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

Your job is also to make money, but spend as little money along the way as possible to accomplish your business objectives. This sometimes leads to a misalignment of the value chain to demand.

It’s easy to grab platinum, gold, silver, bronze or a la carte sponsorships off the shelf. However, it’s always better to negotiate for those opportunities that provide the greatest value to your audiences and your brand. Before you go gunning for gold or break out that purchase order, here are some things you should consider to ensure sponsorship success.

Involve the Right People: This is true when selecting and planning other elements of your event as well. Remember to include sales, PR, marketing and digital teams in the discussion when selecting which sponsorship elements to take advantage of.

Base Sponsorship Decision on Objectives: When evaluating sponsorship packages, or a la carte products offered by show producers, its important to think about which items would be most effective in accomplishing your objectives first. What are those things that offer the highest value? For example, if your objective is thought leadership, speaking opportunities are best, if you are looking to nurture relationships and close sales, private hospitality and one-on-one audience engagement is strongest. Anything else is largely unnecessary and should be left on the table.

Review the Audience: This is the single most important part of any sponsorship. Will the sponsorship draw the critical mass of targeted attendees required for you to earn the right level of return on investment or objective? Make sure the demographics and psychographics of the audience are right for your brand. Its also a good idea to insist on third-party audits to validate audiences.

Ensure Content Relevance: Examine the focus of program content to audience priorities and objectives. Ensure your content aligns well to sponsorship content, otherwise your brand will appear disconnected. Will audiences find this relevant and participate? If not, you’re in the wrong place, doing the wrong things.

Negotiate Sponsorship and Custom Opportunities: Look at the strength of sponsorship offerings and the Share of Voice offered. Gauge the producer’s willingness to negotiate, provide value-added services and entertain special requests, such as speaking opportunities. If the right opportunities don’t exist, create your own! Remember producers need you more than you need them.

Leverage Business Partners: Partners provide a powerful leverage point that few take full advantage of. How many of your partners are participating? What’s their scope? How have they used the sponsorship effectively in the past? Including your partners in the planning process can create a potent sponsorship opportunity and increase return on investment. If done well, you can spend far less and get far more than going it alone.

Check Out the Competition: While competitive presence is not a critical factor, it is still something that should be examined in your decision making process. How many of your competitors are involved? What is their scope of participation? Understanding how you compare to your competitors in the audiences eyes, especially in the early stages of a sales cycle can help ensure success. Use this information to plan your sponsorship strategy and tactics.

Understand Who You Are Dealing With: Look at the stability and past performance of the producer. Do they have a track record for delivering advertised event performance? Are there official, third-party audits available? Knowing the background and longevity of the sponsorship opportunity and the producer can give you solid ground to stand on in your decision making process and in negotiations.

As Carrie Urban Kapraun from IEG states in her post, Elusive Intangibles: They Are All Around Us “..intangibles are an important part of any decision-making process and are often not given the credit, thought and time they deserve. I think it is beneficial for everyone to develop metrics and criteria to quantify and compare intangible benefits, especially in a sponsorship context…” At the end of the day sponsorship is about real value, both tangible and intangible. Understanding what will bring true value to your audiences and your brand starts with your objectives. From there its about taking a strategic approach,  examining the opportunity with diligence and negotiating from a position of power to ensure success.

Evaluating Event Sponsorships? Consider This… 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