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

I offer that although there are similarities and the two often complement each other, they are fundamentally different.

Simply stated, in this context an event  is a gathering of people at a predetermined place and time for the purpose of exploring and sharing information that is of common interest. There are several different types of events, ranging from large tradeshows and conferences, to panel discussions, networking meetings and intimate proprietary engagements. Each event type has a purpose in the sales and marketing cycle – a topic which I’ll discuss in a future post. But is an event in itself an experience?

A brand experience can be as complex as a visit to Disneyworld, or as simple as a discussion with a customer service representative over the phone. We all have experiences every day. Some are positive, some are negative, but few are designed effectively.

An effective experience engages all senses. It activates the emotional and rational triggers within us and motivates us. A typical event marketing program will employ some experiential tactics, but few completely. Here are seven ideas that will help you integrate powerful brand experiences into your event marketing program.

1.  Start with the audience. In order to design an effective experience or series of experiences, its important to understand your audience first. What are their emotional and rational triggers and inhibitors? What do they need to feel and understand in order to act on your objectives? Make sure your experience puts your audience in a position of power and confidence. After all, its all about them, not about you or your products. Although you are creating an experience for the masses, its important you drive a sense of intimacy with each and ever member of the audience. Make it as personal as possible. This foundation can be used not only in experience design, but in product development, sales process, customer service training and beyond.

2.  Know your objective. Event marketers often get trapped in their own repetitive cycle of events. Year-over-year they build and plan the same events, perhaps swapping out products and messaging from time-to-time. Its important to step back and examine the business, marketing and sales objective of your program, and then the contribution of each event tactic to that program. Establishing appropriate objectives for your event is the easy part. Sticking to these objectives and designing unique experiences which truly deliver against these goals is often the challenge. Focus on as few objectives as possible. This will ensure you invest time, budget and resources appropriately to drive success.

3.  Design the experience to be immersive with all six senses in mind. Yes, I said six. The sixth being rational intuition. If it all comes together, your attendees will feel and think they “belong”.  Its important your experience is as immersive as possible, surrounding attendees from all sides and use external influencers to effect internal responses. Event marketers often focus on the visual, sometimes the audible and seldom any of the other senses. Here are some thoughts on engaging the senses.

• Sight: Make it compelling: exciting video,vivid photography, appropriate colors and graphics all play a part.

• Sound: The volume is often just as important as the audible content itself. Remember to use ambience and silence to your advantage. These can be powerful engagers or distractors.

• Touch: Give your attendees something to touch, and to engage with. Think about texture. Holding something in their hand has been proven to drive value perception and ownership. Also don’t forget about temperature or air quality. At a tradeshow even plush carpet with a thick pad creates a welcome retreat for foot-weary business infantry. In speaking sessions, make seating comfortable, but not too comfortable.

• Smell: Site inspections are important. If a hotel conference room has a mold or mildew problem, this can detract from the experience. The same goes for strong cleaning products. Plan for the aroma of attendees. Ambient smell can be just as distracting as ambient sound.

• Taste: Especially important for hospitality settings. Make sure the food and drink is of the highest quality possible.

4.  Don’t forget about interaction. Interaction with things, as well as people. Arguably, the most important part of any experience is the people present and audience interaction with those people. Human interaction can make or break an attendee’s experience. Be professional, be engaging, be friendly, and most of all, be human. This is what will build real long term brand relationships.

5.  Tell a Story. In my earlier post Storytelling in Social Media and Events, I described some ideas on how to incorporate effective storytelling as a tool to engage and interact with audiences on both an emotional and rational level. You can tell a story at a single event or across several tactics. Success will be determined by your audience, your message and the way in which the story is told.

6.  Stay on brand. Do not sacrifice your brand intent to create an experience. Ensure the type, quality and tonality of your experience reflects well against your brand personality. Anything else will hinder audience engagement and long-term retention of message and brand association with the experience.

7.  Be authentic. Authenticity is critical in driving trust with your audiences. Ensure your experiences are genuine, authentic and true. Consider adopting a case study approach within your experiences driven by customers, partners, etc. to further empower authenticity.

Is your event an experience? These are just some guiding principles to get started. As marketers, we should walk around in the shoes of our audiences as often as possible to build effective and relevant experiences both face-to-face and virtually. As always, if you have other ideas, please share!

Are You Experienced? Seven Ideas for Engaging Your Audience is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0

For marketers it can be a double-edged sword. You want to partner with artists who your audiences like, while staying true to your brand. Not to mention, members of your team and executives alike may have different opinions on who the right artist is to represent your company. Unfortunately, these decisions are all-to-often wrought with personal preferences, and sometimes made without fully evaluating opportunities against business objectives which can lead to failure in generating Return on Investment.

Here are a few thoughts to help you balance the the emotion with rational criteria as you play musical chairs with artists, sponsorships and program activation.

Audience: Do the demographics of the artist’s audience match your brands target audience? Tools like NPD music watch can help you understand what music consumers buy, where, and why they buy. This database includes market share by specific artists, genres, companies, labels, and titles as well as consumer behavior, attitudes, and demographics.

Brand Alignment: What are the key attributes of your brand? What are the attributes of the artist? What is the subject matter of their songs? Determine which elements align, and which do not. The fit should be as natural and organic as possible. The story should not feel forced. If there are any showstoppers, the artist can be easily removed from consideration, if there are elements that are not detrimental to your brand, but not necessarily aligned, that’s OK. A perfect match is extremely rare. If you can get a 70% alignment, you’re doing very well.

Reach and Star Power: What is Marketing Evaluation’s Q Score for the artist? What is the magnitude of the artists tour? How are recent music sales? How active is their fan base? All of these factors can be used to determine the opportunity of your brand along with the artist to make an impact on your target audiences.

Artist and Agent Flexibility: Is there an opportunity for your brand to truly leverage the artist as a brand advocate? Can you negotiate the right deal points to activate your sponsorship? Often the more prominent the artist, the less flexibility you have. Less prominent artists may entertain more options and view the relationship with your brand as more of a partnership where there is a mutual exchange of value. Marketers have a balancing act here, and finding the right balance can make or break the success of your sponsorship.

Cost: This is a huge factor. Even with the largest investment, many ‘A’ list artists will make more money selling merchandise during a few concerts, than you have to provide in sponsorship dollars for an entire program. Keep this in mind when trying to negotiate deal points with each artist and understand every request and every negotiated point is significant. Prioritize the elements which are critical to the success of your program and ensure these are included in the deal.

Burt Helm and Ronald Grover write in their post, BTW Celebrity Endorsers Have to Work Harder “With marketers trying to squeeze more out of every dollar, celebrity endorsers are being asked to do more than just pose beside a product.” These are interesting times in the music industry and brands offer a compelling solution to artists who are looking to reach broader audiences, sell more music or loosen the grasp of labels on the industry and their income. Whether its a presenting sponsorship deal, an endorsement or secondary sponsorship, brands can do well if they take a strategic approach to their entertainment marketing program. Remember entertainment marketing is not just about the music, its about the marketing. Identifying and exploiting an organic fit between your brand and an artist is no easy task. If done well, it can foster a mutually beneficial partnership and relationship that can drive demonstrable business success for both artist and brand alike and add value to your audiences.

Originally published on AMA Boston Blog, September 15, 2009.

Entertainment Marketing: Its Not Just About The Music is a post from: Experiential Marketing 2.0