value. Be present. Be on social networks. Be real. If you offer a product or service that offers true value then you should Blog often to communicate yourself to your audiences. AND most importantly, don’t dodge, lie or deceive your readers. People don’t get a second chance here. Have good intentions and your actions will follow suit.
Social marketing is a very delicate business in that you are facilitating people’s emotions in the process of getting your message out. You need to be careful about how your messages are perceived. You need to be careful about leaning into practices that some may seem to be bordering on unethical or misleading. If you get it right and your message represents great value and happiness then people will broadcast it for you without cost, if your message is a negative one it will broadcast just as far except it will be at a considerable cost.
Heres a great presentation on social media to watch:
10 reasons why every company should host virtual events
There has been an endless debate on whether or not to jump on the virtual events bandwagon. We’ve seen examples of how companies like Microsoft and Nokia hosted their virtual events. We’ve also seen how companies like IBM have such a dominant presence on virtual worlds such as Second Life.
If your company has a large enough user-base or prospect lists but you can’t justify the costs of holding live physical events, then you should consider going virtual. It’s time for us to drop our inhibitions about virtual events and face the facts. Here are some to begin with:
1- There are actual calculatable benefits of virtual events, like increased productivity time, reduced carbon footprint, zero traveling time, increased volunteer participation, zero geographical boundaries and bigger audience attendance.
2- Ability to engage people more interactively on a one to one level. When networking, you can have conversations with multiple attendees at the same time (just like in IMs) and yet make them all feel you are talking exclusively with them. It’s also easier to locate contacts from your existing Twitter, Friendfeed, LinkedIn or Facebook networks. Those are people you may not necessarily recognize in real life, but will be able to find easily in a virtual setting.
3- During these interactions you can share material, knowledge, presentations, PDFs, photos and other files. You can also add content recommendation systems.
4- One of the biggest post-event challenges is to analyze the attendee’s data. Virtual Events makes it much more advanced and quantifiable. You can see exactly what each attendee did, where he went, who he talked to, what material he downloaded, what questions he asked, what conversations he had with others etc. This is all valuable information that can help you understand your audience better and follow-up with them accordingly.
5- Using all of the information about a prospect or user that you gather, you can then easily categorize them according to how interested they are and how much they already know. You can then add them into your sales pipelines in different lists depending on their current relationship status.
6- Event marketing in virtual events is much lower than live physical events. According to Brent Arlsaner, VP of Marketing for Unisfair, a virtual events coordinator; virtual events generate leads at about $23 per head count.
“Take our client Quest Software’s first virtual event, which generated leads at a $23-per-head count. Marketers know that $23 per lead is a pretty impressive return on investment.”
7-If you are pressed on time, it takes on average one third to one fourth the time to organize virtual events as opposed to physical events. Less organizing time, means lesser headaches and lesser overhead costs.
8- If you want to hire booth staff or volunteers, you can get cheaper options from across the globe instead of being restricted to geographical constraints. All you have to do is put up a job post on Elance or oDesk and review the candidates that apply. You can pay only for the actual work done rather than for the number of hours.
9- The registration and ticketing process of virtual events is simpler in nature since it eliminates the need for paper tickets completely. This can be integrated with a payment system to make the entire registration process a seamless experience. Instead of tickets, you can simply grant access on the doorway when someone logs into the event space.
10- You can market richer content which is available on the spot instead of waiting for the event to be over. Some attendees may immediately add the pictures to their flickr, friendfeed or blogs. Pictures of the event or attendees can be taken and passed around during the event with your clients/sponsors brands visible in the background. This will give the clients or sponsors an added incentive to advertise or sponsor the event.
Is this why companies like On24 are coming up with virtual event platforms for other companies to host their events? What other virtual event platforms can be used?
I would like to take this debate a step forward with you guys. If any one of you has hosted virtual events, please share your experience with us here. If any of you have had a chance to market virtual events, what challenges did you face? If any one of you faces barriers to entering the virtual events world, let us know what they are. Together, let us try to evaluate whether or not this is the future of events. I’m tagging some notable people in this domain, Julius and Eugene to get the conversation ball rolling. Let’s hear all of you out.
P.S: Its okay to disagree.
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