Jeremiah Owyang coined the term “Intention Web” to describe social media which captures and promotes users’ future plans. Where the asynchronous web is about the then, the real-time web is about the now, Intention Web properties are about the later.

Event and experiential marketers seem to have been focused on using social media as a sort of historical record of their activities, posting content, including transcripts, photos, videos, Powerpoint presentations etc. after the fact.

Otherwise, the community has begun to embrace the now, talking about what’s happening on Twitter, Facebook and the like, by promoting and encouraging attendees to share their personal experiences real-time during speaking sessions, concerts and brand experiences of all types. By attracting and leveraging as many followers as possible marketers are able to broadcast updates and engage audiences well beyond the physical experience.

But what about the future? Aside from simply listing an event on Facebook, Linkedin or your favorite social network, what are you doing to build excitiment, drive anticipation, generate audience and foster community before your event takes place?

There are a few Intention-based social networks that specialize in driving this anticipation. Here they are, along with some ideas for how to best use them in your event marketing program.

Dopplr: “Dopplr is a service for smart international travelers. Dopplr members share personal and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Dopplr presents this collective intelligence – the travel patterns, tips and advice of the world’s most frequent travellers – as a Social Atlas. You can use Dopplr on a personal computer and a mobile phone.” Setting up a profile is easy. Then you can build your network easily by inviting friends from: Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Outlook, or type in your own email addresses. Travel plans need to be fairly specific, and the carbon footprint section is interesting. While Dopplr is not about events, its a great resource for travel planning for a specific city with restaurants, hotels and activities explored in each location. Look for more mobile integration for Dopplr with their iphone App and recent acquisition by Nokia.

Meetup: “The world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.” This group-centric site makes it really easy to find groups and their activities in locations where you are or are traveling to. You basically have two options: Find a Meetup Group or Start a Meetup Group. Finding a group is easy. Just type in a few keywords, and the site will serve up all the groups in your area that meet on the topics you’re interested in. Once you select a group, you’ll be brought to their page where you can sign up for “meetups” post pictures, and participate in the group forums. You can also share group activities with Facebook and Twitter. To create a group is also simple, but there is a nominal cost ($12 – $19 per month depending on length of commitment) to keep the group listed. Once you’ve created a group you can invite folks to join, promote your group r meetups through the site or other channels or simply wait for them to come to you via keyword search.

Plancast: “Plancast is the easiest way for you to share your plans with friends and discover what others are doing in the future.” This lightweight application allows users to keep tabs on what people are doing in real life. Simply create a profile (name, picture, location, bio) and you’re on your way. From there you can post What you’re planning, When it occurs and where it happens. You can subscribe to other users, or they can subscribe to you, this way plans are shared. Plancast seamlessly integrates with Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz, so your plans can be posted across your social networks, and subscribers (think friends, followers, etc) can be invited to join you on Plancast. Once you post your plan, others can plan on attending or participating. Plancast is an easy way to organize nights out, tweetups or major events. It’s all about the subscribers, so build your network and use Plancast to get together.

Tripit: “TripIt turns chaos into order by making it easy for anyone to: Organize trip details into one master online itinerary — even if arrangements are booked at multiple travel sites, Automatically include maps, directions and weather in their master itinerary, Have the option to book restaurants, theatre tickets, activities and more right from within the online itinerary, Safely access travel plans online, share them, check-in for flights, or print an itinerary.” The interesting thing about Tripit is the ability to share your plans with others. Like Dopplr, this functionality can help users organize formal or informal meet-ups in cities where they are traveling to. You can add friends through email address books (e.g., aol, gmail, hotmail, live, msn & yahoo), my entering individual email addresses, or through Linkedin. Tripit also has a host of applications to try out from iGoogle integration to groups which let’s you track the itineraries and locations of people within groups you assign. Check out the interactive map that plots where people are traveling to. Tripit Pro also has some interesting functionality including tracking your frequent flyer program points and getting travel alerts. No other service does a better job integrating with social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google, etc. Its a great tool to organize not only your own itineraries, but those of your entire team.

Upcoming: “Upcoming is a community for discovering and sharing events. It can help you find stuff to do, discover what your friends are doing, or let you keep private events online for your own reference.” You’ll need a Yahoo ID to join Upcoming, as it is a Yahoo property. Once you’re in you can create a basic profile. Adding friends is a bit more challenging, you need to know their names or do a search for existing members. Alternatively you an invite users via email. Finding events is as simple as entering a subject (keyword) and location, and upcoming will seve up all upcoming events in your area. Adding an event is also quite simple. Other features include integration with music sites like Ping.fm, Pandora and iTunes to add concerts. Additionally, you can join groups to subscribe to their forums and events, or check out places to get information on all the happenings in your favorite locales. The only interaction with other social sites on Upcoming seems to be the ability to share events on Facebook. Upcoming seems to be more about posting and finding events than driving community or building personal profiles for interaction.

In conclusion, these are just some of the Intention Web sites you’ll find out there. Facebook and Linkedin already have some pretty robust event applications. And sites like Socializr, Baseloop are more geared toward smaller, friendly get-togethers. Deciding which application(s) to use is largely dependent on what you’re trying to accomplish. For managing travel to other cities with groups of folks or across your communities, consider Tripit. For connecting with your communities on the social web and sharing plans, Plancast is the way to go. For promoting your community look to Meetup. How are you using the Intention Web to build anticipation and coordinate your plans?

Social Anticipation: Using the Intention Web for Experience Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

Strategy means many things to many people. For some, its about the activities that are engineered for the audience to participate in. For others, its bringing the brand to life online. For others still, its about the right events or digital activities to participate in. I submit it’s all of these things and more.

Creating or adopting a strategic framework for the needs of your experience or program is a good place to start. From there, taking time to think about how you will approach each component lays the foundation for success. Here are some tips for creating a strategic framework that will help you rally the troops and march onward toward victory.

1. Clearly articulate and prioritize all objectives. What are you trying to accomplish with the event / experience / program? If you accomplish only one thing, what must it be? Because there are many lieutenants in the work we do, there are also many opinions on what the objectives should be. Try to foster agreement on as few objectives as possible. Honing the list down to no more than 1-3 objectives will ensure your squad focuses on the right things.

2. Think about measurement first. Now that you’ve established your objectives, it’s important to understand if, when and how you’ve accomplished them. Create a measurement strategy that reports on how these objectives are being met. no more, no less. Make sure all officers and troops alike are in agreement on success imperative and the measurement plan before the event / experience / program is launched.

3. Know how your battle contributes to the war effort. Always understand the input and outputs of what you’re doing. What other programs might influence your work? What contribution does your event make to the campaign? Understanding will also help ensure your are focused on the most important things.

4. Take time to get to know the target. Think beyond the demographics and psychographics of audiences. What are their interests? What are their triggers and inhibitors? What emotional and rational needs do they have that your brand can fulfill? This will lay the foundation for relevent experiences and build meaningful relationships.

5. Play to your strengths. Know thyself. Stay on brand and execute those tactics which are most likely to succeed. Apply the 80 / 20 rule for experimental activities and focus on tried and true methods first. Also know your weaknesses and be prepared to overcom them.

6. Survey the battlefield. What else is happening in the marketplace? What are your competitors up to? What socio-economic factors, marketing trends, business challenges, online and offline influencers need to be considered? Knowing the environment in which you are operating can help determine the types of activities executed at right time and place to maximize success.

7. Draft a comprehensive plan of attack. How will you attract an audience? What experiences will motivate them to act on your objectives? How are you representing your brand? What’s the sales strategy? What about follow-up? Promotions? Ensure there are sub strategies to your overarching strategy.

8. Develop contingencies for defeat and victory. Flexibility is key. Know what you will do if all or part of your program begins to fail before the event / experience / program is executed. Alternatively, know what you will do if the work is wildly successful. Sometimes an inability to support success can be more damaging than an outright failure. Make sure you have immediate, quick-strike plans in place as well as intermediate and longer-term ideas in your arsenal.

9. Remember measurement. Measure and diagnose your event / experience / program. Understand success, the degrees to whiich you were successful, and the reasons behind success or failure. Consider what successful tactics can be replicated elsewhere or improved apon. What were the reasons for failure? How can this be prevented next time? Create a plan for continuous improvement so each battle is won with fewer casualties.

Sun Tzu also wrote, “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” By creating a strategy and calculating the outcomes before you launch your plan, you’ll be able to mitigate failure and drive overwhelming success.

The Art of Experiential Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

As a marketer, I’ve often joked about implanting RFID chips into people or at the very least, tattooing a barcode on their forehead so we can track their activities and behaviors. Now we have something even better ~ all kidding aside. Most everyone has a cellular phone, smart phone or mobile device of some kind. Many are outfitted with a GPS. People are willingly sharing information with the world about who they are, what they are interested in, where they are going and what they are doing. Wake up marketers! This is what we have hoped and dreamed about for decades!

There are six location-based applications / services I’ve had my eye on recently: Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl and Yelp. In this post I’ll briefly describe each and offer a few ideas on how to take advantage of these tools to complement experiences, drive engagement, foster community and build brand relationships with audiences.

1. Brightkite

What is it? Brightkite helps people discover where their friends are and introduces users to new people, places and events in their neighborhood. It also allows users to simplify their social life by posting updates to several social networks.

What’s so cool about it? Brightkite works like many other social networks with friends, fans, “like” function, filters and search. Users can also customize locations. The introduction of other people, places and events provides and opportunity to create recommendations based on user behaviors and preferences – a potential gold mine for marketers.

Where to get it? Brightkite.com

2. Foursquare

What is it? Foursquare is an application that works on any mobile device. It allows users to “check in” at different locations, share their experiences, earn points & unlock badges, and become the “Mayor” to unlock freebies at different locations.

What’s so cool about it? The incentive-based ranking system and organic tie to restaurants, bars, retailers and other points of interest creates a compelling promotional model that can drive real business.

Where to get it? Foursquare.com

3. Gowalla

What is it? The Gowalla application lets users share their location with others on the Gowalla network, as well as Facebook and Twitter. Users can earn stamps for their virtual “passport”. New locations can be easily discovered by users and added to the Gowalla network of destinations. Gowalla is only available for the iphone and android-enabled devices.

What’s so cool about it? The integration with other social networks is huge. This can begin to help marketers create psychographic and technographic profiles of their audiences across platforms. The passport incentive idea can also help drive business and monetize audience activities.

Where to get it? Gowalla.com

4. Loopt

What is it? Loopt shows users where their friends are located via interactive maps on their mobile phones. It also helps tie people to locations and events. Users can also share geo-tagged photos and comments with people in their network both within Loopt and other social networks. Although Loopt works with many mobile devices, some are not included.

What’s so cool about it? Loopt is really great for finding the physical locations of other people in your network to organize ad-hoc meetings, or for brands to reach out to users in their area for localized promotions.

Where to get it? Loopt.com

5. Whrrl

What is it? Whrrl allows users to check in to different locations, share photos and comments of those places with others, unlock secret societies of users based on your behaviors and create and analyze your “footstream” or digital record of where you’ve been.

What’s so cool about it? Great tool for sharing your experiences with others in your network. For marketers a great tool for creating loyalty and advocacy programs for select “societies” and for spreading promotions beyond the scope of traditional marketing efforts.

Where to get it? Whrrl.com

6. Yelp

What is it? You may know Yelp for their restaurant, retail and other services reviews.

What’s so cool about it? Yelp already has a built in audience and a robust database of places to go and things to do. Connecting people isn’t too far off. Good reviews will drive business both online and on the street.

Where to get it? Yelp.com

Here are some ideas to help marketers to capitalize on these opportunities.

Participate: Subscribe to these services and make sure your business information is up to date on service profiles.

Promote: Create special promotions for subscribers to these services. Freebies, coupons, specials, referrals and loyalty / advocacy programs.

Pull: Create special environments and host formal events and ad-hoc meetups for audiences who belong to these location-based networks. Become THE destination locally.

Partner: Create opportunities for cross-brand promotions within your company and throughout your business partners. This is a great tool for localized micro-affinity marketing. Think dinner and a movie, drinks and museums, office supplies and printing services, makeover, haircut and shopping spree. You get the idea.

Piggyback: For event and experiential marketers, partner with relevant local establishments to extend the event experience. Scavenger hunts, visits to retailers who sell products you showcase at the event, client site case study visits, hospitality events, local office visits can enhance your experience and provide proof-point connections to the real world.

We live in interesting and exciting times. As you consider the social media strategy or your business, ensure location-based services are a part of the plan. Never before have marketers had such an amazing opportunity to connect with their audiences at the moment of truth.

Have other ideas? Please share!

Where You At? Location-Based Services For Marketers is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

According to Quantcast, as of November 2009, MySpace has just under 60 million regular users per month, making it the second largest social network in the US. 57% of users are female and 43% are male. As far as age is concerned, 46% of MySpace visitors are 18-34, followed by 13-17 at 26% and 35-49 at 17%. MySpace also boasts a large Hispanic and African American population.

Like all marketing, the trick for brands is to fish where the fish are. In other words, make sure the digital properties included in any social media strategy attract your target audience. Its also a good idea to align your brand appropriately with the content of the property to ensure relevance for the community.

MySpace attracts a younger audience than Facebook, and the content is more entertainment focused, including, celebrity, fashion, video, sports and most importantly, MySpace is building their business largely through music. With recent acquisitions of imeem, and iLike, as well as the build out of MySpace Music, News Corporation appears to be focused on billing MySpace as the premier social destination for all things music.

So how can event marketers leverage MySpace for events? Here are 8 ideas to get you started.

1. Its not about the event, its about the community. This may sound familiar from my earlier posts, but it bears repeating. As marketers, its important we change our thinking from using MySpace or any other social media platform for an event, to understanding how we can incorporate our event into the community. Changing our state of mind will help ensure we are focused on the right things and enable long-term success. What’s most important is approaching social communities comprised of the right audiences for our products or services. In some cases, there will not be an organic fit between branded content and community interests. Content should be carefully crafted to align, or alternate channels should be explored if content alignment is not possible.

2. Create a profile for your event. Although designed for people, a profile can be built for an event. This is really easy to do on MySpace. Make sure your presence is branded appropriately and community centric. Myspace is completely customizable. You can change the layout and background or create a custom look and feel using CSS tools. From here you can add different modules that display exactly the kind of information you want to display on your profile. Take advantage of appropriate modules for your presence like:

• Blurbs – Shows the “About” Section of your profile
• Details – Miscellaneous details about your event
• Interests – Here you can include the subject matter of the event
• Companies – Here you can list participating companies
• Friend Space – Friends or fans listed (think attendees or other interested parties)
• Events – Create and manage all your events or curriculum / agendas
• Calendar – Displays important dates about your event

3. Add multimedia content to your profile. Keep it updated to educate, inform and excite your audiences.

• Music Player – If your event is entertainment focused, this is the place to keep and showcase it (under MySpace Music)
• Video Player – Record or upload your own videos (under MySpace Video)

4. Keep the information fresh, interesting and engaging. Other modules can be used to better communicate and engage with your community. Use them daily.

• Status and Mood – Keep your audience apprised on event activities
• Activity Stream – Publishes everything you do on MySpace
• Comments – Allows you or others to post comments to your profile

5. Create additional value for attendees. Still other modules can be used to help attendees navigate the locale around your event

• Local Reviews – Helpful for destination events where attendees may be looking for hotels, restaurants, attractions, etc.
• MySpace Local – Can be used for attendees during regional events to find restaurants, hotels, and attractions

6. Identify, attract and befriend the right audience. You don’t need to boil the ocean here. Start by searching MySpace for people who you know who are already part of the community and “friending” them. You can also invite people you email or IM via your contact list to join MySpace. The next step is to use MySpace search functions to conduct searches of Profiles, Groups and Forums to identify folks who might be interested in your content and your event and “friend” them. Finally, you can promote your MySpace presence off site to attract others to become your friend.

7. Engage your community. If you build it, they might come. In order to be truly successful, you must engage and interact with others. Reach out to other MySpace profiles with related content (industry, fan, speaker, exhibitor, etc.). Post photos, videos, music, stories, links and updates that will keep your audiences interested and engaged. Also take full advantage of MySpace:

• Blogs – Allows you to create your own blog or view others blogs – update your blog regularly. For more guidance on using blogs effectively at events, please check out my earlier post, The Importance of Blogs in Experiential Marketing.
• Groups – Join relevant groups or create your own group based on the event – make sure you participate actively.
• Forums – Start new discussions or participate in other revelvent discussions actively to foster your community and drive interest in the subject matter of your event.

Here are some thoughts on the kind of content you should post regularly.

• News about event content (again, think community interest first) and  event operations
• Links to outside blogs (speakers, exhibitors, industry sites, subject matter experts, etc.)
• Links to other MySpace pages (speakers, exhibitors, industry / subject matter groups, etc.)
• Photos and videos (speakers, experiences, exhibits, demonstrations, previous events, subject matter relevant, audience and fan provided)

Remember, the beauty of social media, is you don’t need to create everything, you can leverage and share what others have done, provided it is on brand, relevant to your audience and appropriate for your presence.

Think long-term. This is not just about awareness and audience generation for your event, but an engagement strategy that will make your event a vital component of the community and an important accentuation point in the relationship with your audiences, whether they be attendees, speakers, exhibitors, press, analysts or otherwise.

8. Leverage appropriate applications. There are hundreds of applications in MySpace. Browse application categories or search apps based on keywords. You can also create your own applications to be included in the MySpace universe. Here are some I’ve found useful:

• Custom Countdown: Allows you to create customized countdowns for your events
• iTwitter: Syncs your tweets to your MySpace profile
• RSS Reader: Include RSS feeds from your blog, news sites, subject matter experts, etc. on your MySpace profile
• Create Free Polls: Survey your MySpace audience and report the results
• YouTube Post: Post your YouTube videos directly into your MySpace profile
• Business 3.0: Integrate your business information, products, services, etc. into many social media platforms

Building a MySpace engagement strategy (or any other community engagement strategy)  is easier said than done. Participating in communities takes time and diligence, but with the right focus, your event can become a prominent fixture both within the MySpace community and beyond. Remember to observe, create, share and engage and long-term success will be yours.

These are just some of the things you can do with MySpace. There are many other uses and applications for events. If you have other ideas or ways in which you’ve used MySpace for events please share!

8 Ways To Use MySpace For Events is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

One way to advance the conversation around using Twitter for event and experiential marketing is to leverage third-party applications. There are literally hundreds of Twitter applications available. A case could be made for using any and all of them for your event marketing program. I’ve spent some time reviewing some of the more interesting applications which can complement your events beyond creating buzz. In some cases there are alternate tools which perform the same function as those listed below. Feel free to explore. These are some of my favorites.

Twellow: The Twitter yellow pages. This directory searches the profiles (bios) of Twitter users when you enter a keyword. This application can be used to identify potential attendees, speakers, exhibitors, suppliers, etc. Its very simple to use, and ranks search results by number of followers.

Icerocket Twitter Search: There are several Twitter search tools out there. This is one of my favorites. Its a real time search engine and searches for keywords used within tweets. For events, Icerocket can be used to find trending topics, monitor hashtags, or find people of interest based on what they tweet. Bonus: Icerocket also searches blogs.

Tweet Later: This is one of my favorites for event marketers. If you plan ahead of time, you can schedule some of your tweets to coincide with the event schedule. Great for reminding followers of speaking sessions, or promoting your booth and other activities throughout an event. The perfect tool for press releases of new product launches, etc. I’ve used this tool for tweeting key points of my presentation while I was giving it. With rehearsal and timing it can work out pretty well. Keep in mind, while you can schedule some of your tweets ahead of time, its important to stay connected and be a part of the ongoing conversation live.

Tweetdeck: Monitoring the conversation around your event is critical. Tweetdeck makes this simple by allowing you to monitor several keywords, hastags, and people at once. Consider using Tweetdeck to monitor the conversation around your event in realtime. You can also set up Tweetdeck on large format monitors for attendees to see what content is buzzing in the twitterverse while they’re at an event. Bonus: Tweetdeck also integrates with Facebook and MySpace.

Tweetbeep: A very useful tool that monitors keywords and links and sends activity alerts by email every hour. Imagine having trending topics about your event, sessions, speakers, etc. delivered to you as they happen. Deploy Tweetbeep in addition to Tweetdeck to monitor hot topics.

Twtvite: a free event management tool that helps you organize and promote local Tweetups (informal social gatherings of people with like interests). You can use Twtvite to organize tweetups around your event. If you are using Tweetdeck or Tweetbeep to monitor conversations around your event, Twtvite can be the perfect tool to organize adhoc discussions to complement planned event curriculum based on what topics are trending.

Poll Everywhere: Need an audience response system on the cheap? Poll everywhere allows audiences to submit messages or answer multiple choice questions via tweet, SMS or the web. The best part: their feedback is instantly embedded into your live Powerpoint presentation. This tool has some amazing applications for hybrid events. Here you can get feedback from both face-to-face and virtual audiences during a presentation that is also streamed live via the internet.

Twtpoll: Simple polling application that allows you to submit a question to the twitterverse. You can choose form 17 types of questions and set a time limit for answers. This is great for gathering information for presentations before an event, or getting feedback after an event. Bonus: You can share Twtpolls across any social network.

Twitpic: This tool allows you to share pictures via Twitter – complete with geotagging. Share live pictures of your event with the world! Encourage attendees to share their event pictures as well. You might even incorporate a photo scavenger hunt into your event using Twitpic.

Twitvid: Like Twitpic but for video. Super easy to use. Share videos of speakers, entertainment, demonstrations, etc. via Twitter. Encourage attendees to participate. Bonus: autosharing to Facebook, MySpace and Youtube is integrated.

Twitcam: Create a live twebcast! Broadcast your event via this simple, instant streaming video application. This is great for speaking sessions, demonstrations, etc. Integrates with a twitter window so observers can comment / ask questions during the presentation. Its a good idea to have a moderator and a decent webcam / mic hooked up to your computer.

Tweetchat: Very cool application that allows users to conduct  live chat over twitter via #hashtags. I participate in the #eventprofs tweetchat as often as I can. You can organize tweetchats during your event on trending topics, or schedule these as part of you planned curriculum. Tweetchats can also take place off hours or for virtual participants.

These twelve Twitter tools will help you advance your event program beyond the profile, #hashtag and promotional tweet. If used appropriately these applications can drive community engagement before, during and after each event to create real relationships with your audiences across your event program. Use one, use some, use them all, its your choice. Understand your audience and objectives first, then pick the best tools to meet your needs. I’ve only scratched the surface here. Again, there are hundreds of third-party Twitter applications out there, and they come and go daily. If you find something that’s worked for you please share!

12 Twitter Tools Every Event Marketer Should Know About is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

There are blogs on just about everything. If you spend a few minutes searching blog directories, you can find just about anything you might be interested in reading. There are blogs about marketing, blogs about events, and even blogs about blogging.

Blogs have several benefits for experiential marketers. Blogs can serve as a destination for your communities. Blogs humanize your event by giving it a voice and a personality. Blogs give you an opportunity to participate in conversations ranging from communicating event logistics, to exploring the depth and breadth of content as part of your experience.

Several brands and show producers have been using blogs for some time as part of their event program, but few have done so effectively. Here are some ideas on how you can effectively integrate blogging into your experiential marketing program.

1. If you don’t have a blog, start one. Blogs are simple to set up. Free blogging software is commonplace and theme templates are widely available. If you like, you can create your own template, or integrate a blog into your existing website or social network. The most popular stand-alone software platforms are Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger. Social network platforms like Ning, KickApps and Crowdvine allow you to create social networks which include blogs as part of their infrastructure. The most difficult part of blogging is ensuring you plan enough time and support for creating content. Assign the right level of resources to ensure your blog is well-managed. Many seasoned bloggers create an editorial calendar to plan content ahead of time and adjust as the environment dictates.

2. Establish the right tone. The way you communicate says a lot about your brand and your experiential marketing program. Determine the brand intent and personality of your blog and event. Remember, its not about selling, but engaging with your community. Set the precedent and your community will follow.

3. Start early. Establish your blog as soon as you’ve decided to create an event experience. The earlier the better. This will allow the blog to carve out a niche in your subject-matter universe. It will also help the blog become a more powerful awareness, thought leadership and audience generation tool.

4. Keep going. Just as the blog should be started as early as possible before your event, it should grow in interest and relevance both during and after the event. This will build a community around the subject matter of your experience, as well as extend the life of your investment by reaching a larger and increasingly higher qualified audience. This is an easy way to contribute to improved ROI.

5. Keep content fresh, vibrant and alive. While event logistics and schedules are interesting and all, nothing will attract and retain an audience more effectively that relevant, interesting content they cannot get anywhere else. Balance logistics with value-added content. Your blog can bring your face-to-face experience alive for attendees and online observers alike. Use photos, videos, sound files as well as text to tell your story. Keep it fresh, mix it up and establish a personality for your blog. What can you provide to your community on a consistent basis that will keep them excited about the subject matter as well as your experience? Identify, prioritize and deliver this to drive long-term success.

6. The blog becomes THE destination. Sure, we want attendees to come to the event, and they will. However a blog will foster community before, during and after the experience to drive long-term relationships. By using the blog as a platform for ongoing face-to-face and digital tactics, you create deeper, richer experiences for your community. This contributes to audience retention, expansion, brand loyalty and advocacy over the long run.

7. Use guest bloggers to generate content and interest. Invite speakers, exhibitors, subject-matter experts, analysts, and even the press and media to participate in your blog. Recognize guest participation and “best” content through a community rating system. Not only will this improve the quantity and quality of content for your experience, but it will also attract more readers, drive participation and build community. Your focus here becomes balanced between facilitation and content development, freeing you up to focus more on the rest of the experience.

8. Bring Your Own Audience (BYOA). If you build it, the might come. Conduct social media searches on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to identify audiences who may be interested in your content, your blog and your event (in that order). Contact them and invite them to visit the blog. Research, read, comment or ask to be a guest blogger on related blogs. This will attract audiences who are interested in learning more to follow you. Link to relevant content as often as possible. You can also use blog directories, blogrolls (your own as well as listings on other blogs) to help drive audiences as well. The key here is to establish and maintain a presence in the blogosphere.

9. Encourage readership and participation. Throughout your communication plan, make sure you promote the blog, the authors, and the content. Reward the community for participation where possible and appropriate. To drive long-term community relevance, its a good idea to promote the blog as prominently as you promote the event itself. An event is a point in time, a blog lives on well beyond the experience.

BONUS THOUGHTS:

10. Impose a time limit. Sometimes, you don’t want to establish or build a long-term community, and that’s OK. Consider setting up and promoting a blog that has a limited lifespan before, during and after the event. Promote it as such and encourage the community to interact as often as possible during this limited time opportunity.

11. Pull content from other blogs. Similar to linking to outside content in the BYOA section above, consider pulling content from other sources (with permission of course). Speakers, exhibitors, subject matter experts,  analysts, and press and media may have blogs that they would love to share and promote on your site or as part of your experiential marketing program.

Blogs are a powerful tool. They give your experiential marketing program an anchor, and your audiences a long-term destination. With the right focus, content discipline, resource allocation and community integration, event blogs can help turn a single event into a vibrant community around your subject matter.

If you have other ideas on how to use blogs for events or experiential marketing programs, please share!

The Importance of Blogs in Experiential Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

Here are 10 thoughts on how you can create an effective and efficient event portfolio plan.

1. Collaborate: Ensure you have all the right people involved in the process: brands and business units; corporate headquarters and countries or regional offices; event marketers, advertisers, direct marketers, digital teams, PR and sales; agencies; business partners, etc. Having the right people involved at the right level from the beginning of the process with help you build an integrated plan that has a much higher probability of success. This will also facilitate buy-in and help things work much more smoothly as the year goes on.

2. Build Value: Relationships are predicated upon a mutual exchange of value. Remember this when working with your internal and external teams during the planning process. Understanding the inputs, outputs and roles of each and every team member will help make the process run effectively and efficiently. Respect for individual roles and establishing an environment of trust are critical. Success of the plan, and ultimately the company trumps individual needs.

3. Think of the Audience First: People do not live their lives via a media plan or event schedule. Most will only attend a few events per year. Who are your target audiences and what events are they most likely to attend? Event marketing portfolios should be built from an audience perspective first.

4. Give Every Event A Job: Some events and tactics are good for generating awareness and thought leadership. Others are better for lead generation.  Still others have strengths in nurturing and closing the deal. Don’t forget about loyalty events. While its true that few events have a singular purpose, consider the promary objective of each event in your portfolio, and ensure you have the right tactics in place at every stage in the sales cycle. Remember that large third-party events are best for the early stages of the cycle (awareness, lead generation) and smaller, proprietary engagements are most appropriate toward the end (nurturing, conversion, loyalty).

5. Act Globally And Locally: There are some industry events which have the power to attract audiences from near and far – destination events. Start with these. Otherwise, audiences tend to operate within a certain market. Execute proprietary activities regionally to nurture, convert or drive retention and expansion of your audiences. Its often a lot easier for someone to attend a local breakfast seminar than book a flight to Las Vegas.

6. Select Events Carefully: Create and adhere to a robust decision-making process. Use the right criteria. Are your target customers at the event? Can you drive the audeince? Does the event audience meet your target demographic? Is it a key industry event? Is there an opportunity to tell your story?

7. Use Data-Based Business Rationale: “We’ve always attended.”, “Our competition will be there.”, “What will the industry / our customers think if we don’t go?” Are not sound business strategies or reasons for exhibiting. Do the math. If the event has the ability to meet your marketing and business objectives, then go. Otherwise, leave it on the table.

8. Decide Which Activities To Add, Change Or Remove: Understand that some events are underperformers because they fail to deliver the right audience. Others deliver the audience, but the way in which you participated may need to be adjusted to take better advantage of the opportunity. There are also always new opportunities available to reach your audiences. These opportunities may be created by third-party producers, or you can create them yourself. Explore all options before arriving at a final plan.

9. Save by Zero: If you have an event portfolio that is filled with legacy activities and potentially frought with waste. Start from scratch. Build your plan from the ground up. Make no assumptions. Treat every event with the same scrutiny when evaluating it for inclusion in you plan.

10. Keep The Plan Alive: Remember, no plan is ever final. Event portfolio planning is a continuous process that must be monitored throughout the year and adjusted regularly based on performance, learning, the environment and your own pipeline.

Portfolio planning can be a complex and sometimes politically-charged process. The right alignment to marketing and business objectives, strong team integration and disciplined process, will help increase your chances at delivering a flexible plan built for success. If you have any additional ideas or challenges you’ve faced in creating your plan, please share!

Portfolio Planning: 10 Tips for Creating The Right Mix is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

Often event-producer-provided audience descriptions can be somewhat biased and useless from a marketing perspective. Case in point: Aren’t we all “decision makers”? Because of this, I’ve come to respect third-party audits by companies like BPA Worldwide or Exhibit Surveys. Wherever possible, its a good idea to insist on third-party audits to drive true marketing discipline into your program and the event industry at large. All said, chances are you don’t want to attract and start a conversation with everyone who attends a trade show – You want to engage with the folks that really matter, your suspects and prospects.

I’m always amazed at the size and scope of the spend many companies make at major events to drive awareness and audience. I wonder if anyone ever bought anything because of a 24-story building wrap. I’m not saying awareness vehicles have no value. On the contrary, awareness is critical in driving pipeline. My point is: each and every tactic and investment at every event should be scrutinized and prioritized to ensure it is the best tool to accomplish your business objectives with your targeted audiences. Event marketers don’t have to have the largest budget, the biggest booth or the most impressive sign to win. They just need to be strategic in their approach and apply intelligence to their process. Here are some ideas that can help you own the show without breaking the bank.

BYOA – Bring Your Own Audience: The audience is the most important part of any event. Don’t rely on someone else to provide it. Be sure to link with sales organizations and have them personally invite key customers and prospects to the event. Design experiences just for them when they get there. Leverage business partners to participate in your presence and ask them to do the same. Use search (both standard and social media) to identify and invite suspects. Engage in a direct marketing campaign with key media properties to drive awareness for targeted audiences that meet your demographic and psychographic profile requirements. Its a lot easier to catch the right fish if you stock the pond.

Get The List: Negotiate sponsorships with event producers that include the pre registration, registration and attendee lists. Sort and parse the list to ensure you’ve boiled it down to just your target audiences. Communicate with this audience before, during and after the show. Ensure you build a communication stream well-before the event to determine how you will handle opt-ins, hot, warm and cold leads and ensure this process is followed.

Engage The Press And Media Early And Often: An event is not the first time you should contact the press and media. Its imperative you build relationships with key media properties well-ahead of time. Remember, if you can provide content that is relevant to their audience and is easy to execute you will go far. Just like any business relationship, press and media relationships are predicated upon a mutual exchange of value. Make sure your content is newsworthy and you spend time helping them succeed. Its not always about your company, brand or products. Hold a press conference before the event to drive mindshare and monopolize the media. Remember to invite prominent bloggers in your industry who are respected by your target audience – they often have greater pull than mainstream media.

Be Everywhere That Matters: Fill educational tracks with experts that can provide high-value content in sessions relative to your companies niche in the subject matter of the event. Secure a keynote speaking opportunity. Participate in panel discussions and roundtables. Remember, audiences spend far more time in sessions and attending speaking opportunities than they do on the show floor.

Get The Smallest Booth Possible: That’s right, I said smallest. Your largest investment should be in engaging with your audiences. You don’t need to bring every product in every product line. You don’t need 300 signs scattered throughout the booth. You don’t need every employee in your company to staff your booth. What you do need is enough space to manage flowthrough of your targeted audience over the course of the show. You also need space for the appropriate number of staffers to manage these attendees.  Ensure your experiences and demonstrations have enough room to comfortably be executed. Other things to consider include business theater and meeting space. Take advantage of off floor or off site meeting space. The cost per square foot is often less and you can control the experience more effectively. Above all, make sure your booth is open and inviting, and most importantly, efficient.

Use Time As A Competitive Weapon: Create experiences and engagement activities that monopolize the time that your suspects and prospects spend with you. If you have days filled with demonstrations, booth tours, speaking engagements, meetings, etc., audiences will spend more time immersed in your brand and will have less time to spend with competitors.

Leverage Social Media Or Virtual Technologies: “What happens in Vegas…” or more appropriately, “What happens at the event often stays at the event.” This is unfortunate considering the huge investment made. Use social media to enhance, expand and extend the event experience for attendees and outside participants as well. Videos (YouTube), Photos (Flickr), Blogs, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, private social networks, etc. can all be potent additions to your strategy. Remember an event is a point in time, relationships are long-term. Engage and interact with your communities both on and off line to improve the ROI of the event.

Follow Up Quickly And Consistently: Remember the communication stream? Execute the plan to follow up with and engage opt-ins, hot, warm and cold leads. The reason for investment and participation in the event was most likely to obtain these suspects. Don’t waste the investment by dropping the ball when the event is over. Leads are gold. Covet them. Communicate with them. Build relationships with them. Now.

Creating mindshare and heartshare doesn’t have to be expensive. Recognizing and engaging with a targeted audience is more effective and efficient than betting the farm on broad-based awareness efforts. With the proper alignment of tactics to business objectives, and the discipline to scrutinize and prioritize each and every investment, you’ll be well on your way to building the right share of voice to own the show.

Have other ideas? Please share!

Owning the Show: The Art Of Building Share Of Voice is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

There are many reasons people participate in the world’s largest social network. Some to understand what’s happening amongst their circle of friends, others to play games – the most popular games on Facebook are about farming and the mafia (thought of the day: what does this say about our society?), still others to share links, photos and videos.  As far as events are concerned, there are over 3 million events created each month. Three million events. These of course range from meeting for drinks at the local pub, to birthday parties, concerts and full-scale trade shows.

With so much activity going on, how can event marketers possibly be successful on the Facebook platform? The answers are simple, but implementation and successful engagement can be quite complex. Here are some insights to consider as you build your presence.

1. Its not about the event, its about the community. As event marketers, its imperative we stop thinking about using Facebook for an event, and start trying to understand how we can incorporate our event into the community. Changing our state of mind will help ensure we are focused on the right things and enable long-term success.

2. Create a page for your event. This is really easy to do on Facebook. The hard part is building in relevant, compelling content that will keep your audiences engaged. Make sure your presence is branded appropriately and community centric. With the right discipline and focus, your Facebook presence can become the content hub for the subject matter around your event. Build comprehensive content into the Info section,  post key photos, keep the Wall updated with fresh content and initiate relevant and engaging discussions on the Discussions tab. Take advantage of widgets like:

• Fan Box (where audiences can become fans)
• Live Stream Box (where your community can communicate)
• Page Badge (so fans can promote their affiliation with you as well as promote your event on other sites)

Post photos, videos, stories, links and updates that will keep your audiences interested and engaged. Here’s the hardest pill to swallow: In order to build a true community around your event, its important to have appropriate targeted content that is truly source agnostic. This might mean allowing content from competitive events – granted this content does not need to be as prominent in your presence, but it should be allowed. Otherwise, here are some thoughts on the kind of content you should post regularly.

• News about event content (again, think community interest first) and  event operations
• Links to outside blogs (speakers, exhibitors, industry sites, subject matter experts, etc.)
• Links to other Facebook pages (speakers, exhibitors, industry / subject matter groups, etc.)
• Photos and videos (speakers, experiences, exhibits, demonstrations, previous events, subject matter relevant, audience and fan provided)

Remember, the beauty of social media, is you don’t need to create everything, you can leverage and share what others have done, provided it is on brand, relevant and appropriate for your presence.

3. Leverage appropriate applications. The Events application can be used to promote your event, or other activities both around and within your event. Beyond this there are hundreds of calendaring and other organizational or promotional applications that can be used. Some I’ve found to be valuable include: Polls, Promotions, SlideShare, CitySearch, EventBrite, Social RSS and My Documents. Search or Browse the Application Directory and select a few that are right for you and meet your needs. Another option of course is to hire a developer to create your own Facebook applications.

4. Identify, attract and befriend the right audience. You don’t need to boil the ocean here. Start by searching Facebook for people who you know who are already part of the community and “friending” them. You can also invite people you email or IM via your contact list to join Facebook. The next step is to use Facebook search to conduct searches of People, Pages and Groups to identify folks who might be interested in your content and your event and “friend” them. Finally, you can promote your Facebook presence off site to attract others to become your friend or fan.

5. Engage. If you build it, they might come. In order to be truly successful, you must engage and interact with others. Reach out to other Facebook pages with related content (industry, fan, speaker, exhibitor, etc.) and participate in discussions, post photos, videos, links,  content and comments to their Walls. Think long-term. This is not just about awareness and audience generation for your event, but an engagement strategy that will make your event a vital component of the community and an important accentuation point in the relationship with your audiences, whether they be attendees, speakers, exhibitors, press, analysts or otherwise.

Building a Facebook engagement strategy (or any other community engagement strategy)  is easier said than done. Participating in communities takes time and diligence, but with the right focus, your event can become a prominent fixture both within the Facebook community and beyond. Remember to observe, create, share and engage and long-term success will be yours.

Five Powerful Ideas For Using Facebook For Events is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

1. Think in terms of community, not event. Even the best Twitter strategies would fail unless there was an audience to speak with. Just because you have a Twitter profile it does not mean people will follow you. Building a following takes time and diligence. Remember, an event is a single point in time, but relationships are long-term. Think in terms of building communities around your content using the event as a point of accentuation in the relationship.

2. Determine your niche. What is the subject matter you will Tweet about? Event updates, speaker interviews, etc., are fine, but to add true relevance to your followers, talk about the things that they are interested in – event content – the reason they will attend the event and participate in the face-to-face experience. Good content attracts the right followers.

3. Determine who you want as followers, and who you want to follow. Begin by following (potential) speakers, attendees, exhibitors and sponsors. Services like Twellow or TweepSearch allow you to conduct searches on people’ bios. These are enormously powerful tools. For example, if you want to engage in conversation with radiologists, then you can search for folks who mention this in their profile and then follow them. Secondly, use tools like TwitterSearch or Ice Rocket Twitter Search to identify folks who are tweeting about content relevant to the event. Once you identify each person, follow them. Some folks will follow back, some will not. Its OK either way. If your content is relevant you have a greater chance of getting traction here.

4. Recognize you are not the only authority on content. Understand what original content you will provide as well as what content you will target for retweets. Its important to always add value to the community.

5. Tweet Often. Keep your community engaged by participating in the conversation daily. Again, you don’t need to create original content all the time, but recognizing the contributions of others and retweeting their ideas, thoughts, links, etc. will keep you connected.

6. Follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of what you post should be relevant content that adds value to your community, 20% can be logistical or personal, giving your brand personality.

7. Think like a search engine. Use keywords and phrases that are relevant to your communities. Just as you are using search to identify relevant content and community members, they are too. Its also a good idea to keep your tweets well short of 140 characters so others can retweet your tweets.

8. Create and own a #hashtag. This gives your audiences a communal symbol to rally around as they share relevant event content. It also makes it easy for others to find you, your content and your events.

9. Give your audiences a destination (as well as multiple destinations). Your website is an easy start. What’s often more impactful are blogs about your niche subject matter. If you don’t have a blog, get one, or at the very least, post often to other people’s blogs. Sharing links to other relevant content is also a good idea.

I’ve just scratched the surface here. There are thousands of ways you can use Twitter in your experiential marketing program and hundreds of tools to help you. The first and most important is to build a community. I’ll explore more Twitter topics in future posts. In the meantime, if you’ve discovered some interesting ways to integrate Twitter into your event program, please share!

Who are the People in your Neighborhood? Using Twitter to Build a Community around Your Events is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0