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

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

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

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

1. Make sure your event has clear objectives. You’d be surprised at major corporations who participate in events because “they always have” or “our competition is there”. Unfortunately, these are not sound business reasons for participation and there is often a great deal of wasted money and resources that go into events that yield no return as a result. Its important to have a business purpose to participate in an event, as well as established objectives. Remember objectives should be SMART.

Specific – Be specific about what you want to achieve as a result of the event.
Measurable – You should be able to measure performance against objectives.
Achievable – Ensure your objectives are achievable and attainable.
Realistic – You should have enough of the right resources to realistically achieve your objectives.
Time-bound – Objectives should be accomplished within a predetermined time limit.

An example would look something like this: “We will go to XYZ event to make 320 contacts which we will qualify into 100 leads by October 22, 2009.”

Its OK to have multiple objectives for a single event, but make sure you have a primary objective, and not many more to ensure you are geared for success. The key here is focus.

2. Create experiences designed to meet your objectives. Setting objectives is the easy part, doing the right things to accomplish them is another. Years ago I had a client who wanted to drive brand awareness with new prospects. This is a fine objective (although not SMART) however, they started by inviting only existing customers to a proprietary engagement, so there was no way to meet this particular objective. If your objective has to do with awareness, do things at your event that drive awareness. If your objective is about nurturing relationships with existing customers, do things that will engage and nurture them. One-size-fits-all events are far less successful than highly targeted, activities rich in experiences designed around objectives and audiences. An example here would be an objective like: “Drive understanding of XYZ product to 400 prospects by the end of XYZ expo.” Then, by creating an interactive, hands-on experience (perhaps a kiosk) to demonstrate features an benefits of a XYZ product to target audiences you’ve moved the needle.

3. Measure performance against your objectives. Measurement should always be based on objective, emphasize outcomes over outputs, and drive a culture of continuous improvement. If you’d like to drive sales, measure sales. If you’d like to increase awareness, survey your audiences before and after the event to see if their awareness of your company or product has increased as a result.

4. Do everything possible to generate the right audience. The most important part of any event is the audience. Its relatively easy to get an audience, but attracting the right audience is a different challenge altogether. Relying on show producers alone is fine, but their focus is to deliver as may people as possible to all sponsors and exhibitors. Its a good idea to supplement this with your own targeted activities. Use internal lists, alliances and business partners, purchased or rented media lists, social media, etc. Promote the event by communicating compelling reasons for your target audience to attend. Talk about those things which will activate their triggers and eliminate their inhibitors. What can they get at your event that they really want or need and cannot get anywhere else?

5. Follow up quickly and consistently. This is a big one. All too often, companies go into an event without a plan for how they will address leads afterwards. Have a process by which you will sort and manage hot, warm and cold leads. Establish different communications streams for each type of lead. Assign the appropriate resources to execute against this plan and make sure it happens. If a prospect is at an event looking for a solution and you do not address them, they will fill their need elsewhere.

6. Ensure there is appropriate funding for everything. Don’t run out of steam at the 80 yard line. Make sure you budget for audience generation, engagement at and around the event, follow up and measurement.

7. Invest in activities that offer the highest ROI. No one ever bought a multimillion dollar solution because of a sign at an event. Branded conference bags, toys, pens, t-shirts, etc. do not convince people to buy your product (unless that is what you are selling.) Once you have the right audience at an event, the most powerful motivators are those things that drive engagement with that audience. Conversations, case studies, networking, speaking, interactive workshops are great ways to engage and interact with your audiences. Invest in these things first.

8. Make your event part of a 360 approach. Remember, it takes more than one date to win the girl. The same goes with business relationships. Every event is important, but what’s more important is how you use that event in the overall marketing mix to court your suspects, prospects and customers. It is this cadence of touches and parts of the conversation which drive deeper, more meaningful relationships.

Eight Common Event Marketing Mistakes 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