How beautiful would these Norberto Moretti Vasovolante (left) glass teardrops look as a backdrop or wall divider. You can fill them with virtually anything – just get creative. And his bud vases (right) are divine.

Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
Past-President – ISES Toronto
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I love Sydney-based Have You Met Miss Jones. Originally specializing in selling white bone china products they’ve expanded to include clay pottery, capiz shell, metal and woodwork. I adore their cute button plates – although not ideal for sauces, they look magnificent!

Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
Past-President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network

I participated last week in #blogchat, which was moderated by @LeeOdden, CEO of TopRank. There was a lot of dialogue about SEO (search engine optimization) and the importance of employing an SEO strategy to build blog traffic.

the . rule
One common strategy is to investigate popular keywords, create a list of them and use them frequently in your blog posts. Although there’s no defined rule of thumb, it’s common to use the top keyword in the title, description, metatags and then at least 3-4 times in the text (in a post that has a 500-600 word count). AKA Keyword stuffing. Not only does this strategy sound like a lot of work, but it can lead to you sacrificing the quality of your content, the style of your writing and the personality that is unique to you. In my opinion, focusing the content of your website around most commonly used keywords, although great for achieving high rankings on Google, is counter intuitive to building a strong and unique brand.

Yes, it would be wildly unfulfilling to invest hours every week into writing your blog posts if no one was to read them. Otherwise, you’d just keep a journal. I understand that it’s important to get noticed. But it’s more important to get noticed by the right people.

getting noticed . by the right people
My approach has always been to be less concerned with numbers and more concerned with creating quality readers. There are a few things I’ve done over time to help me get there…

I subscribe to a wonderful design magazine called AZURE. I read it strictly for the pictures :) It’s brimming with the latest ideas from the design and architecture worlds…and this month’s issue didn’t disappoint. It featured ‘10 designers who are shaping the future‘ and 2 of them are certain to touch our world of meetings and events.

1. Ibrahim Elhayawan & Jim Dodson – Mobile Performance Venue, Norway

David Edwards’ creation was actually a space in France called Le Laboratoire. His idea was to match creative artists with prominent scientists – a merging of form and function. Many ideas have come out of those four walls. One of which, Le Whif, I blogged about some time back. The idea behind this product is to use gastronomic scent to leave the taste of chocolate in the taster’s mouth…without the guilt (I could have used that tonight before I polished off a bag of Maltesers). Although the jury is out as to whether this product has any type of longevity, there’s no denying that the concept behind the product is a winner. Hopefully this will spawn many successful, new ideas.

Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
Past-President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network

1. Join the conversation
Back when I started eventprofs’ weekly chats, there were only a small handful of organized Twitter discussions…now there are over 55, and counting! Each chat is highly targeted to a segment of the Twitter population. For example, there are chats for fathers, association managers, caterers, feminists…and yes, even Anthropology in Product Management! They encourage like-minded people to come together at set dates & times to chat about topics relevant to them. It’s an incredible opportunity to leverage Twitter for learning, networking and crowdsourcing.
@spkrinteractive has created a fantastic Google Doc that tracks these chats and when they’re held – click this link to see the full listing.
For more information on the #eventprofs chat, click here.

2. Find tribemates
As mentioned above, hashtags naturally attract like-minded people. Whether they’ve been created to monitor an event, talk about a subject or for an organized chat, they create a tribe of followers who want to learn more about the subject. What better way to expand your tribe than to follow those who follow a hashtag you monitor. There are a few tools that help you find your tribemates: Wefollow and Twibes and Twubs are three of the more popular sites.

3. Send a highly-targeted message
OK – so we’re beginning to form a picture of like-minded tribemates. People who care enough about a topic or event to follow it. This can prove to be a fantastic opportunity to send a highly-targeted message. HOWEVER…the idea is not to use a hashtag as a broadcasting tool to spam people or to blatantly sell your products or services. After all, the common sense rules of social media still apply – engage, add value and be relevant. A great example of how not to use a hashtag is Habitat UK’s bad decision to use top trending hashtags to promote their spring collection and sale. A decision that still haunts them today. Contrary to Habitat’s strategy, there are many wonderful examples of how people have used hashtags successfully to send a targeted message. Some examples include: sharing a job opportunity, providing your perspective on a hot industry/subject topic, promoting a relevant event, sharing a product or service promotion valuable to the tribe, and distributing compelling news.

4. Find archived information
Think about hashtags like files within a filing cabinet. There are millions of conversations happening on Twitter. Using a hashtag is kind of like selecting conversations on a specific topic and putting them in a file. That file can be looked at by anyone who wants to see it. A popular way of tracking a hashtag longterm is to use TweetDeck. Simply click the magnifying glass icon
Earlier I mentioned one of my favorite tools to track and manage hashtags, What The Hashtag. This site also allows you to see who the top contributors were to the hashtag, how many tweets there were, how many people used the hashtag (and many more stats). The beauty of knowing the top contributors is that these are usually the segment’s influencers. Why is this important? Influencers are critical to helping spread a message. They’re highly connected and valued for the content they tweet…which means that when they tweet, people tend to listen. Getting a message in their hands, that strikes a chord with them, can lead to the message being re-tweeted and spread through the tribe and beyond.

Many of you have asked for a copy of our Business Butterflies deck, which was presented at ISES EventWorld 2009. On behalf of the Business Butterflies, I’m proud to share it below! If you’d like to see the archive of the livestream, please click this Twebevent link.

Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
Past-President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network

Passion is an incredibly important thing to have when you author a blog. A blog requires an immense amount of dedication – to find unique stories, create great content, make it look visually appealing and unique. Without passion you could be one of the 95% of blogs that are abandoned. I’m proud that my blog has been going strong for almost 3 years now…and if you know me, you know that’s no small feat. I can only attribute this to the fact that my blog feels a heck of a lot more like play than work.

Now if I followed what many experts say about authoring a blog, I should have developed a schedule to ‘train’ my readers when to expect new content. But the word schedule sends ripples of convulsion through my body. Why? Because it takes away the magic that happens when thoughts and ideas form organically. My best thoughts come to me when I’m driving in the car, taking a shower or settling down to a good night’s sleep…when my mind shifts from overdrive into neutral. Creating a schedule for blogging would force me to come up with content, even when I’m not feeling very inspiring. And that, my friends, would equal a pretty boring blog. After all, what is a blog about inspiration without inspiring thoughts?

Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
Past-President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network