We did not mean to stop engaging......

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For those who are loyal followers, or occasional readers of The Membership Engagement Blog, I AM SORRY.

I have not posted a blog in three months.  It almost seems like after the Engaging Associations Forum, we simply disappeared.  We didn't.  We were just working on our move.

A lot has changed with Greenfield Services since the end of July 2015.  We went completely virtual, because we realized that we did not need 3,000 square feet of office space.

After the Engaging Associations Forum, we remembered that having fun and making a difference is really what we want to be doing.  But after looking at our website, we realized that our website did not appropriately reflect who we are.  We changed that.

Oh, and we took some vacation too!

As a result, I am pleased to announce that WE ARE BACK, but not here - the blog has moved and will be hosted on our newly re-designed website, and this post will be the last one hosted here.

Moving forward, we hope that you will update your feeds to include the new blog location (http://www.greenfield-services.ca/blog/), where we will continue to stir the pot, offer tips and best practices, and other pieces as it relates to:

• Association Management
• Membership Marketing
• Membership Engagement
• Event Marketing 
• Engaging Meeting Design
• Sponsorship and Exhibit Sales

...and I hope it will continue to engage, spark new ideas, and ultimately, create change.

So, thank you, and we look forward to continuing the conversation!

Meagan Rockett Association Ambassador

9 Marketing Remedies for Event Registration Success

Over the years, our Greenfield team has "rescued" numerous programs because event registrations
were not coming in as expected. Here is our prescription for a successful event marketing campaign:

1. Get permission first: It is important to obtain and track permissions for your stakeholders -your prospects. Members are OK; they have opted in to your communications through their renewals. However, your prospective list is a different story: with CASL in play, it is important to build a list that won't get you in trouble later.
2. Maintain your database: With CASL, if there is a complaint, the burden will be on you to provide that permission was obtained. Don't risk the fine! Keep your database clean.
3. Make it about ME: Who cares if your event has a record-breaking number of exhibitors, sponsors or break-out sessions? If your communication isn't articulating WIIFM (what's-in-it-for me) for the potential attendee, they likely won't register.
4. Twitterize your message: Don't send long emails telling me ALL there is to know about your event. Since your message is most likely to be viewed on a mobile device, keep your message short and to the point. If there's more to the story, give links where the recipient can go for more.
5. Make it shareable: An increasing number of business event attendees are active on social media. Make it easy for attendees to share your event with peers by using ShareThis or other social media sharing platforms. That way they can tweet, post to Facebook or LinkedIn, or whatever social medium they prefer.
6. Tell them who else will be there: Not just speakers or sponsors/exhibitors; people want to know about their peers. So upon a registration, gain permission to publicize the fact that an attendee will be there. Those who agree will have their name posted on your event website. It's a simple way to create FOMO (fear-of-missing-out).
7. Show them: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video is worth a million. Use this powerful tool to show clips of speakers, testimonials from attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors. Score double points by showcasing a video of someone with similar attributes to your prospect.
8. Vary your channels: Unless recipients have white-listed your email address, anytime you are using email deployment software, there is a 30-40% chance that your message will be caught in spam filters. Your audience may be interested but may never see your message! Pay special attention to where your prospects hang out on LinkedIn. Get the influential people in your industry to tweet about your event. Or even send something by mail - something that will pique curiosity, and will drive traffic to your website.
9. Don't be so business like: Learn from what gets shared online; people enjoy funny or touching stories. Your promotion will rise above the clutter if you show emotion humour, or an edge. Don't be so serious!

For meeting, conference and event planners, covering each tactic can be a daunting task.  But a well-rounded event marketing plan will drive attendance & engagement.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Heading to Canada Meet Week in Toronto? Visit us at the Ignite Business Event Expo!

Heading to Toronto next week for Canada Meet Week?  Have you registered to attend the Ignite Business Event Expo?  Plan on stopping by booth 206 to say "Hello" - we will be there!

Now at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre; the Ignite Business Event Expo is committed to ensure that attendees have a unique experience by providing the following:

Experiential

At iBE Expo 2015 they have done away with the bowling aisle format and instead create an upscale boutique environment where you will feel inspired!

Interactive

iBE Expo is designed to encourage meaningful business conversations in an intimate environment where you don’t feel rushed to get to your next appointment!

Informative

Their pop-in Good to Know Theatre features complimentary 30-minute sessions on a wide variety of topics you can apply to your job the minute you leave the show. It’s simple, all you have to do is show up. All sessions are applicable for CMP credit.

We hope to see you there!

Heading to #PCMACIC this month?

This will be my first PCMA Conference ever - and not only am I excited to attend, but we will be speaking there too!

Join us in Montreal on Tuesday, November 25th, where Doreen Ashton Wagner (Chief Strategist, Greenfield Services), Rachel Stephan (President & Creative Strategist, sensov/ event marketing), and I will be proudly presenting a case study on event design.  On what?  The Engaging Associations Summit of course!

The session will talk about lessons learned from the inaugural event.  As a collaboration between a consortium of business event industry suppliers, this event pushed the envelope with many different techniques such as pre-event concierge services, innovative meeting design, participant-led "unconference" sessions, and even post-event accountability circles to help participants implement what they learned.

What worked?  What didn't?  Was it worth it?

Join us at #PCMACIC to find out!

In advance of the conference, if you want to download more information, we recently released our e-book summarizing the event.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Montreal!

Event ‘Shatterpoints’ Point to the Need for Change

Associations can strengthen their conferences and protect the revenue they generate by anticipating the “shatterpoints” that could eat into audience loyalty and send the event into a tailspin, consultant Jeff Hurt told participants at the 2014 Engaging Associations Summit.

“One change in one shatterpoint can have a domino effect, with drastic consequences,” said Hurt, Executive Vice President of Velvet Chainsaw Consulting in Dallas, Texas. Acknowledging the Star Wars movie series as the source of the term, Hurt said organizations’ conference revenues could be vulnerable if they don’t achieve at least:

• 50% paid attendance at two out of three annual events
• A 65% renewal or “stickiness” rate among exhibitors
• A 75 to 80% stickiness rate among sponsors.

Looking to the Future

Hurt said a goal can be a lagging indicator, to the extent that strategies are built to address problems an association has already experienced. By contrast, a shatterpoint can be a leading indicator, pointing to future risks that the organization can mitigate or prevent.

After inviting Summit participants to discuss their own measures of a healthy, sustainable conference, Hurt suggested a series of longer-term shatterpoints, including:

• Secondary revenue stream that represents less than 30% of the total
• Only 35% of conference participants under age 50
• Less than 55% of direct expense devoted to the participant experience.

One Piece of a Larger Puzzle

Hurt stressed that conferences are just one part of a larger patchwork of association services and initiatives, and should be seen as part of a continuum of customer and audience touchpoints. The key audiences onsite fall into three categories—economic buyers, decision-makers, and influencers—and more than ever before, organizations can use smart data to define and target the groups they need to reach and bring together.

Although shatterpoints can point to serious risks for associations that don’t pay attention to them, a Summit participant said the impact can be positive if they “blow things up” and draw attention to the potential for change.

Click here for highlights of the 2014 Engaging Associations Summit and a sneak preview of the 2015 event.

Marketing and Communications: The Age of the Audience

Audience members have moved to the front and centre of association and event marketing, with a new generation of communicators deploying a powerful set of techniques for defining, segmenting, understanding, and reaching the unique, often demanding individuals in your membership.

From inbound marketing to outbound email, from blogging to social networking, an explosion of new tools is changing the way the most innovative marketers think about and practice their craft. At the Engaging Associations Summit in July, you’ll get a first-hand look at emerging marketing philosophies that point toward a more open, balanced relationship between associations and their members, participants, prospects, and other stakeholders.

Panelist Rachel Stephan, Principal of sensov/ event marketing, urges clients to check all their assumptions before launching a campaign, beginning with how and where a target audience congregates and which platforms they use to communicate.

“You certainly don’t want to market to an audience where they can’t be found!” she states on the sensov/ website. “To figure out which sites you should use and how, audience mapping will allow you to determine your best course of action” for any organization or event.

For panelist Jeff Hurt, Dallas-based Executive Vice President, Education and Engagement at Velvet Chainsaw Consulting, a crucial step in effective marketing is to recognize that the audience is in charge.

“Audiences are not owned,” he wrote in a recent blog post. “We like, follow, and subscribe to brands, organizations, and people…when it brings us something of value, saves us money, or provides timely content.” That dynamic has shifted the emphasis from traditional media and advertising to a constant commitment to building loyal audiences.

Hurt cited six key audience types defined by author Jeffrey Rohrs: Seekers, Amplifiers, Joiners, and three categories of “VIP Joiners”: Subscribers, Fans, and Followers. One challenge for conferences, he said, is to turn Seekers and Amplifiers into VIP Joiners who commit more deeply to an organization or an event.

Panelist Mitchell Beer, President of Smarter Shift, focuses much of his work on “narrowcasting” specialized messages to small but influential target audiences.

Many organizations “have important stories to tell. Their target audiences are usually policy-makers or other subject specialists, not a wide group of consumers,” he wrote. “To have an impact, they have to deliver their content and messaging above the lowest common denominator, at a level of detail and complexity that conventional marketing usually avoids.

“That means trading breadth of reach for depth of understanding. So landing at the top of a Google search may or may not be a measure of success.”

Stephan, Hurt, and Beer will talk about association marketing and communications at the Engaging Associations Summit, July 24-25, 2014 in Ottawa. Click here for details.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Year-Round Conversation Through #Event #Marketing

There may have been a time, once upon a time, when an event marketing strategy was as simple as “plan it and they will come.”

But those days are done. With a larger number of competing events, new and sometimes fractured marketing channels, and shrinking budgets, it isn’t enough to put together a dynamite program and count on the audience to show up.

The smartest, most effective event marketers are making those three or four days onsite the cornerstone of a year-round conversation, in which:

• The business and collegial relationships start developing online.
• The dialogue is advanced onsite.
• The closing plenary session isn’t the end. It’s the end of the beginning for the new ideas, opportunities, and issues that participants will carry back to their online channels to continue the conversation.

A New Way to Interact

This new way of interacting is a huge opportunity for any event. But it’s particularly promising for the kind of innovative, groundbreaking program that association executives said they wanted when we did the background research for the Engaging Associations Summit, July 24-25 at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

You told us you wanted to learn and share experiences with your peers, rather than just hearing from consultants and industry vendors.

You said you craved fresh, alternative formats that would deliver a more powerful learning experience.

And we knew it would take more than a few days for those deeper, more useful conversations to grow and flourish.

That’s why we asked Rachel Stephan, Principal of sensov/ event marketing™, to join us as a strategic partner for the Summit.

Back to First Principles

sensov’s approach to event marketing—and the approach we’re taking for the Summit—is a good reflection of the questioning spirit we’ve brought to this entire adventure.

We’re going back to first principles, leaving no standard practice unexamined if we can help it.

You asked us for an event that replaced talking heads at the podium with real dialogue among peers. You encouraged us to second-guess whether a successful event had to take place in a standard meeting room, with standard décor and amenities.  sensov/ event marketing™ is helping us rethink conventional marketing strategies by putting different audience segments at the centre of every decision.

• We checked all our assumptions about the benefits and takeaways that would make the conference a great investment for association executives, then built our marketing around the language we heard back from prospective participants.
• We aren’t placing ourselves at the centre of our own marketing universe. sensov/ event marketing™ encouraged us to treat speakers and participants, sponsors and exhibitors, our venue and other vendors, and our partner organizations as the best messengers to introduce the Summit to their own contacts and communities.
• Although we’ve ended up with a robust social media campaign, we didn’t have any preconceived notions about which messages we’d be sharing on which platforms until we’d mapped each segment of our campaign to our specific audiences and objectives.

And in a great example of preaching what we practice, Summit participants will get to interact with Rachel Stephan first-hand, hearing her ideas and sharing their own experiences with event marketing campaigns that put participants and audiences first.

Click here for more on the Engaging Associations Summit, July 24-25, 2014 in Ottawa.

sensov/ event marketing™ is a creative marketing agency with a clear focus: marketing association meetings and international congresses. Challenging status quo, pushing the limits of existing marketing campaigns, sparking new marketing ideas, being at the forefront of event technology. Since 2001, our strategies and creative campaigns consistently deliver results that meet and surpass clients’ meetings objectives. 

In-person events are not a thing of the past. They just need better attendee marketing!

Scott Oser provided this guest post.  He is the President of Scott Oser Associates Inc, a US-based consultancy working with associations and non-profits to solve marketing, sales & membership and circulation challenges. 

I am sure you have heard many times how attendance at face-to-face meetings are down and that webinars, virtual conferences and social media are allowing a percentage of your potential attendees to no longer attend your face-to-face meetings, conferences and seminars.  While this may be true in some cases it is definitely not true at every organization.  I firmly believe that with the right programming and smart marketing face-to-face events can be as effective as ever.  This article is going to give you some tips to greatly increase your chances of having an incredibly successful meeting in the near future.

Plan! Plan! Plan!
No successful marketing effort starts without a plan.  Even if you have marketed the meeting or conference before you still need to devise a marketing plan.  The first step in developing your plan is to review what you have done in the past and determining what worked and what didn’t work.  It is amazing how much information you can gather just by reviewing what you have done in the past as it can inform you as to what you want to do more of, less of and the same amount of for the next meeting.  It will also help you identify any gaps that might exist that you want to fill with new activities.

Your Website Is Your Home Base
Almost everything marketing activity that you undertake should direct your audience back to your website.  Your website needs to be the hub that contains all of the different details that an attendee, an exhibitor, a speaker or any other audience that you reach for your meeting needs to know.  It is therefore critical that your website is well designed and very user friendly.  It is also important that your website is regularly updated and always up-to-date.

Don’t Be A One Trick Pony
Not every single individual you reach out to is going to respond to the same marketing medium.  We no longer live in a world where you will succeed by contacting your members only through direct mail or only through email or only through any one marketing tactic.  In today’s world where marketing is everywhere and people do have preferences it is important that you implement a multi-media approach to your marketing.   Of course you will want to use your data to determine what works best and use that most often but that medium still needs to be part of a marketing mix.

Use What You Already Have!
All associations are already communicating with their members in multiple ways.  We have e-newsletters, magazines, journals, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors, webinars, conferences, chapters, social media, etc.  Before you start paying for external opportunities to market your conference look at what you already have and determine how you can use those opportunities to drive attendance.  Your primary audience for your meeting as most likely your members who are already taking advantage of the items I mentioned below so this is a great, inexpensive way to get your message out.

Target! Target! Target!
Your attendee marketing is going to be much more effective if you define your target markets and message them accordingly.  There are going to be different pieces of your meeting that will appeal to different pieces of your audience so it is important to “speak” to these people about the areas they will find most interesting.  One idea I have seen work recently is literally promoting certain sessions and activities to a certain audience based on their role in their organization.  This is incredibly effective as it shows the prospective attendee that you understand who they while showing them something that will be of value to them.

Track! Track! Track!
I realize that this sounds really simple but there are still many associations that are not tracking the results of their attendee marketing efforts.  Tracking is essential because if we don’t track there is no way for us to know what is working so we don’t know what to do more of, less of or even to stop doing altogether.  Some ways you can pretty easily track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is by putting source/promo codes on direct mail pieces, unique urls on ads and email blasts or even matching responses back to marketing efforts just due to the timing of the effort.  One of the goals of any marketer is to always improve the response rates and tracking will allow you to generate the data to do that.

There is the possibility that your face-to-face meeting will never have as many attendees as it did in the past.  That said, if you follow some, or all, of the tips suggested above you will definitely end up with a marketing plan that is more effective from a human, financial and response perspective.  You will also have a much better chance of ending up with attendance numbers that are exactly where you want to be.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Seven Steps to Turn Trade Shows Into Real Conversations

Finally, here’s something that trade show participants and booth staff have in common: there’s got to be more to the experience than three seconds of avoidance.

We’ve all been there, most of us from both sides of the fence. The participant approaches the booth, casting a sidelong glance to get a quick idea of the products or services on offer, without committing to stop. The booth staffer, ever attentive to a new prospect who might help justify the cost of the booth, watches closely (but never too eagerly) for any sign that the walk-by will turn into an actual opportunity.

It takes a lot of mutual mental energy to sort out whether any kind of dialogue will even take place. The procedure repeats, then repeats again. And within a couple of hours, most everyone is doing the trade show walk—feet sore, eyes glazed, and mind numb to all but the most targeted, compelling pitches. (And the people delivering the pitches feel exactly the same.)

Laying the Groundwork

Contrast this all-too-familiar picture with a show where buyers and sellers are looking forward to the specific, concrete conversations they expect to have. By the time they arrive onsite, they’ve been talking or corresponding for weeks, maybe working together for months or years.

It’s a strategy that relies on magnets rather than darts. It’s more respectful of participants’ time onsite. It’s more effective and energizing for booth staff.

And for all those reasons, it raises questions about the established view that trade shows are just about lead generation.

Event Marketing for Trade Shows

An event marketing approach means treating your exhibits program as part of a larger, more client-centred campaign. Here are seven steps you can take to change the trade show experience—for your own organization and, even more important, for the people you’re trying to meet:

1. Start early: Allow yourself at least three months, ideally six, to plan your strategy and prepare your presence.
2. Know why you’re attending this show: By the time you commit time and resources to set up and staff a booth, you should have a clear idea of who you want to talk to and why they should be interested in hearing from you.
3. Build the foundation: A trade show will bring you a certain number of new, serendipitous contacts. Some of them may even remember meeting you and agree to continue the conversation afterwards. But you’ll get better results if you can fill your time onsite with scheduled appointments that advance or solidify business relationships you’ve already begun building by phone or online. But that means improving on the standard assumption that trade shows are strictly a place to gather leads, and paying more attention to the quality and depth of each conversation.
4. Remember that less is more: If you’ve collected 100 business cards in eight hours on the floor, there weren’t enough hours in the day to find the legitimate “hook” that made you an interesting contact for each prospect. So you shouldn’t be surprised when your sales team spends a lot of time leaving unanswered voicemails after you get home from the show. Far better to come away with a half-dozen top prospects and a clear invitation to follow up.
5. Make every booth unique: You needn’t and shouldn’t remake your entire booth for every show, but it’s a mistake to use the same, generic signage and collateral that participants saw last month or last year. The specific objectives you established for attending this show should point you to the messaging you want while you’re onsite.
   
   Hint: To produce a tailored booth without wasting paper, sign material, and the money you spent on production and shipping, invest in a reusable pixel board for signage and print-on-demand PDFs for collateral.
   
   
6. Keep it professional: It’s fine to use a prize or gimmick to draw attention to your booth. But unless you’re working at a consumer show, recognize that you’re drawing people based on their professional interests. Some prospects may take an offer of personal perks as a sign of disrespect, and many organizations prohibit their staff from accepting gifts above a certain value. (We once heard of a $5 threshold that determined the designer coffee a customer could accept as a courtesy.)
7. Always follow up. Always. Although some trade show marketers question the rule of thumb that 80% of leads are never followed up, there’s wider agreement that the “fishbowl method” of collecting business cards is seldom backed up by a formal sales management system. If your trade show presence isn’t integrated with your sales pipeline, you have no business being onsite.

Six Tips for Combining Your Conference and #Association #Marketing

Every time your organization holds an event of any kind, it’s a pivotal moment to deliver a message, increase brand awareness, and build lasting relationships with members, prospects, and the key decision-makers in your sector.

So it’s surprising when organizations fail to integrate their event marketing with their broader communications and outreach strategies. Surprising—but by no means unheard of. If you work for an association that has a great communications program that does little or nothing to promote upcoming events, here are some steps you can take:

1. Start early: If you’re planning a six-month campaign for an annual event, start nine or 10 months out if it’s the first time you’ve tried to coordinate with your in-house communications group.
2. Line up your arguments: If the communications team has never thought of the conference as a prime source of information and messaging, it’s up to you to make the case. You can do that by highlighting the strong content you’re bringing onsite and the connections between the conference and the broader communications effort.
3. Find your spots on the calendar: If your organization has a strong communications presence, it probably has an editorial calendar to track key milestones and deadlines. To integrate your event marketing with the rest of the communications effort, you’ll have to carve out your spots on the calendar. Try to maximize exposure in the weeks leading up to key registration deadlines, and watch for moments when conference content can reinforce your organization’s wider messaging.
4. Treat content as a fulcrum: Some content marketers recommend using a blog as the fulcrum of a wider social media strategy. Every time you publish a new post, you create news that you can legitimately redistribute via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social channels—and when readers are particularly interested in a topic, they “raise their hands” by clicking the links in the blog. By linking those readers back to your conference website, you encourage them to find out more about the program and, ultimately, to sign up for the event.
5. Adhere to the schedule…: Once you’ve committed to the editorial calendar, it’s important to meet your deadlines. You picked your spots for a reason, and your event needs the timely, effective marketing you’ve mapped out. Your in-house communications team is counting on you, too, and you’ll earn their undying gratitude by delivering clean, readable text when you said you would.
6. …but be prepared to improvise: Any editorial calendar can be overtaken by events. In fact, author David Meerman Scott has elevated newsjacking to a fine art. If breaking news helps you make a compelling case for people to attend or sponsor your conference, that means postponing the post you thought you had lined up and publishing it next week instead.

You’ll know you’ve connected with your communications team when they start to see your conference as a smart, useful resource, not just another product they have to sell. The first step is to recognize content as the most important part of the event, and think about how to market it accordingly.

Are you looking for other ways to market your events to your community?  Visit the Greenfield Services Inc. booth at iBE 2013 in Toronto.

Event #Marketing: Your Message in Search of a Platform

Last week, we talked about the treasure trove of content that you can use to build an event marketing campaign, largely by working with the key takeaways from your previous event.

But the next question is: Now that you’ve got the content in hand, what do you do with it?

Go Where Your Audience Gathers

One of the first rules of content marketing is to find your audience where they already gather, so the right mix of media for your campaign will depend on the groups you’re trying to reach. But for more and more organizations, all roads (or, at least, more roads) lead to one or more social platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

If your organization has a limited presence on social media, or no presence at all, there are still some basic steps you can take to give your event some visibility online. Social media thrive on smart, targeted content, and you’ve got compelling material in search of a platform. Here are some steps you can take to build a perfect match:

• Create a Twitter hashtag for your event. If it’s an annual conference, or part of a recurring series, leave the year out of the tag, so you can reuse it and build a larger audience over time.
• Find the LinkedIn groups that match the profile of the audiences you’re trying to reach.
• As your conference website takes shape, featuring the types of material we talked about last week, produce LinkedIn stories and Twitter tweets that talk about the specific pieces of content that are most likely to draw each audience.

Keep the Conversation Real

To make this event marketing strategy work, you have to remember the fine distinction between conversation and selling.

If more than about 10% of your messaging has to do with the conference itself, you’ll be seen as a spammer and treated accordingly.

But if you genuinely set out to open conversations about your conference content, your online audience will begin to respond. Many of your speakers will appreciate the input. You’ll gradually widen your circles and reach prospective participants who’ve never heard of your event, or never considered attending.

And by the time participants get onsite, many of them will have already been a part of a gripping online dialogue that they’re eager to continue during the face-to-face event, then carry on via social media in the weeks and months after they get home. That’s when the conversations around your conference program become a starting point for building a stronger, more connected and member-centred organization.

Want more information?  Come check out the Greenfield Services booth (number 137) at iBE 2013 this June in Toronto!

Event #Marketing Begins with Great Conversations

After too many years of trying to attract attention with too many gimmicks and giveaways, event marketers are beginning to understand the blindingly obvious: That honest, respectful conversations are the best way to build an audience and earn lasting business relationships.

And none too soon. At a time when budgets are tight, customers are laser-focused on the bottom line, and ethical concerns cast a harsh light on even the most innocent gift, traditional incentives have less impact and carry a lot more risk. All the same factors make it even more important to differentiate your event, making sure it stands out in prospective participants’ minds.

You can do that by building deeper, more durable conversations with the audience segments that matter to you the most. And the cornerstone of those conversations is imaginative, original content that points them to the solutions they've been looking for—and that they’ll find most easily by attending your event and building a closer relationship with your organization.

But What Can We Talk About?

An event marketer in search of content is like a vegetable-lover at an all-you-can-eat salad bar. That’s because a well-organized conference program is a nearly endless source of smart, targeted content. (And it’s good for you, too!)

But it’s still rare for organizations to recognize the gold they hold in their hands: more often than not, conference content is presented once, then forgotten. It’s a terrible waste of a precious resource, but it gives you an opening to re-purpose your onsite content by:

• Producing topical blog posts based on last year’s sessions
• Posting Q&As with an upcoming speakers
• Connecting an educational session or track to a burning issue in your industry or profession
• Interviewing participants to find out what they did differently or better after attending last year’s conference
• Finding members who couldn't attend your last event and asking them what they missed most (particularly if they plan to be there this year).

It’s All About Respect

The best way to earn respect from your participants and prospects is to respect them in turn. That means communicating in a way that treats them as serious members of a serious profession or industry.

The right content marketing plan operates at two levels to build profile and participant numbers for your event: It delivers valuable knowledge, with the promise of more for anyone who goes onsite, and it positions the conference itself as a place where worthwhile knowledge is shared. Not a bad place to start, when more organizations are asking what they’ll get back from their investment in your next event.

Want more information?  Come check out the Greenfield Services booth (number 137) at iBE 2013 this June in Toronto!

Image courtesy of  FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Using Twitter for Events – Part 3: Engagement

This post was written by Gwynydd Murray, Client Care Specialist with Greenfield Services

Social media and mobile solutions continue to change the way people communicate and how organizations engage with patrons and draw in new interest. Twitter provides endless opportunities for collaboration, efficiency, innovation, and promotion. Used effectively, social media and mobile technology can significantly improve productivity, as well as enhance audience awareness and participation.


About a year ago I took great interest in The June/July 2012 edition of CSAE’s Association Magazine (http://www.csae.com/Resources/Magazine.aspx), which discusses at length how to optimize the use of a number of social media channels for events. Everything from LinkedIn and Facebook to SlideShare and YouTube will help organizations disseminate key messages to a plethora of followers and potential attendees. The Feature Article, The Role of Social Media at your Next Conference outlines perfectly how “The proliferation of social media has made it possible for us to capture meaningful information and respond to it – in real-time.” (page 28). Nothing is better in real-time than Twitter.

In my previous blogs, I’ve already explained the importance of Preparation and Tools. When thinking about Twitter for events, there is nothing more important than Engagement. The great thing about Social Media is the back and forth between originator and audience. The message does not exist in a vacuum, but is expected to foster conversation and encourage sharing of the message outside its original sphere.

When considering using Twitter for events, the first thing to remember is it is not solely for the day-of, on-site reporting. You need to draw in potential attendees’ right from the beginning. The event ads, program, website and emails should all publicize the Twitter @handle and #hashtag. You can then reach out to potential attendees and engage those who have already registered.

Tweeting before an event is not only about advertising. Content about speakers, schedules, exhibitors, accommodations, and deadlines is important to keep people informed. Keeping up a conversation will get them interested. Ask questions about what people are looking forward to and encourage them to ask questions themselves. Do not forget to keep up with those posts, and always respond to those who have taken the time to reach out to you.

While at the event, talk to and take photos of exhibitors, attendees, and presenters to get “nuggets” to post. Explain what you’re doing and encourage them to do the same. Even if someone does not use Twitter, gauge their interest and encourage them to look into it.  Recently, we planned Caesars Windsor’s Meeting Planner Symposium, and our friend and colleague @JeniseFryatt joined us as a virtual panelist for social media.  Jenise suggested having a “social media concierge” booth for newcomers to social media, and the concierge’s purpose would be to walk them through the set up and how to search for specific hashtags to tweet and re-tweet what is happening.  What better way to engage them in the social media process than in person and on-site?  It was a GREAT idea, and well supported by the other panelists and the audience of meeting & event planners, and association executives! Talking to visitors ensures better engagement next time. Draw people to an interesting booth or Tweet a speaker’s line that made you LOL.

Again, constantly check for re-Tweets and mentions, to keep the conversation going and let people know it was not a one-way medium. Even from off-site, the right Tweets can make you feel like you’re there.

Finally, remember the Twitter feed exists after the event. It’s a great way to measure people’s opinion after the fact. How did they like the sessions? Who were their favourite speakers?  How many people got to the early morning breakfast?  This will not only keep people engaged, but ensure future great events. Think of it as an instant survey.

The adage of quality over quantity could not be truer for Twitter. It’s not about a 140 character “info dump”, but having a conversation. It’s not only about making information accessible on the day of, but engaging with people who want to participate long after the booths are down.

Image courtesy of  FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Using Twitter for Events – Part 2: Mastering your Tools

This post was written by Gwynydd Murray, Client Care Specialist with Greenfield Services.

Social media is an inexpensive tool for sharing information before, during, and following an event. With the right plan and the right message, organizations can bring in more patrons and keep those already on board informed.

As reported by eMarketer Inc, showed American nonprofits are spending more time using social media to get their message out than they did in the previous year.  While there are a number of useful and popular sites - from experience - Twitter is the most efficient tool in communicating a very specific message to a desired audience. The study also outlined that Twitter is used by nearly three-quarters of American nonprofits and is used most for multiple posts per day.  Despite these numbers being from a US-based survey, social media trends are comparable north of the border.

In addition to my previous article about Preparation, to aid in the best possible use of Twitter for events, the next aspect to consider is the available Tools and what you should consider having on hand.
The most basic tool that anyone can use while Tweeting about an event on site is a smartphone (with a camera and internet access). I’m not going specify any brand or model, because you just need to be comfortable with it and know how to use what you’ve got to its full potential. There is no question though, there is a difference between camera quality and internet connectivity – an improvement on the basics could be necessary.

In my original post, I said that practice and preparation make perfect. Know what your phone is capable of and get familiar with any useful apps available. You can use Twitter within the browser, or you can find the Twitter app, which allows you to post photos and connect with other Twitter users. Hopefully, you have already connected with associated Followers and should have an already assembled collection of correct @handles and #hashtags. If you cannot pre-program the app you’re using, this is where a hardcopy list would come in handy.

Once you’ve got your mobile companion in-hand, the charger should never be far away.  Some of you may be saying “Of course.” Others may figure “I can usually go days without charging, a few hours in the Trade Show should be a breeze.” You may have the best battery, but I would err on the side of caution because Tweeting from an event is one of the biggest workouts your phone is going to get. Merely using the camera and browsing the internet will use a substantial amount of energy. Switching apps and using multiple media is almost guaranteed to drain the battery before the day is even done (believe me; I didn’t think it would, and it happened to me a few months ago!). You really do not want to watch those little bars depleting and have to rush, which means not doing due-diligence to the whole process.

In addition to the phone, a laptop or iPad can make things easier and provide access to different programs and resources. I realize this can be a tall order and may be overkill, depending on your circumstances.   A bigger screen will make it easier to see the quality of the photos and will also allow for editing. A laptop would also allow using a digital camera to download better photos. With these types of tools, it also helps to be able to use Wi-Fi (don’t forget to get the password for the venue) to check the Twitter feed and do internet searches with ease.

All-in-all, Twitter itself is a great tool for promoting and presenting events. Familiarizing yourself with the basic tools available to access this app, will make the process easy for anyone who is interested.

Image courtesy of  FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Using Twitter for Events – Part 1: Preparation

This post was written by Gwynydd Murray, Client Care Specialist with Greenfield Services.

The importance of social media is undeniable, and Twitter specifically can be used as an effective event promotion tool for associations. In my experience as a third-party Social Media Coordinator, there are some things I have learned that will help even the most novice Twitter user when it comes to events.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I am not yet 30, but this does not mean anything in terms of my social media prowess. So many people use their age as a reason for not giving Twitter a try, but with the right fundamentals anyone can get what they want from social media. Two years ago, I was not familiar with Twitter at all. I have had to learn from scratch, and most often trial and error is the best teacher.  Age should not be a factor when looking for a social media expert, it should be based on knowledge and expertise.

It may have become a cliché, but the Scouts had it right – always be prepared.

In terms of using Twitter for events, the first thing to consider is preparation.

Create a following. The more people online, the better, but you need to be strategic. Use membership lists to find the appropriate people on Twitter beforehand and share pertinent information to get people involved. Looking for volunteers? Is there a change in schedule? Are there special rates? Without a growing media, the day-of work will not reach everyone it can. Keeping the association members and potential attendees in the loop is top priority.

Your event should have a hashtag (ie: #event2013) and that hashtag should be expressed in multiple sources. Of course, use it as much as possible on Twitter, but also try to get it out in event literature, such as emails to attendees, the event website and program.

Keep the lines of communication open with the host. If you have questions, you need to know who to go to for answers and you really do not want to be responsible for misinformation. Things change and come up out of the blue, so know where to get the most current and accurate information – not just the internet.  If you are doing social media for a client, you need to know what their ideal is. Do they want to see a lot of photos? Do they want a particular message out?

It may seem counter-intuitive, but a “low-tech contingency” is imperative. Technology can be fickle, so some basics need to be accessible regardless of power-shortages, worn-out ink cartridges, or password protected Wi-Fi.

• Have a hardcopy of the Program printed ahead of time. You can mark up the floor-plan with “not to miss” exhibits; as well as know the schedule, sponsors, and speakers to keep track of. 
• Compile a list of important Twitter handles. This can include sponsors, keynote speakers and facilitators, exhibitors, and suppliers.  A hardcopy list will prevent mistakes (ie: @GwynMurray can accidentally be attributed to @GwynyddMurray). You cannot always maneuver straight from Twitter, so even the preprogrammed handles from pre-event Tweets may not be right at your fingertips, unless you’ve got a list printed. This is also a great source for ensuring no one gets forgotten, in that you can tick off each necessary box as you go. The less guess-work the better.

Simply speaking, Twitter prep is very important and may take more time in the first place, but it will make the day-of more efficient at any event.

Stay tuned for some additional advice about how to optimize your use of Twitter for events.

Using Social Media to Boost Your Conference Promotions

You shouldn’t have to put the rest of your life on hold to build a strong social media presence for your next conference.

Some social media tools take more time than others, and using them all would be a full-time job (for someone else, since you’ve already got one). But with a smart social media plan that is tailored to your audience, you can hone your approach and get the results you need.

Your first step is to develop an editorial calendar that lays out the messages you want to deliver, the content and media (social or conventional) that you plan to use at different points in your campaign, and the in-house or outsourced support that you’ll need to meet your deadlines. The calendar can be as simple or complicated as you need it to be—but consider starting small, meeting your goals, then expanding the campaign as time permits.

To make the plan achievable, use simple online resources to pre-schedule your content and keep campaign administration to 20 or 30 minutes per day.

·         Twitter tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck make it easy to pre-write a cluster of tweets and preschedule them through the day.

·         WordPress, a popular blog platform, has an editorial calendar plug-in to help you manage multiple posts.

·         A Twitter hashtag is one of the easiest ways to begin building a community around your conference message. Once people begin using the hashtag to post or retweet content, they end up bringing their followers to your conversation.

·         A YouTube channel takes a little more time—to prepare good content, and to manage the uploads. But a compelling video message can add a powerful new dimension to a campaign built mainly on online text.

Like almost any other marketing tool, social media will bring better results if you plan to gradually build profile and credibility, rather than pushing for quick results. The transition from push to pull marketing makes just as much sense online as it does in any other medium.

Six Tips for Marketing Your Conference on Social Media

It’s easy to spot the organizations that are missing the point with their social media campaigns. At a time when conventional marketers are abandoning hard-sell strategies that drive their members and customers away, others are trying to bring the same, tired techniques online.

Here are six tips to get the most out of a simple social media strategy:

1.    Find Them Where They Are: To bring your audience to your social media platform, you have to find them where they already congregate online. Don’t forget that you might end up with a different “right” answer for each audience.

2.    Build an Irresistible Community: Once you've located your audience, invite them to an online community where they can learn, share, and feel at home. As long as the site keeps giving them useful information and contacts, they’ll keep coming back.

3.    Develop Your Listening Skills: We’ve talked about the hazards of short-term “push” messaging and the need to give your audience the information that they need and want. A social media strategy takes you a giant step farther, creating an online community where you can listen to your members’ issues and concerns. You should also monitor all the channels where you located them in the first place, taking every opportunity to repost or reply to any interesting or relevant comments.

4.    Talk Back…In Their Language: When you start reflecting your members’ issues back to them, through the online community and in routine communications, you’ll prove yourself as an organization that has the pulse of its membership.

5.    Don’t Try to Do It All: Doing a consistent job with the right social media platform is more important—and more realistic—than sustaining a comprehensive campaign that uses every possible online tool.

6.    Take Control of the Strategy: In a recent article for the Canadian Society of Association Executives, public relations advisor Tim Shaw urged readers to connect their social media work back to organizational strategy and “measure, measure, measure” the results.

Social media is still a new frontier, where advisors are scrambling to keep up with the latest in technologies and platforms, tweets and likes. But the audience-centred strategies that work in other settings can also help you build a compelling online presence.

Why Conference Marketing Isn’t All About You

Is your conference marketing program designed as a hard-hitting call to action, with messaging that pushes and prods participants to that inevitable moment when they register?

Or do you take a more gradual approach, designed to pull the audience in by positioning the event as an irresistible opportunity for networking and professional development?

Your past registration campaigns may have emphasized one of these strategies or both. But the ultimate questions are:

·         Is the conference all about you or all about them?

·         And if it isn’t all about them, why do you expect them to attend?

The End of the Hard Sell

The big difference between the approaches is as simple and powerful as helping people find the information they think they need, rather than deluging them with the content you want them to like. According to Association Laboratory Inc., a U.S. association management consultancy, this is one of the characteristics that distinguish marketing from sales.

“Marketing is a member-driven approach to creating a package of products and services that solve member problems,” the company states. “Selling is an organization-driven approach designed to convince your audience to purchase what you have to sell.”

For the most part, “when most people say marketing, they usually mean promotion.”

A Gradual, Long-Term Goal

Earlier this year, I attended a workshop on creative marketing and sponsorships hosted by the Ottawa-Gatineau Chapter of the Canadian Association of Society Executives. One of my main takeaways was that marketing campaigns should build member engagement—inevitably a gradual, long-term goal, in contrast to short-term event registration targets.

Association Laboratory lists a series of possible catalysts for your next marketing campaign. Have you spotted a decline in membership or conference attendance? Are you losing volunteers or having trouble recruiting new ones? If your impulse is to launch your next mass mailing or e-blast, that may be the right step. But only if your messaging is about the unique value your members and participants can count on you to deliver, not the product or service you want them to buy in the next 48 hours.

No Silver Bullets

There are no silver bullets for engaging members, but I recently published a list of my favourite marketing tips for associations. If you’ve just clicked the link, or if you’re just about to, you know exactly how your members should feel (and exactly what they should want to do) after reading your next conference marketing piece.

Event Promotion and Twitter

Twitter is rapidly growing in popularity to engage your potential delegates for your upcoming event. When it comes to event promotion, it’s a great place to:

• Connect with other marketers and influencers
• Generate general buzz about your event
• Create conversations which in turn generate interest in attending your event

Here’s how it works (and some tips to help you along the way):

Create a Twitter Account
Create one for either your organization as a whole, or specific to your event (i.e. you can have a twitter account specifically for your National Conference & Tradeshow).  Do your best to stay away from using your own personal twitter account for this purpose, as those following you on a personal level may be confused about your event posts.

Creating your Twitter account, by including design elements your target market will recognize or will easily relate to.

Create brand recognition by using your organization’s logo, the logo of the event, etc.  You have the ability to customize your background as well – try to keep it consistent with your other branding material, visually appealing but not “cluttered”.  Ensure that when it is found, followers recognize it for what it is.

Create a Hashtag for your event (#eventname)
What is a Hashtag and how do you create one?  Its simple.  It’s a keyword or acronym with a pound sign in front of it.  Anyone can include it in their tweets.  Twitter users can search hashtags and save their search to follow conversations and updates about the event.

When creating a hashtag for your event, keep it simple.  Make it easily identifiable for your followers and short so that tweets can have the hashtag included.

To create one that is unique to your organization, you can research existing hashtags first to ensure it is not already in use, thus, causing confusion when promoting your event.

Ensure you are advertising the event hashtag in all other areas (membership emails, print materials, signage, etc) generate more Twitter chatter.

Encourage Tweets with the use of your Event Hashtag
Using the hashtag will engage members who are attending, and those who are not able to attend your event to be kept up to date on all of the action!

• Prior to the event:  When there is an update about speakers, sessions, sponsors, etc, tweet about it through your event’s Twitter account, and use the hashtag in the message.    Promote early registration deadlines (i.e #eventname register by Jan 15 and get $200 off conference fee), celebrate goals (#eventname just hit the halfway point for registrations), promote your sponsors (Its official! @sponsorname is hosting the opening reception at #eventname).
• During the event:  Encourage your delegates to tweet about sessions, start a Q&A by tweeting questions to presenters.  Request your presenters Twitter handles and promote them in the conference materials.  Ask them to tweet about speaking at your event.  Prior to commencing the presentation, encourage speakers to promote their Twitter handle and the event’s, so that questions can be directed. 
• Have someone monitor tweets with your hashtag and respond in real time at the event.  Though some organizers find this risky, display a feed of the tweets in common areas of your conference (or, if you can, in every session) to encourage users to keep the conversation going.  Yes, some delegates may tweet negative comments or may even diss the speaker.  But this is the ultimate audience feedback system!  Answering a negative tweet will show how you care about member engagement.
• Remember that those who have not been able to attend will be watching… so give them something to talk about!  Tweet findings, “quotable quotes”, photos of the event.  Those monitoring the chatter will re-tweet, meaning that your event will get more exposure.
• After the event:  Keep the conversation going!  Ask for feedback, suggestions on future topics, locations, etc.  to be posted with the use of your hashtag.

With over 380 million users, Twitter can be a great tool to help you engage delegates, sponsors, exhibitors and members at large.

Event Promotion and YouTube

Looking for a creative way to promote your event to the world?  Try YouTube.

With so many other social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) who serve to get information out to your members or connections, YouTube is a platform to publish video content to promote your events.

Here’s how it works (and some tips to help you along the way):

Start by creating your own YouTube channel
Your channel will serve as the central spot to publish your video content.  When creating a channel, you need to create an account with YouTube.  Tip: Use a corporate email address if you can (events@, etc) instead of a generic email address (i.e. yahoo, etc).

To help your potential delegates find you, ensure you align the name you give your channel with your company/organization.  There are opportunities to add channel tags (or, keywords) as well, so do your best to align those as well.

Make sure your fill out your profile.  Those who are searching you will be able to confirm that they have come to the right place.

Event Dates
This section (under Modules) can be used to promote the dates of your upcoming event.  When promoting an event, you can list here hey information such as a brief description, the dates of the event, the venue/location, and links to full event information & registration sites.

Create and post videos
Drive interest around speakers and sessions that will take place at your event.  To start, you can film someone within your events department, who would discuss the hot topics being covered, and any key points of the event that your delegates may be interested in.  In addition, you can continue the communication by asking a member or volunteer lead to discuss networking opportunities and social functions, and how much fun they had, etc.

If you can, ask your speakers/presenters to participate.  By submitting a 60-second video discussing what they will be presenting at the upcoming event, your speakers/presenters will be providing all potential delegates with a “snapshot” of what kinds of information they will be learning about while they are attending.

Capture your event on video
Many conferences are recorded these days.  Use these recordings as a marketing tool for future conferences, by showing potential delegates what they missed this time.

You can assign someone in your events department to be the “official” videographer – by asking for live feedback from delegates, or post-presentation interviews with the presenters.

You could also consider holding a contest, calling for delegates to record feedback, etc. on their mobile devices – as an example, the top 3 submissions would be used as a marketing tool for the next event, and maybe they could save on the registration fee for winning!

With over 3-billion daily views on YouTube, and a user-friendly platform to develop your own channel, event promotion with this media avenue, if done and managed consistently, will assist you in engaging your delegates.