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Balancing Tactics vs Strategy at Events: 3 Easy Tips for Staying Strategic

Kerry Skemp — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:24:53 +0000

Earlier this week, we covered event branding approaches that can give your event a personality. Branding is a strategic initiative, one that guides your event from a high level. But a lot of event planning and execution is taken up by tactical initiatives. Between booking the venue, scheduling the travel, and making reservations so your keynote speaker can go to her favorite sushi joint in your town, tactics can start to outweigh strategy very quickly. To help keep event planners on track with issues of tactics vs strategy, we offer three easy ways to avoid being stretched thin by tactics.

1. Know your mission

When you’re bogged down in details like who ordered lamb and who ordered chicken and whose name badge was printed and whose wasn’t, it can be hard to keep the big picture in mind. Throughout your event planning and execution experience, remain focused on your real goal, which is not throwing a perfect event, but bringing people together to share ideas and make connections. Don’t let tactical issues pull you in the opposite direction from your overarching strategy.

2. Keep it simple

The tools you’ll use will vary by event type, but you’re likely to have at least a few spreadsheets, as well as an effective email and calendaring system for registrations and reminders. Don’t use an event planning tool just to have one, and leverage other tools–such as your event website (especially if you create it with SnapHop!)–for your own benefit, not just that of your attendees. Instead of duplicating content in multiple locations, use your own website as the master copy of content, updating information there (and updating attendees accordingly) as soon as changes happen. This makes it so that you’re not the sole holder of information that could be useful. One hint: if your spreadsheet color-coding is so complicated that you need to look at the key every time you open the document, you might be overcomplicating things. And refer to Tip #1: engagement, not an amazing array of planning spreadsheets and tools, is your real goal.

3. Find fun partners

Event planners don’t have to do it alone! Events exist to build connections, so make some of your own as well. Find favorite vendors, trusted event planning mentors, or even helpful audience members who can play key roles in tracking details and sharing information. A great event should make everyone involved want to promote it, so don’t feel like it’s all up to you.

What helps you remain focused on strategy and value proposition, even as tactical tasks stretch you in multiple directions? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

The Best Event Branding Examples: Learn from the Experts

Kerry Skemp — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:32:36 +0000

You have a personality. Your company has a brand. Why shouldn’t your event be branded as well? And I don’t mean popping your company’s logo on the event website and materials and calling it good. I mean creating a real identity for your event–one that starts before the first planning spreadsheet and lasts after the name badges have been thrown away. Branding your event can be critical to standing out from the corporate conference competition. Here are some of the best event branding examples we’ve seen, and ideas for how you can emulate their processes (not their identity) for your own brand.

TED: Passion

TED conferences are designed to share “ideas worth spreading.” Those ideas are usually at least loosely related to Technology, Entertainment, and Design, three elements that are unquestionably and rapidly changing our world. But TED’s real differentiation from other events lies not in its subject matter but in the passion of its speakers. You’ll never yawn while watching someone fumble through Powerpoint slides at TED. Many TED talks don’t have decks at all. TED recognizes that the value of an event is in people, and reflects that value by showcasing accomplished people with passion. That’s the TED brand, which is strong enough to carry through to independent TEDx events.

If passion is the what, video is the how. TED has supported the passion of its speakers by letting them (literally) speak for themselves. Sharing videos from TED events has helped inspire people around the world, as well as make them feel part of the passion. True passion has to be open, and TED has done an exceptional job of keeping its content accessible. Try the same with your event–start with passion, not process, and see where it takes you.

SXSW: Interaction

SXSW has panels. Hundreds, even thousands of valuable talks happen constantly throughout the SXSW music, film, and interactive festivals, as well as offshoots SXSWedu and SXSW Eco. But anyone who’s been to SXSW–or even in Austin during March–knows that this event is all about the parties. It’s not partying for partying’s sake (at least not all the time), though, it’s partying to make connections with people in your industry who matter. Whether you’re a garage rock band trying to get signed to a label or a garagebound startup trying to get funding, SXSW is the place to interact with people who matter–the actual sessions are just a nice seasoning.

So how did SXSW get this way? Its unique combination of musical acts and sessions on the recording industry helped make it more than an industry conference or a music festival. By bringing together performers and management, SXSW became a distinctive forum for interactions that didn’t happen anywhere else. It doesn’t hurt that SXSW happens in Austin, one of the most fun and friendly cities in the country. Holding the event in Austin as opposed to Los Angeles or New York makes SXSW feel more like vacation and less like work, even if the deals that go down are often legendary. Think about your industry and where might be a distinctive place to meet, or identify groups that aren’t brought together often. This could help you identify your event’s brand.

Ragnar: Adventure

Perhaps lesser known than TED or SXSW, Ragnar is a popular running relay series where 12 (or sometimes 6) participants collaborate to run about 200 miles in about 24 hours. With 15 races around the country, Ragnar has quickly grown into a rite of passage for casual and dedicated runners alike. While Ragnar could have branded their relays as exclusive, competitive events meant for elite runners only, the organization instead appeals to the sense of adventure in all of us. Ragnar highlights the chance to participate in a fascinating event with friends, suggesting crazy team names and costumes, and brings everyone together with a fun afterparty. Named after an adventure-seeking Viking, Ragnar is truly a distinctive experience! While your corporate event might not involve sleepless nights, think about how you might be able to challenge attendees to try new things–this will truly create an event to remember.

After all that, do you know what your event stands for? If you can’t come up with something beyond building business, you should take some time to think twice about your motivation for having an event. If you can come up with your reason for being, start thinking about how you can use event branding to take your conference to the next level.

“Like” It or Not: Dissecting the Value of Facebook Marketing

Kerry Skemp — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:19:05 +0000

A recent Forrester report on the value of Facebook marketing found that liking a brand consistently increased the likelihood to purchase, recommend, and consider that brand. BlackBerry users who liked the brand on Facebook were 5.6 times more likely to have purchased a BlackBerry than those who didn’t “Like” the brand, while Coca-Cola Facebook fans have a 95% probability of purchasing the brand, compared with a 71% probability for the general population.

These results seem exiting, but there are at least two clear issues with this “research.” First, there’s the issue of causation. The type of person who’s willing to become a Facebook fan of a brand is likely to already be an enthusiastic fan of that brand, or at least have an interest in it. That makes the increased purchase, recommendation, and consideration likelihood a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: is the increase due to the Facebook relationship, due to the existing brand relationship itself, or due to another factor entirely? The modeling used in the study compares Facebook fans to non-fans, but can’t fully account for the brand relationship outside of the Facebook “like.” The study did find that BlackBerry owners who like the brand have an 87% probability of recommending the company to friends, compared with 44% for BlackBerry owners who haven’t clicked the magic “Like” button, but again–that’s not caused by the “like,” just indicative that those who “like” tend to be engaged supporters.

Additionally, this study focused on established brands (BlackBerry, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Best Buy) that already have widespread brand recognition, as well as a large existing pool of customers. Is it possible to say that Facebook marketing works in the same way for smaller, less-known brands? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work–in fact, it might have an even more demonstrable impact for small brands. But this study doesn’t tell us that for sure.

Finally, the top reason that consumers engage with brands online is to receive information about deals and promotions. This isn’t caused by brand affinity, it’s caused by the desire to save a buck. Brands who think their Facebook like count is benefiting them more than the cost of expensive promotions may need to reexamine their ROI. That said, the value of Facebook marketing is hard to quantify, and the data does show Facebook fans to be a beneficial group. So leverage them, don’t just tempt them.

We think events (including in-store promotions) are a perfect place to acquire Facebook fans (potentially with an existing interest in your brand) that you’ll retain over time. What’s a creative Facebook promotion you’ve seen at an event?

From Disconnect to Unconference: 4 Ways to Promote Audience Involvement at Corporate Events

Kerry Skemp — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:38:43 +0000

What’s the point of an event? As we mentioned earlier this week, events are a great way to spice up your existing marketing program and interact with people face-to-face. Typically, most corporate events are created to inform, to interact, or to sell. While most events are built at least on the premise of informing attendees, some (like, say, SXSW) are just as well (if not better) known for the social side of things, while others (Cloudforce, perhaps) focus on “selling” the benefits of a particular tool.

Even when aiming to educate, conferences can sometimes put too many restrictions in place on attendees, at the cost of creating an event that truly resonates with an audience. Event planning blog Engage 365 recently (re-)posted an overview of disconnects at nonprofit conferences specifically. While nonprofit staff are generally digital in their everyday lives, checking email on mobile devices and connecting with others on social networks, some conferences create unfortunate disconnects for their audience members by using printed (analog) materials or discouraging use of mobile devices during presentations. These disconnects can bring, at best, a yawn, or at worst, a really dissatisfying experience for people.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, “unconferences” with no set agenda allow their attendees to plan, organize, and contribute all content on the day of the event. Many tech- and business-focused events fall somewhere in between disconnected events and unconferences, with printed brochures and center-of-attention panelists on stage but at least some digital presence and mobile interaction. While conference organizers want to ensure that sessions are focused on providing quality information, they should also look to ways to involve attendees not only as questioners but also as participants. With that goal in mind, here are four ways to promote audience involvement at corporate events and conferences:

1. Creative panels

Panels are great for both audiences and presenters: they provide audiences with a well-rounded viewpoints (as well as the opportunity to ask questions), and they take pressure off individual presenters to touch on every point. They’re also, by nature, more interactive than presentations, which helps

2. Audience polls

I recently attended a continuing medical education conference where the doctors presenting used anonymous audience voting on various topics and treatment methods. It was a great way for the presenters to identify areas their audience already understood (and hence needed less coverage) versus areas that needed to be addressed in depth. It’s not a new idea, but far too few conferences take advantage of this approach.

3. Mobile audience questions

People like to participate, but not everyone is the type to stand up and walk to a microphone in front of hundreds of folks. That’s why providing an easy mobile forum for people to instantly ask anonymous questions–screened by a moderator to ensure relevance and focus–is a great way to raise new topics of conversation and ensure that multiple viewpoints are heard.

4. Curated followup

One of the tragedies of great events is poor cataloguing of content and insights they produce. Good conferences post their speakers’ presentation slides and may also offer video, but few conferences have a truly great assembly of both conference content and related coverage. SnapHop is working to close this gap with feedback aggregation modules.

Creativity and engagement–but not at the expense of organization–are at the heart of a great event. How will you aim to make your next conference more engaging?

Hippo yawn by wwarby used under Creative Commons license.

Does Your Marketing Need a Little Salt? 4 Ways to Flavor Your Existing Marketing Program

Kerry Skemp — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:12 +0000

This post is the first in BookBiz, a series on (non-business) books that have inspired us to look at business differently. Stay tuned for more, or suggest a book we should read!

I’m currently reading Mark Bitterman’s Salted, a gorgeous love letter to the savory mineral that covers more types of salt than I ever suspected might exist. From fleur de sel to sel gris to Japanese shio salt, Bitterman’s salts have the flavor bases covered. But does your business?

It’s easy to get trapped into the routine of following a marketing “recipe”: create the call to action, publish the blog post, send the email newsletter. And while these core elements will certainly nourish your marketing program, bringing in new customers and informing the old, they can start to taste a little bland after a while–both to you and to your customers.

So how can you keep your marketing efforts bursting with flavor? Here are a few ways to flavor the standard ways you market, without having to cook up new initiatives from scratch.

1. Take a bite out of mobile

We’re big proponents of mobile, but going mobile can be daunting (which is why we have a full set of mobile marketing resources for you!). That’s why it can be so great to start small. Try a mobile microsite (made with SnapHop!) for your next event, or consider an in-store promotion that provides instant discounts to consumers who text in entries.

2. Taste a new metric

I know, you’ve got a lot of metrics already. From pageviews to CPM, you may feel overwhelmed. But how do you know that your standard metrics are the right metrics? Take a week or two to track mobile visits separately from web visits, test the response to a mobile-optimized version of your email newsletter, or look at browser metrics for your ad clicks. Tweaking a metric slightly or looking at something new may shed new light on what you’re already doing, sort of like putting some pink Hawaiian alaea salt on your fish instead of Morton Salt.

3. Ask spicy questions

There’s often a lot of focus on needing to be an expert in your field. But being an expert shouldn’t preclude you from asking good questions–in fact, the more you know, the more you’ll wonder. Instead of trying to be the expert in every situation, consider asking the tough questions and inciting some real debate. It may burn a little, but the results will be worth it.

4. Face-to-face flavor

Websites, blog posts, emails, tweets, and phone calls are great, but they can never replace the full flavor of face-to-face interaction. Whether this means setting a lunch date or planning an event, make sure to sprinkle some real-world time among your virtual marketing efforts.

Which of these methods have you tried–and which did you savor most? We want to hear from you!

8 Tactics For Engaging Social Media Sweepstakes and Facebook Contests

Caleb Hodes — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:59:03 +0000

In a recent posting at Inc., Altruette founders Lee Clifford and Julie Schlosser wrote about what works and what doesn’t work in Facebook contests. In their initial social media push, the team crafted a seemingly fun and engaging contest. The idea was to promote a “Philanthropy Friday“, when users submitted videos about their favorite non-profits. As they explained, this promotion was like throwing a party where nobody showed up. In fact, it was pretty much exactly like that. The team switched it up with the next contest (called “Help a Mom in Need“) and got better results. Below, we outline the four tactics that worked for them, and provide a few extra tactics after the fold.

Social Media Sweepstakes Basics

Let’s start with the four tactics the Altruette founders mentioned:

Make it easy to get involved: instead of asking for a video, they asked folks to comment on the most charming mothers

Reward everyone: they now made a donation for every “Like” and comment received so everyone felt they were contributing

Tie the contest very closely to your brand: helping a mom in need was a natural extension to the established brand

Enlist help when you need it: when going live, the team asked some of their best brand ambassadors (including close friends, family, and customers) to help share the launch.

Taking Social Media Sweepstakes to the Next Level

To build on these tactics, you should consider the 3 main reasons for social media marketing (or Community Management). You run contests to build your brand, and (as we covered yesterday) social media helps by (1) engaging you with your customers, (2) encouraging them to engage with eachother, and (3) encouraging them to share your brand with their own friends.

With that in mind, 3 tactics the team could have tried with this contest to really strengthen its Community Management element are:

Reach out to the top commenters: chat with them via phone or email to learn more about their stories and offer to use their platform to share stories about their mothers with a wider audience. This engages with their customers.

Ask their users why these commenters were so touching: this helps build up the internal dialogue. It encourages the community to engage with eachother.

Post the stories for sharing: Once the top stories were collected and feedback was gathered from the community, make several polished stories via their platform and encourage their community to share with their friends.

These tactics organically work with the tactics they outlined. They also work as a next round extension to the contest. None the less, they are still making it easy to take part because most of the proactive work would be done by Altruettes. Additionally, sharing stories on their timelines is something people are more willing to do then asking their friends to buy product.

I encourage you to visit Altruettes. They created a line of philanthropic jewelry to raise money and awareness for non-profits they admire. It’s a good cause that anyone can get behind!

Finally, at SnapHop we’ve been developing our platform with mobile and social in mind. It’s an easy to use platform so you can set up your next social media sweepstakes within minutes. We’re the 8th tactic for success, so check us out!

Related articles

What Works – and Doesn’t – on Facebook (inc.com)

12 Top Community Managers Share Their Tips for Better Engagement (socialbusinesstoday.net)

5 Easy Steps to Measure Social Media Campaigns (entrepreneur.com)

To really understand social media, you must also understand online communities (freshnetworks.com)

Social Networking Catches Up With Gaming on Mobile, Provides Authentic Info

Caleb Hodes — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:45:20 +0000

TechCrunch recently reported that the mobile analytics provider Flurry has found that users of Android and iOS are now giving equal time to Social Networking and Gaming on mobile. In the past, gaming had consistently taken up the lead in time spent on mobile devices. Additional data support the notion that social marketing is becoming a central tactic for small businesses. Why is the shift toward social so important to the small business owner, and to marketers in particular?

The end of Gaming’s 40-month reign over Social Networking in mobile clearly shows the importance of social for building and strengthening your brand. In past discussions I’ve had with owners of small businesses, some were aware that a social media presence would be useful, but didn’t take action, and others hadn’t even considered the need for a social presence. While it’s true that your business won’t die simply because you never set up a Facebook page, business owners missing out if they don’t. Given the growing amount of time we spend on our smartphones, and social networking in particular, owners are basically leaving money on the table by not socializing.

People trust the tastes and opinions of their friends and family (ribbing aside), and can find these tastes easily using social media. Trust networks form the basis of Community Management. The best review a business can receive is the glowing post someone shared on their Facebook Timeline or hashtagged on Twitter. These posts are important because they’re written from the heart and don’t read like your basic sales pitch. In fact, if you were to pay someone to post a sales pitch on their page, their friends will likely begin ignoring them. I know I would.

In Social Media campaigning, there should be 3 goals:

1. Engagement with your customers so that they feel like they are a part of the experience.

2. Engagement between customers to form a community around your brand.

3. Engagement between your customers and their own circle of friends, which promotes the expansion of your brand.

The growth of Social Media use on smartphones makes this the perfect time to begin actively planning campaigns using a Community Management strategy. It’s affordable, high-impact, and can easily be set up and managed via the SnapHop platform. Try it today!

Image by “koreshky” via Wikipedia.

Related articles

Social Networking And Gaming Mobile Apps Are Now Neck-And-Neck For Time Spent On Android, iOS (techcrunch.com)

Social Apps Gaining Popularity, Mobile Games Reaching Saturation (pcmag.com)

Putting on Google Colored Glasses: The Big Question Missing from Google’s Mobile Playbook

Kerry Skemp — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:55:04 +0000

On Wednesday, Google introduced a Mobile Playbook designed to help marketers make the most of mobile (aka help Google get more mobile ad dollars–but that’s beside the point). The playbook covers 5 crucial mobile questions for businesses to ask about mobile:

1. How does mobile change our value proposition?
2. How does mobile impact our digital destinations?
3. Is our organization adapting to mobile?
4. How should our marketing adapt to mobile?
5. How can we connect with our tablet audience?

These are all great questions that every organization needs to ask, and the playbook goes into detail about critical points like local search, mobile metrics, brand building, and mobile optimization and integration for email, social, coupons, and offline experiences. However, something big is missing here, perhaps obscured by those Google Glasses. What is it? The customer.

As we’ve explored in the past, knowing your client is as critical as knowing your medium. If you’ve got an amazing mobile website that offers incredible multimedia download capabilities, but all your customers want to do is find your store locations, you’re not offering an effective mobile experience. So the playbook needs a new, founding question:

0. How does our customer use mobile?

Perhaps this question is implicit in the other inquiries, but I think it merits stating on its own. Mobile doesn’t just have to do with you and your company’s value and operations, but with a whole new way of experiencing the world. In fact, Google summarizes its playbook by saying, “At Google, we believe that mobile represents a sociological shift with how users relate with both the digital and physical world.”

Google Glasses are another example of changing how you relate with teh world–a bit more drastic than general mobile use. Discussing (and wearing!) the glasses on Charlie Rose yesterday, Sebastian Thrun touched on the transformational nature of not only Google glasses but also self-driving cars and online learning, among other elements. The diverse possibilities he discussed prove that technology is definitely changing the world–and the companies that understand how best people can use it to transform their lives will win.

Makeup Ads for Men? Mobile Ad Targeting Problems

Kerry Skemp — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:36:56 +0000

Breaking news! Ads miss their targets, whether they’re freeway billboard missed by distracted drivers or web ads served up to the wrong folks. This can be as simple as incorrectly targeted grocery ads or as wasteful as makeup ads served up to men. One study found that women’s personal care ads were targeted correctly 25% of the time, with 47% of the ads being shown to men rather than women.

Mobile ad targeting problems have a variety of causes, including the sheer difficulty of linking user data to their browsing habits. Until ad networks improve, what’s an advertiser to do? You can start by making ‘em come to you. Inbound mobile marketing and mobile SEO are great ways to bring your audience to you, rather than pushing out the wrong ads to them on impersonal, unrelated networks. Once you’ve achieved the coveted Facebook like or Twitter follow, you can publish out the content that will bring people to you, and make them lasting customers. And since social networks (often) know more about their users than content sites (unless those sites are taking advantage of social connections), linking to your audience that way can help make your outreach more effective.

SnapHop makes it easy to make mobile optimized content that will motivate people to follow you and engage. Try us today and stop wasting ad dollars on mistargeted ads!

Image by Diana Garcia, used under creative commons license.

Maximize Your Audience

Wen Tian — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:34:19 +0000

Recently, we came across this article talking about The Three Rs of Modern Marketing for brands. The first R is Reach, which indicates that brands need to reach largest number of audience possible at a reasonable cost. This is especially true at this day and age when there are so many channels available in reaching out to one’s customers: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Mobile Web, QR Code, SMS, email, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Foursquare, YouTube, etc… More are coming everyday and some are going away (MySpace)! How does one brand manage all these channels and effectively connect with its customers?

The answer is simple: try them all and track the analytics. It’s discovery process that all brands need to go through to find effective marketing channels. Many times, one will be surprised where its most loyal customers are hanging out. It may not be the usual big three: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It may be Tumblr; it may be Pinterest; it may even be Instagram. Going forward, there is not going to be any single dominant marketing channel anymore. Consumers are constantly trying new things (social networks, mobile apps, location services, etc…) and brands need to be ready to move together with their customers onto the next big thing.

One more thing. It’s a global economy and please do not ignore one’s international audience. For many global brands, it is the largest part of the customer base and it’s growing fast everyday! Take Sina’s Weibo for example. It is the largest micro-blogging service in China with over 300 million registered users, which is almost twice the number of users that Twitter has globally! They use many of the same brands that people do in North America. Can many brands today afford not to effectively communicate with them?