Mind set
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:
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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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…
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Creating Online Social Media Campaigns |
Event marketing using social media tools is about creating the right campaigns that have the maximum impact. Social media and networking channels offer a lot of flexibility in crafting out our messages just the way we want to. You can measure the impact and reactions of your messages and adjust your campaigns accordingly.
You can also add mental and emotional triggers to make your campaigns most effective. This helps people make the buy-no-buy decision quicker.
I came across a social marketing tool that claims to help us create online social media campaigns with ease. Its called Shoutlet. It helps in creating the content, distributing it to the right audiences and in measuring the results of the campaign in real time. Quite a handful, I’d say.
Shoutlet has some big companies, like ebay, in their client list already. Its a cost effective tool for serious businesses who want to reach out to their markets in a more organized manner…
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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?
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Social Media Etiquittes For Event Planners |
It seems that people tend to misuse social media and networking sites for their marketing campaigns leaving users irritated. Spam in emails is something I have learned to get used to (sort of), but Facebook spam and blog comments spam is always an annoyance.
It is important to be careful in your social media strategies and implementation because one wrong move can defame you in seconds in the online world. Although these things may seem obvious to most people, I will still share them with you so that you can run through your plans to make sure you don’t unintentionally push the wrong nerves. As event managers or marketers, your reputation and credibility are things that need safeguarding.
I consider these an understood underlying part of my preachings, but if we’re not on the same page about them then there is a chance you may misinterpret my social media strategies and harm your events or businesses. So, here goes:
If you are leveraging social media for marketing your events, please make sure of the following:
1- You send messages to only those people who are interested or have opted-in to hearing from you. No random catching strangers in the marketplace.
2- If you have found your demographics online (randomly), then try to build a relationship of trust with them before pushing marketing message down their throats. Make them your friends by helping them or providing them value. This is always a mutually beneficial relationship…
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Social Media - An Online Mindset Shift |
Its interesting to see how event managers with old-school traditional marketing knowledge are using social media in the wrong way. When it comes to social media, you have to have a complete mindset shift or else you’d end up wasting time and energy with little or no rewards.
People who don’t change their mindsets want to see immediate results, want to get immediate outreach (outreach doesn’t necessarily mean better branding), don’t have the right conversations with their potential customers (have to be two way), don’t let communities evolve on their own (by trying to control everything), are not open to criticism, don’t switch to online mediums completely (still rely on offline techniques more), can’t synergize different mediums for planning and marketing their events.
Of course, I do understand that it can be difficult to just switch a perspective that has been embedded in our systems for years. If you are having trouble adapting your thinking process around the latest and newest technologies, here are some things that may help:
1- Be in the know of whats going on. Subscribe to different authority blogs in your industry. Get Google alerts for updates on happenings that can effect your business. Keep yourself constantly up to date…
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Can sharing be a marketing technique? |
Who would have thought a few years ago that sharing content with others would become so easy? Now we have blogging software for sharing ideas, Youtube for sharing video clips, Flickr for sharing photos, and great services like del.icio.us and stumbleupon that let us filter the best content from the web in groups.
But a common question I get asked is this - how do we manage content that is our IP, content pertinent to our event and businesses? Do we just publish it into the public domain freely?
Brad Fallon stated at a recent STOMPERNET conference that in the next 12 months alone, more content will be published for public consumption than has been published the history of time. The reason is that everyone can publish now days and not just the media barons.
That said I think its fair to say that whatever it is you are doing it’s been done before. The question you need to be asking yourself with the surge in open (social) media and content sharing is this; If you do keep what you are doing for your events (business) locked behind a firewall and your competitors don’t. Who is going to prosper over the next 5 years.
I know who I would be betting on and invite readers to comment on who they would put their money on. We will delve into this further in future posts.
I believe sharing content is very important - at a recent conference we discussed the fact that over 60% of media content being consumed by the new generation of people is content that was discovered and shared by their friends.
Sharing information that would be useful to people and to their friends is not just an important emerging way of promoting events or getting the word out about something, but to create credibility among people who would want to find you and follow you over time. The social web makes it incredibly easy to find the truth about a person - if a person wants to be perceived as an expert, that expertise will truly be tested with the strategies employed when sharing content.
Here are some of my own recommendations on content sharing:
1- Be Authentic and Consistent. This is incredibly important - the best strategy for sharing content is to genuinely want others to grow to understand and appreciate the space in which you are an expert. If you keep focused on this mindset, and on the subject matter that you want people talking about, you will find yourself sharing very relevant material about that subject consistently.
2- Share incredible content. Having content by yourself doesnt make you the expert - your expertise comes from how you have interpreted, thought about, and applied that content over years. So its ok to give your content away - this is the best way to build meaningful relationships with your potential consumer base.
3- Share content meant for learning. You should think about sharing both content which represents the cutting-edge stream of thought in your subject, but also content that allows newbies to get excited about what you’re talking about. This will not only increase the community of people who follow you but also enable you to start conversations with the experts on the best paths of teaching new comers. A community of participants starts to evolve from these interactions.
4- Time your multi-media content. What you are sharing at any given time is going to be perceived as how you are thinking about the subject at that time. The content starts becoming what you are exploring or what you are excited about, and that in itself gives your audience a hint about who you are. While creating a full roadmap of how you will “unfold” content may not be a nice idea, it is very important to share similar content across all mediums. E.g. if you are sharing links on del.icio.us and also videos on youtube, then make sure they are all touching on similar topics at any given point in time.
How do these techniques tie back into marketing and promotion? What you are trying to aim for here is to become a reliable source of good knowledge about a subject matter - if people can begin to expect good things from you, they are likely to invite their friends to follow you as well.
You will over time become the go-to authority on your subject, and if people trust the content you share to be good, they are also likely to trust you when you talk about your events, your services and your products.
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 key word research tool.
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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.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! If you want to source the best JV partners in your niche, you need a software that sources those selling the most product’s in your niche!
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