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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

Mashable recently published “Google Wave: Better than Twitter for Conference Chatter” by Charlie Osmond at Freshworks. At first pass this article made a lot of sense. Charlie talks about how #hashtags aren’t an ideal way for people to share relevant content, and that the wiki-like interface of Google Wave makes it quite easy for users to share information of all kinds, effortlessly. This creates a more optimized platform for conference back chatter.

After watching the above video and spending some time checking out Google Wave (many thanks to Mike McCurry for the invitation) I quickly realized Google Wave is much more of a game-changer for event marketers than I originally thought. For those of you who have not yet received the coveted invitation, or if you have but just haven’t had the time to explore Google Wave, here’s a brief synopsis.

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A ‘wave’ can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, presentations, drawings, maps, interactive games, and more in real time. Google Wave is an open platform and developers are being encouraged to create extensions, plug-ins and applications to make this offering even more powerful. Jay Lahiro also has a nice description on his blog.

We’ve been talking about social media as a conversation or dialogue for some time now. Google Wave allows us to have true ‘polylogues’, where multiple users can participate in the discussion at the same time.

There’s been a lot of discussion as of late about how to use Facebook, Linkedin, and especially Twitter for events. These discussions tend to segregate communications streams into ‘front channel’ and ‘back channel’. The intent here being that official, planned content around an event, whether face-to-face or virtual, is considered ‘front channel’, with most referring to social media as a ‘back channel’ communication stream. This is not to say that legacy social media tools cannot be used for ‘front channel’ communications, but few event producers have done so effectively. Participation tends to be limited to “We have a Facebook page.” or “Here’s the official Twitter #hashtag.” There tends to be an attitude that if you build it, they will come, instead of truly integrating social media content into an event and actively engaging communities online before, during and after an event.

Google Wave has the potential to change this paradigm. Here, official content (speaking sessions, blogs, photos, videos, exhibitor content -- promotions, product launches, etc.) could be included in a wave along with social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Conversations, etc.) This allows for the integration of ‘front channel ‘and ‘back channel’ communications streams, allows users to create their own event experiences and creates a true community around the event.

Virtual event platforms like InXpo, Unisfair, ON24, etc. should take notice. An open platform like Google Wave can disrupt their business model and give brands, event producers and event agencies a free and simple way to connect audiences with brands virtually. For face-to-face events, Google Wave provides a compelling enhancement which can add real value to their experiences for their audiences (think the ultimate hybrid event). The true measure of success however will be for event producers to learn more about how to engage audiences both on and offline, and use the event as a communications hub where brands, subject matter experts and audiences each have an equal share of voice in the community.

It’s challenging to describe Google Wave in words. The above video does a nice job of walking through the basic offering, and there are several other blog posts, etc. which can give you some more insight, but to truly understand it you must experience it. I strongly encourage my fellow marketing, social media and event brethren who haven’t spent time in Google Wave to secure an invitation as soon as possible, and begin to use the tool to better understand how you might use it to engage your audiences. Google Wave is in preview mode, and has not been made publicly available. The faster we can get over the learning curve and more we can influence its development, the greater the value it will have for us as it becomes more widely available.

Already on Google Wave? Please share your thoughts, and be all means, please connect with me at ianmcgonnigal@googlewave.com.

Google Wave: The Future of Event Engagement? 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

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

The number of people who use social media is estimated at 110 million in the U.S. according to a study by Anderson Analytics. That’s about 37% of the total population (304,059,724 according to US Census data). Of that group, Facebook dominates with 78 million regular users, followed by MySpace with 67 million, Twitter with 17 million, and LinkedIn with 11 million regular users. This also means that roughly two-thirds of people do not use social media.

What’s most interesting to me about this is the conglomeration of behaviors that Social Media has proliferated among users and marketers alike.

A marketing program is like a ship, and right now many marketers are running over to the Social Media side of the boat and its listing. If we are not careful and move toward balanced, sustainable models, our vessel will capsize and it will take us some time to recover.

At the end of the day for marketers, Social Media is a channel. Granted, its a complex channel with multiple communications streams, both synchronous and asynchronous. It can also be used at many stages in the sales and marketing cycle.

Social Media is the next big thing, but we must be disciplined in our approach toward using it as a marketing tool or we will fail, publicly.

Here are some tips that will help you navigate these sometimes murky waters.

1. Set Your Objectives: Determine where you want to be in the next month, quarter, year and three years. What do you want / need to accomplish at every stage in your sales and marketing cycle? How many sales? How much revenue? How many suspects, prospects and customers? Determine business objectives first, then examine marketing objectives and social media objectives that will help you meet the needs of the business.

2. Gather Intelligence: Understanding your audience is critical. Who are they? What do they do? What are their interests? What are their emotional and rational triggers and inhibitors? How do they behave both on and offline? Where are they? What sites do they visit regularly? A good place to start is to look at your existing customers – chances are there are more just like them. It’s also a good idea to subscribe to different demographic and psychographic services to identify similar audiences. Read what the analysts are publishing. Observe your audiences. Listen to what they are saying. Participate in the conversation.

3. Choose Your Weapons: Create marketing tactics and campaigns (both on and offline) that activate your audiences triggers and overcome their inhibitors. Make sure you use the right tools for the job. Understand which tactics will drive awareness, thought leadership, lead acquisition, nurturing, conversion and loyalty. Deploy only the best tactics for each purpose. Again some will be online, some will not. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Be creative, be selective, be on brand and on strategy at all times.

4. Chart Your Course: Make sure your map (media plan and editorial calendar) addresses your audiences where they live, work and play. In short, hunt where the treasure is. If you are using Myspace and your audience is more of a Facebook crowd, you won’t be very successful.

5. Grab the Booty: As you capture leads and grow sales, remember to exploit advocacy wherever possible. Your customers can be your best sales people, especially on the social web.

6. Log Successes and Failures: Measure program performance. Understand what worked, what didn’t and note what adjustments should be made mid stream and in the future. Which social media sites were the most effective in reaching your audience? What’s the right frequency of communications? Measurement is critical to continuous improvement and long-term success.

7. Hire Mercenaries Carefully: You can’t swing a dead parrot without hitting an unemployed social media consultant. History tells us that the people who make the most money during a treasure hunt are not the pirates, but the people who sell them the treasure maps. Patricio Robles points out “Unfortunately, the rise of social media has created another internet opportunity that is ripe for snake oil salesmen. And boy have they taken advantage of it.” in the blog post, How to spot a social media snake oil salesman. Look for established agencies who have worked with companies like yours and have a proven track record of business success. Just because they have a Facebook page and 1000 Twitter followers, it does not mean they are experts. The bottom line is demonstrable business success for their clients.

8. Keep exploring: Experiment in uncharted waters, but remember where the best treasures are buried. The 80 / 20 rule of proven methods to experimentation applies.

Maintaining a strategic and balanced approach to your marketing program is an important step in helping you find treasure where others have failed. Understanding the relationship between social media with other tactics in your portfolio will help you get there faster, and use fewer resources along the away. Keep your hand on the helm and your eyes on the horizon and you’ll reach your destination safely.

Originally posted on the AMA Boston Blog September 1, 2009

8 Tips for Surviving the Social Media Treasure Hunt 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

1. Create a group for your event: You can invite people to join your group, start discussions around the event or event-related topics, give important news updates to your audiences or promote your event to other groups.

2. Add the event to the Events application: This is an easy one. List your event so your audiences can find out about it.

3. Use the Slideshare, Google Presentation or Box.net applications to post relevant event presentations and other content: There is no better way to give your event a long tail and extend the return on investment than by sharing content after the event. Presentation sharing is an often overlooked channel for content distribution.

4. Use the Wordpress or BlogLink application to promote event blogs: If your event blogs are on Wordpress or TypepPad, this is a great way to integrate your thought leadership into your Linkedin presence ~ or to drive traffic to your event site. This will also help improve your event SEO results.

5. Use the Company Buzz application to promote the event: This is basically a Twitter Feed. This gives you another opportunity to link all of your social media content together and help your audience participate in everything that’s going on around your event.

6.  Use Huddle Workspaces to manage event logistics with your community: This simple but powerful tool allows you to coordinate just about everything with your teams.

7. Use Linkedin Polls to survey your audience: Linkedin polls are a really easy way to ask simple questions to your audiences, or start some interesting conversations to engage with your communities.

8. Use the TripIt application to coordinate travel schedules: This can be very useful for understanding what’s happening with your team, speakers, exhibitors, attendees, etc.

9. Purchase advertising tiles from Linkedin to promote the event: Linkedin advertising is highly targeted based on user profiles. This is a great way to get your event promoted to the specific audiences you want to reach.

10.  Use Advanced Search to identify attendees, speakers, exhibitors, analysts, press, media, partners, or other interested parties for events: Wow! Instead of audiences searching for relevant content, imagine having relevant content finding them! Search is an amazing tool that is often overlooked in the event marketing community as a way to drive audiences.

11. Use the Answers section to post and answer relevant questions around the event: Compelling questions can drive engagement and conversations between your brand and your audiences as well as build “community” around certain subject matter. This is a great way to participate in the conversation.  You can also search answers to find out who might be most interested in learning more about your event.

12. Use Status updates to promote the event: Another easy one. Post relevant information daily on what’s happening around the event.

13. Create “Linkedin Networking Sessions” at your events: Take Linkedin off line! Encourage attendees to meet face-to-face at the event and beyond. You can also invite other related Linkedin groups to participate in the live meet-ups.

Linkedin is so much more than a digital Rolodex. With the right integration into your event program, it can be a very powerful tool. I encourage you to experiment with all the functionality and find out what tools work best for you. If you discover something interesting, please share!

13 Ways Linkedin Supports Event Marketing is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

Once again, this study was conducted by The Center for Exhibition Industry Research and the Exhibition Research Foundation in partnership with George P. Johnson. 287 Corporate Brand and Exhibition Management senior-level professionals took the survey on how they are currently integrating digital marketing into their event programs.

Below are these findings, what they mean and what you can do about them.

Budget Related to Digital Marketing

When purchasing /selling exhibit space, what additional on-line sponsorship extensions do you purchase/sell?

Which traditional and digital sponsorship options represent the largest percentage of your exhibition/event budget?

1. Digital tactics represent only 7% of budget for Exhibition Management and 9% for Corporate Brand Marketers. Exhibition Management is offering more digital services than Corporate Brand marketers are buying. E-Mail marketing / advertising represents the largest percentage of the exhibition / event budget.

What does it mean? Exhibition marketers are drivers of digital adoption. This is especially true with web 2.0 technologies. However, some of these services are not viewed as valuable by brand marketers. There is a misalignment of the value chain to demand.

What can you do about it? Some of this is healthy and will drive further adoption of digital marketing. Shift focus from offering legacy technologies which have not proven to be as valuable toward more forward leaning opportunities (web 2.0, etc.).

Do you have methods in place to measure the outcome or results of your digital marketing efforts in exhibition marketing?

Can you quantify how your organization is benefiting from the use of virtual media?

Which tools do you use to measure the effectiveness of your exhibition sponsorship investments/digital marketing efforts?

2. Only half of respondents measure the impact of their digital marketing efforts. Despite increasing use of digital and virtual media, less than half of respondents can quantify how it is benefiting their organizations. Measurements are largely based exhibition sponsorship, sales reports and post show surveys.

What does it mean? Measurement is critical in understanding and improving program performance and ROI. By not measuring their programs, event marketers are missing out on a huge opportunity to increase the efficiency and efficacy of their programs. Also, deployment of inappropriate measurement tools negatively impact understanding of performance.

What can you do about it? Build a robust measurement system for both event and digital marketing efforts. Measurement should be based on objective, emphasize outcomes over outputs, and drive a culture of continuous improvement. Make sure you are using the right measurement tools to measure the right things.

Which traditional and digital sponsorship options provide the greatest ROI?

3. Sponsorships (such as keynote session and roundtable sponsorships) and speaking opportunities are seen as providing the greatest ROI followed by e-mail marketing / advertising and event signage.

What does it mean? Those opportunities which give respondents an opportunity to communicate to their audiences, drive attendance or allow for post-event follow up are seen as offering the highest value. The most interesting finding here was event signage was seen as being more valuable than event websites, social media or mobile marketing. This points to a lack of understanding of the potential impact of these technologies in the event space.

What can you do about it? Ensure you are investing in exhibition components that offer the highest value and return on investment. Audience generation is critical, as is post-event follow up. Any opportunity to engage in a conversation with your audiences is also highly valuable, both face-to-face (speaking opportunities) and online. Do not underestimate the power of social media and mobile marketing in the event space.

When integrating digital marketing tactics into the promotion of exhibition programs, does the effectiveness of the overall effort...?

In your view, how much of an impact do digital marketing tactics have on enhancing exhibition marketing results?

In your view, how much of an impact do digital marketing tactics have on enhancing exhibition promotion?

4. Respondents believe incorporating digital marketing tactics in their promotional programs increases their effectiveness.
65% of corporate brand marketers feel that digital affects their success somewhat. 14% feel digital makes a significant impact.
Over half of exhibition marketing respondents report that digital makes a great deal of impact on enhancing exhibition / trade show promotion.

What does it mean? Digital marketing is clearly making an impact on events. Where exhibition marketing is pushing the envelope, they see greater value in the integration of digital and face-to-face.

What can you do about it? Experimentation, adoption and measurement will lead to a greater understanding and recognition of value. Make sure your programs include all three.

This study teaches us that the integration and adoption of digital and virtual marketing tactics with face-to-face is in its infancy, however our society is increasingly engaging both in-person and online. This is accelerating exponentially. There is an organic relationship between face-to-face and and digital marketing and the impact is indeed powerful. The opportunities for brands to engage their audiences where they live, work and play are abundant, but few are taking advantage of this. Our best strategy as marketers is to recognize this and continue experimenting, learning and adopting both face-to-face and digital tactics into our marketing portfolio. We must participate in the conversation with our audiences to drive relationships based on trust, shared experiences and a mutual exchange of value.

Digital + Exhibit Marketing Insights Part 3: Budget, Measurement & ROI is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

This study surveyed 287 Corporate Brand and Exhibition Management senior-level professionals and was designed to build understanding around how respondents are currently integrating digital marketing into their event programs.

There were several interesting findings in the report. Through this and other posts, I’ll share these findings, what they mean and what you can do about them.

Which digital marketing tactics do you use?

1.    E-mail marketing / advertising, online advertising and websites / microsites are the digital tactics most used by event marketers.

What does it mean?  Event marketers are primarily integrating web 1.0 technologies into their programs.

What can you do about it?  Events are the original social media. Embrace and experiment with web 2.0 technologies to drive engagement, interactivity, immersion, internalization, enhancement and extension. For more information see this post.

How often do you integrate digital marketing tactics in the promotion of your events?

2.  Exhibition marketing respondents appear to use digital marketing tactics more frequently and prominently than corporate brand marketers.

What does it mean?  Exhibition marketers often need to stay ahead of the curve to provide value-added services to attract and retain their target audiences and provide brands the right opportunities to reach these audiences as part of their business model.

What can you do about it?  Audiences interact with brands both online and face-to-face. Together, face-to-face and digital marketing are a potent combination that can deeply engage audiences where they live, work and play and build real, long-term relationships. Ensure your plan includes an appropriate mix of both kinds of tactics.

At what point in the lifecycle of a live event do you use digital media?

3.  The emphasis on using digital marketing tactics is pre event. Post event usage is also significant. Digital media is primarily used as a means to extend reach, improve audience engagement brand perception.

What does it mean?  It appears digital marketing is primarily used as an event awareness and audience generation tool, and secondly as a follow-up tool. Interestingly, digital media is less used during the event.

What can you do about it?  Its important to have a strategic approach toward integrating digital media into an event plan -  not just before and after the event, but throughout the experience. Digital media can be used for both on and off-floor engagement and can enhance the audience experience.

Looking forward, do you think the importance of digital marketing when promoting events will…?

4.  The importance of digital marketing in the event world is increasing and will continue to grow.

What does it mean?  Event marketers will follow suit and the continued adoption of web 2.0 technologies will become more prevalent in the event marketing mix. Also be watchful of how mobile marketing plays an increased role in event marketing.

What can you do about it?  Continue experimenting (in moderation) with and integrating social media tactics into event marketing programs to drive community engagement at all levels. Consider integrating mobile marketing campaigns more deeply into the event experience to be ahead of the curve.

Overall, the organic integration of digital media with event marketing continues to grow. As marketers its important for us to recognize this, experiment with and drive a greater understanding of the best uses of digital media in the event space. If you discover something that works for you, please share to help build greater community knowledge. As always please feel free to comment with thoughts or questions.

Look for part 2 of this post where I’ll discuss Virtual Media within the next couple of weeks (I’m on vacation next week).

Cheers!

Digital + Exhibit Marketing Insights Part 1: Digital Media is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0