Management qualities harnessed with social media - a recipe for success for event managers

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The Event Manager Blog had an interesting discussion on the qualities of good event managers. I’m just briefly going to extend that discussion with a perspective on how to marry those skills to social marketing tools and techniques in order to be the best at what you do.

Amongst the different thoughts shared by a wonderfully active Linkedin community, one caught my attention the most. James Minella summed it up nicely into 5 attributes: organization, bigger picture, multi-tasking, interpersonal skills, creativity and flexibility. Event managers who already have these skills are already a step forward, but these skills can go to waste if they aren’t linked to powerful online mediums. Here is how that can be done.

1- Organize work with productivity tools. Keep a track of comments on your blogs. Keep a track on what other people are doing/saying. Know what your customers are thinking/doing. Keep track of schedules and collaborative planning softwares.

2- Keeping a bird-eye view of the bigger picture using different online tools, such as mind-mapping softwares. You need to be in full control over your plans at all times - mindmaps and other similar softwares help in allowing that.

3- Multi-tasking 24/7. Lets face it, we have to deal with countless stakeholders at all times. We have to deal with managing, planning, implementing, collaborating, envisioning all the time. If only we had 4 clones to work simultaneously, eh? If you can multi-task well offline, you will be able to work even faster on the internet. This is a fast-paced business and you need to be ahead of the game - twittering, googling, planning, blogging, commenting, tagging, marketing. Social media offers countless tools to choose between and saves the time to switch between them.

4- Interpersonal skills to build relationships of trust. Building credibility isn’t as simple as imparting knowledge - it goes much deeper into the foundations of personal interactions. How well you can build relationships with your community online will directly effect the success of your business or services. In my POV its one of the most important skills to attract larger audiences to your events.

5- Creativity in interacting with the markets and flexibility in how they are handled. When finding or approaching your customers, you can get as creative as you want. Hold competitions, ignite heated debates, spread viral campaigns, etc. Flexibility is also important when handling customers or prospects - remember that it is an open platform, so chances are that people may complain, bad-mouth, or disagree with you. Never react to such things negatively, but handle these situations with tact. Remember, whenever someone complains to you, a part of them already wants to be on your side - a part of them wants you to improve - a part of them wants you to become more relevant to their needs. Thank you, James for the good pointers. Here’s what James wrote:

“I think, just like any position, each person has to identify their strong points and accentuate those assets while identifying their areas of improvement and addressing those on a daily basis. In general, I would say any successful Event Manager is:

1. Be Extremely organized - overly so

2. Maintain a big picture philosophy at all times, meaning you work on ever detail while keeping in perspective the larger impact and goal

3. Be a good - no great - multi-tasker. To successfully run any program you are going need to ensure that 50 things are getting done at once, whether it’s in preparation or execution of the program.

4. Possess strong interpersonal skills. You need to be comfortable realting to and dealing with high level executives, government officials, vendors, co-workers, sponorsor representatives, customers,supervisors, suppliers, full-time staff, part-time staff and more.

5. Be Creative and Flexible. I think these two go together because in the event business things are always changing. Which requires you be flexible to develop a solution and solution comes about as a result of yoru creativity.”

Marketing events by micro-blogging

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Social media platforms

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.