Posts Tagged Social Media Strategy
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Once again, a BIG thank you to all who attended my presentation at the CSEME 09 show. As promised, I’ve provided some follow up notes to help you get started in social media. I encourage you to leave comments (below) and let me know what you thought of the presentation. I will follow in the next few days with a slideshow of the full presentation. Enjoy!
The NEW Way to Win Friends & Influence People (Notes Only)
View more presentations from ready2spark.
Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
President – ISES Toronto
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Tags: Social Media Strategy
1. Word of mouse – It’s simple. Events become viral when people want to talk about them. So figure out what makes your event unique and what will get people talking about it. Once you’ve figured this out, the rest is gravy (well…kind of).
2. Find your target – Think about what you’re trying to achieve. Are you hoping the media will pick up the story? Do you want to engage potential attendees? Or, do you want to provide your existing attendees with unique ways to stay in touch with one another? The possibilities with social media are endless. Social media can be time consuming, so the keys to a good strategy are clearly understanding what you want to achieve and focusing your efforts on the sites that will garner you the highest rate of return.
3. Create your home – Why just create a website for your event when you can create a blog to provide constant updates and promote dialogue or a Facebook page to encourage guests to upload their own photos / videos, provide comments and share with their friends. After all, that’s the beauty of social media. By allowing people to participate in shaping your event, you in turn get people excited about your event…and entice them to keep coming back to your home to add content.
4. Cast your net – There are many tools available to event professionals to help you spread the word: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, EventPeeps, Youtube, Flickr and the list goes on. Find out where your target influencers live and craft unique and engaging ways to communicate your event to as many people within your target as possible. Bloggers are always looking for great content to share with their readers. Use them to help spread a word about your event (just remember, to concentrate your message on ideas that will engage your target, not simply ‘selling your event’). Once you’ve created your home, share it with your ‘followers’ and encourage them to share it with theirs.
5. Keep feeding the fish – So, now you’ve got a whole bunch of people following your event. Now what? Find ways to keep them engaged. For example…Create contests. Provide valuable updates. Encourage guests to dialogue with one another. If you’re going to use sites like Youtube, Flickr or Twitter, tell people what keywords to use so that others (and you) can easily find their movies, images and tweets. Find ways to keep bringing this information back to your home (i.e. your website, your blog or your Facebook page) – this serves to keep your site interesting and helps your target find all the information they need in one source.
6. Identify your influencers – Much like using bloggers to help spread your message, you can use attendees to do the same. Remember, you may have 100 event followers, but your followers each have their own followers (and so on). Identify potential influencers and ask them to talk about your event. One of the best ways to do this is via Twitter. Have them tweet about your event leading up to the big day by providing them with snippets of ‘behind the scenes’ info. And, get them to tweet about the event while they’re there. This helps to spread the word about your event and also helps to create desire with those who can’t attend.
7. Keep it going – Once the event is done, your job is not. Social media is fantastic for garnering feedback from attendees. Track social media sites to find out what was said about the event. Collect the images and videos that your attendees took and compile everything you want to share on your website, blog or event page.
8. Evaluate – Unfortunately this part of the process is often overlooked. Don’t forget to evaluate what worked and what didn’t and use this learning for your next event.
Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network
Hire Lara to Build Your Business
Hire Lara to Speak
Subscribe to our Newsletter
The best way to get in touch with me is hello@ready2spark.com
Tags: Social Media Strategy
I had such a wonderful time speaking at Carol Moxam’s Special Event Bootcamp last Thursday at Ryerson University. It was a sold out event filled with fantastic event professionals looking to better understand how social media can be integrated into their events as well as their businesses. The two other panelists were Julian Brass of Notable TV and Ekaterina Tsvetkova of Motum B2B. Each brought a unique perspective on this {incredibly vast} subject. Thank you to all who came out and for your amazing questions. I hope to see you all online very soon!
Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network
Hire Lara to Build Your Business
Hire Lara to Speak
Subscribe to our Newsletter
The best way to get in touch with me is hello@ready2spark.com
Tags: Social Media Strategy
I’ve often been asked how I author a blog while working a full time job. My answer has always been that you make time for what’s important to you and I see my blog as an investment. That’s an important word…investment. It assumes that you put in time to get something in return. And boy have I seen returns. From new clients to speaking & writing opportunities to personal and business brand awareness (not to mention the amazing people I’ve connected with).
However, tonight, as I come off of a full day out of the office, prepare to write a massive proposal, know that I have a 700 word story to submit to a magazine, finish some blog research, write this blog post, AND know that I desperately need to start creating my social media presentation, the words ‘time’ and ‘management’ loom like a rain cloud over my head.
Experience tells me that one of the best things I can do for myself right now is create a schedule. And for those of you who find it difficult to manage social media and your business and personal lives, I’ve found a few resources to help:
. Creating a social media schedule by Duct Tape Marketing includes a great example of how the author manages his multiple social media outlets.
. this To-Do List article by Mind Tools provides tips on how to create a useful list and also provides a free template.
. True You Marketing published a great post on how to get things done on Twitter. Some good tools and processes.
Care to share your time management tools?…please leave a comment.
Now stop reading this blog post and do something useful ;-)
Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
. Befriend me at Events Network
Hire Lara to Build Your Business
Hire Lara to Speak
Subscribe to our Newsletter
The best way to get in touch with me is hello@ready2spark.com
The act of networking has shifted. Face-to-face has been augmented and, in some cases, replaced with online networking. This new form of making connections has allowed people to stretch their tentacles globally and connect with a much larger pool of people at breakneck speed. Sites like Facebook, Myspace, Flickr and Twitter have evolved from social sites into social + business sites. And the lines between business and pleasure have become more blurred than ever. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, but as a result having a clear strategy is more important than ever.
The social networking pitfall that a lot of people fall into is they reach out and connect to potential business prospects and long-lost friends alike. They publicly reminisce about the day they got drunk and passed out behind their school, all the while forgetting that their business prospect is privy to those very same conversations. A perfectly devastating example of this is the recently circulated Twitter faux pas which shows what can happen when you don’t think about who’s listening before you post.
The best ways to avoid these pitfalls is to:
. have a clear strategy – what are you trying to achieve with social media, who is your target, what is the purpose behind your messaging? Stay true to this strategy.
. choose carefully – the scary thing about social media is it has a life of its own. Once you post something it can be quoted by someone else, picked up by another site or simply printed out. The second you’ve pressed send, you’ve lost control of your message. So choose your messages carefully.
. offer value – social media is a new way to make connections, build a brand and drive awareness. The best way to achieve success is to be unselfish. Focus on value for your target and your efforts will be rewarded.
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Cartoon via Gapingvoid
Lara McCulloch-Carter
Author of the Special Event blog ready2spark
Director of Marketing – Regal Tent Productions
President – ISES Toronto
. Follow me on Twitter
. Connect with me on LinkedIn
. Become my Peep at EventPeeps
Hire Lara to Build Your Business
Hire Lara to Speak
Subscribe to our Newsletter
The best way to get in touch with me is hello@ready2spark.com
