I’ve had the pleasure of representing Classic Exhibits, based in Portland, Oregon, for several years. They produce great products and work diligently with customers and end users to give excellent value. They’ve exhibited at Exhibitor in Las Vegas for years, showing off great new exhibits that lead the industry.
This year could be different. When I got wind of their exhibit this year, I just had to investigate. After all, that’s what I do.
I’ve been fooling around for a couple of weeks now with Pinterest, the social media sharing site that has been modestly booming in the online world. In fact, a recent Mashable.com article indicated that Pinterest is driving more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined!
This got my attention, so I had to check it out.
So how does it work, and how might you use it for event, conference and tradeshow marketing?
Start by creating a ‘board’ which is basically a digital bulletin board where you can share images and videos (Pinterest is driven by images, not text and plain links). Then you can curate those boards by adding multi-media content.
Let’s say you start a board on ‘tradeshows I love’. You could even put a date on it, such as ‘2012 tradeshows’ and then post photos of shows you attend during the year. Or you could create a board for just one show that your company attends and post several photos.
Pinterest uses the same ‘follow’ protocol that Twitter now Facebook use. You can simply follow someone to see their boards, which show up on your browser mixed in with dozens of other boards, with the most recent posts at the top.
If you install a browser extension, such as the one use by Chrome, you can easily ‘pin’ an article with an image on your Pinterest board.
When you sign up for Pinterest you can connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts along with your personal website. You can choose to share your pins across your network if you choose. You can create ‘like’ lists, and you can also mention users you follow by putting an “@” in front of their name, just like Twitter.
In fact, by using protocols that are found on other social media platforms, the learning curve on Pinterest is very short and not steep. Which makes it easy to learn and easy to share by quickly pinning images.
Selling Product
By adding a $ or £ to your Pin description, you can post items for sale. I’ve read that this is very popular on Pinterest and is moving a good amount of product, both digital and physical. Just include the link to your product page along with the $ or £ sign. Don’t forget to remove the pin if you sell out!
Of course, Pinterest is mobile (the app is free) and you can easily take a photo you’re your Smart phone and upload it quickly.
There are many social networks that try and get our attention. Pinterest may be doing a better job than most and is probably worth paying attention to.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the release of my tradeshow industry colleague’s book “Build a Better Trade Show Image.”Marlys Arnold is marking the anniversary of her book with a promotion that not only should raise the awareness level of the book, but give you a chance to grab some pretty nice goodies.
It’s a week-long gift-fest, starting on February 19th. Several vendors are chiming in with free offerings as a way to promote the book and to enhance networking.
Marlys Arnold is a trade show marketing strategist and has worked with exhibitors and show managers in all kinds of industries, including some of the largest shows in the U.S. Her book is a tradeshow education that any event marketer should have!
Plan on getting in on the party – it’s easy, just sign up for daily emails for the week of February 19-25 that list the various gifts along with some unannounced special offers.
LinkedIn: Hang out on the show’s group page and join discussions. Ask and answer questions. Lightly reach out to people – which means no sales pitches – and look to learn booth numbers from exhibitors, sessions they’ll attend and other information. Reach out to speakers if they’re someone you’d like to connect with.
Twitter: find the #hashtag and spend time leading up to the show to track the conversation about the show. Take notes. Create a spreadsheet of the booth numbers and Twitter handles of the tweeters. Then you can target the specific individual by using the @ preface to get their attention (don’t send spam – make sure it’s relevant to what they’re already talking about, or lightly introduce a new topic).
Facebook: Check the show page – most established shows have one. If not, you might at least create an event listing and invite targeted people. Scan the show page wall and chances are you’ll find a lot of people that are actively involved. Again, make a spreadsheet. Connect with them, follow or like them and if appropriate, respond to their posts with a comment or question. Post something relevant on the show wall. Make friends.
Over time you’ll find you have a large targeted social media group that recognizes you, finds you engaging and sees the cool things you do. And you earned all this by not being annoying, by not spamming, by helping out and by offering value.
Social media is great for drawing people to your event, whether you’re tweeting from your booth with a contest, posting to your Facebook page or blogging.
But using social media to help people connect while at the event is easy, too. It just takes a little thought and planning, and using the right tools.
I just signed up to attend Chris Gillebeau’s World Domination Summit in Portland this July. During the process of signing up and confirming payment, I had the option of sharing some limited personal and business information so that other like-minded people can find me and perhaps connect before the event. I presume the thinking would be is that it would lead you to want to connect in person at the site. This approach seems perfectly set-up to help keep you engaged in the event a good 175 days before it kick off, and positions you to connect with people before the event. I’m curious to see what else the organizers will do to foster connectivity in the next few months, as the event gets closer.
Another way to create engagement is to offer some sort of game or activity. SCVNGR is a game about doing challenges at places, which makes it perfectly suited for events. By checking into a series of places and doing an activity, you can earn rewards (if it’s set up that way), as well as network with other people playing the same game. By setting up some kind of reward for an activity, you encourage participation.
Involve those back at home or the office. By sharing hashtags, photos and videos – even live video streaming at chosen times – you are opening the conference or show to those who were unable to attend in person. Granted, you won’t get the same kind of engagement as you will with attendees, but it’s like offering a lifeline to ‘what’s new’ and happening’ at the event to those who aren’t attending.
Foursquare is a useful tool to share tips and comments about event speakers, exhibitors and products. It also helps people find other attendees and share tips on the best restaurants of nightclubs. And by monitoring the conversations on Foursquare and Twitter, organizers can quickly step in to address concerns, solve problems or use the comments to guide a better experience with the things that are working particularly well.
Over the past couple of months one of the the things I’ve dedicated a lot of time to is research. One element of that research was a short survey on SurveyMonkey.com, which asked 6 questions related to social media event marketing. The results helped shape the information and tools that you can find at SocialMediaEventMarketingU.com. Here’s a quick look the results.
First, a total of 77 people responded to the survey. These came from a small mailing list I have, a few clients I asked to participate and a handful of folks that clicked through from a Tweet.
Question One: Where would you consider your company’s social media event/tradeshow marketing approach to be?
Beginning: 46.1%
Intermediate: 46.1%
Advanced: 7.9%
Question Two: Who performs your company’s social media engagement?
In-House: 85.5%
Outsourced: 2.6%
Combination: 6.6%
N/A: 5.3%
Question Three: If you could strengthen one element of your social media engagement in regards to your tradeshow and event marketing, what would it be?
Making sure it actually happens at the show: 18.7%
Bringing more people to the booth during the show: 26.7%
Getting more followers and engagement on Facebook during and after shows: 17.3%
Planning and executing social media at shows, period: 24%
Other: 13.3%
Some of the “other” answers:
we don’t do trade shows yet, but I subscribe b/c I like your content!
We are B2B: getting more engagement on Twitter during/after shows
None of the above – we’ve found few customers use it as much as its hyped to be used
Be able to utilize social media without fear of bringing the federal government down on us – we sell tobacco!
Beginning a robust conversation in advance of the Expo, sustaining it through the Expo, and maintaining it in the aftermath.
getting permission to try new concepts for social media
Not having to use Facebook as it is considered to be family and personal as opposed to professional and business oriented amongst our target customers.
Getting my clients to embrace my social media ideas for them and coordinate their social media pages with complimentary technologies like bubble videos
It has been difficult in the past to work the show floor and take photos, update FB, tweet, take videos, etc. But we’re working to designate social networking as 1 person’s role at shows from now on
Getting more engagement on Twitter before, during and after the show
Question Four: In your opinion, what needs to happen at your company in the next couple of months in regards to your social media event/tradeshow marketing?
Getting started and set up: 16.4%
We’ve started, but we need to get up to speed: 16.4%
Learning more about how to more effectively engage: 59.7%
Finding a good company to outsource a lot of the nuts and bolts, strategy and planning: 0%
Creating Facebook landing pages to create more engagement: 7.5%
Other: 9.7%
“Other” responses:
no one who attends tradeshows is willing to commit to social media
Keeping people engaged on the page long-term. We capture FaceBook likes at the booth. We give away all of our promotions for the booth on Facebook. So the early engagement is great, but it is the long term that concerns me. How do we build a community.
Don’t know!
providing our agency more content-blogs-promotions etc.
Incorporating more fun videos into the program over the next year.
We are working on things, some of the shows we attend are not so big on social media yet, so we’re waiting for them to catch up. We still need to work on better integration with other marketing, website, etc.
Question 5: What is your position at the company in regards to social media engagement?
Boss: I tell people what to do: 46.3%
Worker Bee: I get involved regularly with our social media: 34.3%
Department Head: I help direct traffic
Other: 19.4%
“Other” response:
Marketing director
all of the above. we are a very small company.
only one here, so I do it all.
One armed paper hanger! The company is the two partners, two part timers, and an on-call tech.
Also, I’m an influencer and recommender
None, sadly. Too many federal regulations restricting our use of social media (as well as our belief in not marketing to anyone under the age of 21 and how does one restrict that?)
Some things catch my eye from this small survey. First, it appears that most of the respondents are from quite small companies – perhaps fewer than half a dozen people.
Second, it’s obvious that many of the respondents are still trying to figure out what to do with social media, with very few being in the advanced stage.
Third, almost 2/3 (59.4%) are interested in learning about how to use tools and techniques to engage in social media in their event marketing.
Fourth, almost no one actually outsources anything. My hunch is that for these people, it’s either too early in the process to outsource, or it’s too expensive. Or they’re just not interested in it for other reasons.
And fifth, based on a handful of the ‘other’ comments, it appears that many of the businesses and customers that tradeshow marketers are trying to connect with are also struggling with social media, and many are simply not involved. This doesn’t surprise me at all – a recent client of ours really didn’t want anything to so with social media: ‘it’s kid’s stuff’ as they put it, so the marketing directer hired us anyway to do nothing more than social media research – listening to the conversation going on in the blogosphere and Twitter and Facebook. There was a ton of conversation going on there, disproving the notion that it’s just ‘kids’s stuff,’ and we turned up quite a few useful nuggets for him.
As much as I love social media and believe in its effectiveness to reach people and bring them together for a thousand and one purposes, when you’re doing tradeshow marketing, it can’t be your only marketing strategy.
In other words, don’t become too enamored with social media. Use it as another marketing arrow in your quiver.
Continue to use (or enhance your use of) other marketing tactics:
show sponsorships
direct marketing
email marketing
partnerships
public relations
pre-show promotions
contests
personal invitations
in-booth demonstrations
seminars and presentations
effective follow-up
tradeshow staff training
(what else can you add?)
Find ways to tie your social media efforts into these other more traditional tradeshow marketing tools. Blog from your booth. Shoot video at the show and post to YouTube and Facebook. Tweet about your in-booth guests, demos and contests to drive traffic. Social media can be quite effective at your tradeshow – but when used in conjunction with other methods, the combination can be deadly – to your competition.
It’s rare, but not unheard of, for social media to backfire at the worst possible time and you’re facing the dreaded scourge of negative social media. Usually the worst possible time is when your company has a majority of its resources on site at a tradeshow. If most of your people are focused on doing demos, interacting with booth visitors and putting out a thousand little fires that seem to ignite during the show, the last thing you want is to have a blow-up on your social media platforms.
For example, let’s say you have a hot new product that is hotter than anticipated. You’ve even run out in the second day of the show and there’s no way you can fulfill demand.
Or maybe one of your employees opened their mouth to the wrong person and left a negative impression, strong enough for them to go out and tweet or post to their Facebook page.
In most cases, the negative comments usually won’t get too far, especially if you promptly respond and openly try to deal with any issues created.
But on occasion, depending on circumstances of the situation, those comments can get out of hand and go viral. So how do you prepare for such an eventuality, even if the odds are slim.
First, be aware – in a real time basis as much as possible – what’s being said about your company and products. This takes vigilance, and often means using some sort of tool that can monitor Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and others. Search for ‘social media monitoring tool’ and you’ll find plenty of good suggestions.
Second, be prepared for anything. Know how to get in front of a bad story. Be ready to respond appropriately – and make sure you respond as quickly as possible. Your Public Relations department should be ready to respond to that 3 AM call, and have the power to do so. Management has got to trust the PR department that they can craft a message that’s appropriate.
Third, don’t DO NOTHING. The worst thing is to sit on a story and wait for all departments to chime in. For instance, if you think that you need a legal opinion before responding to negative comments, chances are the story will entirely get away from you before you know it. Better to get a partial response out instead of no response at all.
Finally, don’t think that you’re immune because you have a product or service or a company that doesn’t lend itself to a firestorm of negativity. It CAN happen, and if you’ve at least talked about it and have some sort of plan in place, chances are you’ll be able to respond when needed.
The art of prognositcation is alive and well! There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, or bloggers, writers, authors, experts and consultants who bravely try and predict the future.
I’ve tried that a few times, and I’m usually so far off base that I’ve pretty much given up!
However, it’s eye-opening to see what others are predicting as far as trends in social media for the new year.
David Armano at the Harvard Business Review looks at number of areas, including the convergence of how social media will further integrate into ‘real life,’ showing how companies are using social media in almost automatic fashion to help participants post to their social media accounts to share what they’re doing. He elaborates on the Cult of Influence, Social TV, Social Sharing and much more.
Consultant, coach and speaker Jeff Bullas is bullish on the mobility of social media, search socialization, geo-targeting, social commerce and social gaming. Yeah, I know, I’m not into gaming on Facebook (or anywhere else for that matter), but it’s big business – and getting bigger.
Warren Knight agrees that social TV is trending bigger. He believes that social commerce will finally get serious, with reviews and recommendations carrying more weight and significance than ever.
Forbes Magazine’s Haydn Shaughnessy looks at social media from a more international perspective, touching on the growth of the ‘transmitter ecosystem,’ which has broken down barriers to creating online content:
“But another part of the story is that more channels create a larger need for content. Many millions of those people now active online are not, however, content producers. They are sharers and curators.”
Cheryl Burgess looks at 2012 trends and sees that 2/3 of all adult internet users now are using social media. As a result, businesses will increase their migration from social media to social business, trying to figure out along the way how it all works.
And finally, check out this info graphicfrom Social Commerce Today that looks at the timeline of social media and social commerce, along with some brief predictions for what’s coming in 2012.
