The basic scenario of working with an event exists before, during, and after. If the event is a ‘one off’ you have a simpler model.

If the event is repeating you have a cycle of before, during, and afters that build into a trend.

Most events fail at realizing the first basic model and only construct the business processes around before and during.They create attendance, vendor, and sponsor value statements around two of the three cogs.

For event owners who produce repeat events, they often fall victim to error #1 as well.

The next major group of event owners typically adds a business model around the ‘after’ segment because they know that there is on-going conversation to attract attendees, vendors, and sponsors to the next event. In a good number of cases this model has a down time period where nothing is happening (with annual events there is typically 2-3 months of buzz followed by 9 months of silence.)

The core problem

The above processes simply describe an engine that isn’t firing on all cylinders. Even though the engine is paid for and the vehicle basically gets the job done, the team behind it is constantly having to push extra effort into starting a stalled car.

As event owners we need to realize the inefficiencies of working with partial business cycles and allowing ourselves to become stalled during the down time between events.

Bringing in the Right Ideas

Rather than think about social media in a ‘light and fluffy’ mindset thinking it is all about people on Facebook and Twitter talking about stuff, we need to think about it as a tactical tool that drives specific portions of our event.

Here are six ideas for using social media for your event business

1- Promotion

This is the most common category everyone talks about. You can use social media to engage with your audiences with an economy of scale and cost effectiveness. Promoting your event using social media is the hardest thing to do correctly. The high-value and ROI you can get for event promotion with social media is double-edged sword if you become overly promotional, do not engage your stakeholders, or forget your core value.

Additional Reading; Event Hashtags: a guide to using them

2- The Social Connection

People like to meet other people who are like them and who fill a need they have. Providing tools and processes to help your audience communicate and understand the other audience members is a sure-fire way to bring a lot of value to your event. From a personal experience level I’ve been to dozens of B2B events where the event paid for itself and was deemed invaluable because I made one professional/personal connection.

3- Sponsor Value and Revenue

If you are operating with a before and during model, you still have an ‘after’ phase to develop sponsor options around. Repeat events also have an opportunity to engage during the downtime between events. Social media allows events to produce digital versions of existing sponsor/vendor options, as well as new outreach lists, whitepaper sponsorships, interview slots, and other digital content creation.

Additional Reading; Trade Show Exhibits – Post Checklist 401

4- The Opinion

Social media has a huge listening element. Attendee, vendors, and sponsors all have different things to say for entirely different reasons. Social media provides a huge opportunity to collect the information and to make critical decisions that can make huge impacts to events in realtime and in the future.

Additional Reading; Finding people with social media insight

5- The Metrics

Social media creates a tremendous amount of data that can be aggregated, categorized, analyzed, and archived. This data provides invaluable information to adjusting event business models and is a high value asset for vendors and sponsors who are struggling to gain insight to general audiences.

Additional Reading; Audience Engagement & Community Management

6- Building the asset

All of the above elements build over time. If treated like a one-time project social media fades away, yet if you treat it as a foundational part of your event business it grows day after day, year after year into a priceless asset. If we simply think about a basic Twitter asset growing at 500 interested people a month, you would have 6000 engaged members by the end of the first year and nearly 20,000 at the end of the third year. If you did your job correctly, a small list like this could represent hundreds of ticket sales and dozens of sponsors.

Additional Reading; Event research – buzz about events

The bottom line

If you own an event, you simply can’t ignore the multifaceted benefits of social media.

Whether you own a small executive event with fifty attendees or are planning to attract 100,000 people for the next event trade show, social media requires you to look at new return-on-investment areas. The biggest impact points are usually hidden in the

Today we are going to focus on entirely free tools from Google Maps Indoors

Unless you are running a strictly virtual event, there are a lot of opportunities to include local information about your event. I’ve included several videos that help explain Google Maps Indoors (see below) that talk about some of the useful insights.

Keep these ideas in mind as you watch them

Your event / show floor plan.

The larger the show is, the larger your opportunity is. The simple ‘you are here’ type of mall display now gives you the ability to reach into the mobile space to attract, generate, funnel, and deliver leads to your event participants.  By integrating QR codes and mobile friendly websites for your event you also have the power to track, analyze, and improve your hourly, daily, and annual traffic patterns. This enables you to benchmark and improve both online and offline efforts.

Your Sponsor Adoption

The technology driving the trends behind today’s biggest opportunities are hidden in layers of change, mis-information, and basic workload. Marketing directors and outreach coordinators usually don’t have the time to keep track and apply these concepts. Keep in mind who you are dealing with, the business challenges they have ‘here and now’, and the types of frustration they have.

Your Audience

These tools have a double benefit. Your audience wants simpler and more effective ways of discovering useful information. Understanding these tools and applying them to your event allows your community to have a greater personal ROI.

Extend Beyond the Real World

A key thought is tying your event into mobile, social, and local applications. Google Local and Google Maps help to connect your event in the real world with the information that resides in the online world. This connection point is a key benefit for sponsors and vendors who are trying to reach specific audience members.

Reach Your Community

There are a lot of potential partners just outside the doors at your event. Keep local venues such as restaurants, lounges, and tourist sites on the radar by identifying them on easy to use mapping tools.

Check out the related videos about Google Maps Indoors

If you have any questions about connecting the real world and the digital realm, drop us a note or leave a comment below.

This is the key to audience engagement and community management.

In many circumstances the ‘before and after’ experience is driven by online conversation and community buzz.
People want to talk about things that interest them and they also want to discover like-minded people they can network with.

The problem is that communities will naturally adopt online conversations based upon areas of shifting importance.
This means that a lot of them will personally select how they use online conversation.

When trying to identify and engage these conversations online, some people use singular or plural variation.
Other people use completely unique style or inconsistently jump through ten different variations.

While this is a huge opportunity to engage them with, it is also a huge management challenge to “herd the cats” into defined conversation categories.

A real world example:

You are at an event and want to find the ‘perfect conversation’ with a lead decision maker.

Unfortunately there are 5,000 other people in the event hall having different conversations.
The roar of the crowd is almost deafening.

As you spend the next hour moving through the attendees you hear the same conversation five, ten, fifty times. You personally know that there are ten people looking for each other and having the same conversation but that they are having an identical problem locating them amidst the sea of conversation.

Why does this matter?

By understanding when a specific topic gains in popularity, event managers and businesses can cultivate conversations to increase the ability to convert on tactical opportunities. Locating the right  people and getting them properly engaged with your sponsors will produce an entirely positive event ROI.

Discovering Keywords and Conversations

If your business has an important keyword or hashtag that has relevant impacts for your business, make sure to check out all sorts of variations (plural, passive, compound, abbreviations, acronyms, etc) The graphic below examines variations of a keyword several days before and after an event. While all of the results centered around one keyword, certain variations had a huge difference in volume of usage and the length of time it was used for.

(This article doesn’t cover tools, but if you are looking for some free tools to play around with I recommend SocialMention, Topsy, and Addictomatic.)

Getting Local

Once we begin to think of keywords and usage patterns in the whole, we can examine finding business benefits by defining your community engagement by geography. By narrowing it down by geography we can apply tactical marketing campaigns, drive local sales/support, or engage influential leaders to support local communities.

The same conversational data on keywords above can be collected by internal systems (web analytics), external keyword tools (Google/Facebook/Twitter), and profile data on social services (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin API.) By combining this data you can see very interesting trends over time and can integrate the most popular conversations into on-going efforts.

You can see in the chart below how the yellow keyword is very sporadic and that the blue keyword plunged in the end of 2010. When I see this kind of data as a business professional I ask about the drivers and market shifts that caused the blue keyword to lose traction: did it get replaced by another popular conversation? did a marketplace pivot? what caused the drop in 2010?

As I keep those questions in my head I can then drill down into tactical ideas for the top states and cities around the the world. If the volume of usage is high enough there are regional campaigns that can be implemented.

Using The Strategic Mindset

There are many opportunities to plan around the typical live event, but one of the largest areas of benefit is examining other like-minded events to analyze trends and audience patterns that relate to your upcoming project.

If your event only happens once a year there is a lot of time in-between that allows behavior patterns to change. By looking at similar events we can have less gaps in our knowledge and tactically apply efforts to opportunities in the here and now. 

Any useful audience engagement tips you’d like to share?

What is a Hashtag?

Hashtags are words that have the hash symbol (“#”) attached to them. This highlights the #hashtag as an important part of the message. In a more traditional application you use Hashtags to note #classifications #categories and #similar topics. In many cases this allows you to talk about a brand or product and define what category the conversation should be in.

An example: I’m attending the Northwest Garden Show #RealEstate #Seattle

By using #realestate and #seattle as a hashtag, anyone who is also engaged in conversations about real estate or Seattle will find out about the Northwest Garden Show.

Why would I use event hashtags?

One of the primary reasons is that you need to manage your brand. If you don’t create an event hashtag for yourself, it is only a matter of time before your attendees create one for you. You run the risk of having a branded event hashtag that works with your overall theme such as #myevent2011 versus a community generated one like #nyc11doctors

A second reason is that you will most likely want to promote, monitor, engage, and analyze the people talking about your event online (I’ll talk about each of these later in this article.)

How can I drive tactical business results with event hashtags?

This is a core question that can drive a lot of your strategic thinking.

Depending on the event size you may have a single event hashtag or dozens of smaller topic hashtags.

Some examples for having multiple hashtags

Speaker & Panels
each topic, session, or track a different hashtag to help like-minded people have engaging conversations on specific topics.

Sponsor & Vendor
variations that include booth numbers or promotional codes (possibly for tracking sweepstakes or giveaways)

Customer Service or Emergency
Keep your main event hashtag conversation ‘clean’ by giving a direct way to get service and assistance.

How do I create value with event hashtags?

This requires that you think about the different audiences involved in your event. Each audience niche in your event could have a different type of value placed in using hashtags appropriately. The overall value is that you can nurture different conversations and keep a clean signal for specific topics. In many cases a general event hashtag can become contaminated with repeat statements like “I’m having fun at the #conference” or “great presentation at the #conference”

By categorizing hashtags for specific groups, you can create special areas of opportunity for:

• Attendees
• Presenters
• Sponsors
• Stage crew
• Performers
• Journalists
• Foreign languages

How do I get people to use my event hashtags?

One word: PROMOTION

You have to think about your event hashtags just like you would a telephone number.

Your online information should be listed within all of your materials. This should include your event flyers, vendor guide, attendee books, business cards, show signage, etc, etc.

You should also provide a method to get simple instructions that help attendees understand the value and usefulness of using the right event hashtags. This information can be communicated with a social media guide (preferably a printed flyer), through a web page with up to date information, and a mobile app (if you have one.)

Combining event hashtags with event interaction

If your event has any form of digital signage, various technologies exist for presenting the conversation on a screen.

Event hashtags can allows audiences to engage with themselves, people presenting information, and interested sponsors.

Check out options for displaying your information on plasma screens, jumbotrons, laptop computers, personal tablets, smartphones, and projectors.

GETTING TACTICAL

STEP 1 – choose your reason.
It is critical that you define why you are creating a an event hashtag. Your first reason should be to engage your overall audience and cultivate your online brand. Hashtags can also be used to engage audiences, crowdsource ideas,cultivate buzz, share resources, and form relationships. The more tactical you get, the more attention you should give to staying on topic when using that hashtag for communication. Hashtags should always be used to communicate relevant ideas and stay on topic.

STEP 2 – Research your audience and conversation
You don’t want to use an existing hashtag or confuse your audience with similar brands. You can confirm the usage of a hashtag by using Twitter search or Google search.
Take some time to research your current speakers, sponsors, and industry influencers to see if they are consistently using any topic based hashtags. This list of on-going conversation will give you an idea of what conversations are interesting and trendy to your event audience.

STEP 3 – Choose the event hashtag
Keep in mind that Twitter only has 140 characters. Keep it simple. Keep it short.
Don’t fall in love with it. Come up with alternatives and variations.
If you are going to use multiple event hashtags, try to keep a consistent variation and branding.

STEP 4 – Track and Measure it
There are multiple services that allow you to track conversations by hashtag. Tweetdeck is a free desktop application that allows you to sort conversations by a search field. Twilert allows you to track brand mentions.

STEP 5 – Coordinate it.
An essential part of using event hashtags is to work with the group that will be using it. If you make a general hashtag; work with attendees to use it. If you create a sponsor hashtag; create a plan for ROI. Have a basic description of the idea being implemented (or refer them to this article!)

STEP 6 – Cross promote the hashtag
Twitter and services like Widgetbox allow you to create ‘widgets’ that will display specific content that contains your hashtag. These widgets can be used in your web site, in e-mail campaigns, and digital signage.

STEP 7 – Cultivate and nurture
One of the key reasons for step 4 (track & measure) is so that you can see if and when a hashtag is being used (and by whom!)
Work with the interested parties to encourage an active and positive use of the event hashtag.

BONUS TIPS

• Never assume that everyone wants to communicate or engage with a hashtag. A hashtag is a tactic that is used to reach a specific type of audience. Provide multiple ways to engage with you attendees in a positive and professional way.
  
• You can combine aspects of event hashtags with QR codes and Short URLs. QR Codes can be printed on simple vinyl decals and placed through-out your event to highlight access to additional information. When someone scans the QR code it can take them to a web page of relevant conversation.
  
• Hashtag words can become a ‘trending’ topic on Twitter can gain extra publicity. By coordinating large groups of users to hold a conversation on a specific hashtag topic you can gain a substantial wave of exposure.
  
• Consistency counts. In order to track a hashtag or to become a trending topic you need to make sure that everyone involved is using the exact same #hashtag (all it takes is one digit being different and it doesn’t work!)
  
• Plan for an emergency. Have several optional hashtags that can be used during your event in case of emergency. This could include anything from a bonifide disaster to a customer service crisis.

One of my professional niches is understanding new types of security and privacy concerns regarding new media.
A common type of question people ask me revolves around exposing where people are located:

• Should I tweet it?
• Should I check in on FourSquare?
• Should I comment on the presentation?
• Should I tag them?

This article goes into some of the questions you should strategically consider for your event and ways that you can make it a great experience for everyone involved.

Questions you should ask

If you ‘protect’ something, does your absence make it vulnerable?

There are a lot of things we protect in our personal and professional lives.
Give some thought about how location based updates affect your family, friends, and co-workers.
Think about your house, your office, and the things you cherish.
Think about other people.

Are you an executive with high levels of responsibility and/or value?

Executives have a responsibility to everyone they oversee and manage.
Consider what it means to your employees, vendors, and peers when you reveal location and time based information. In very high profile cases, celebrities and executives may also be high value targets for political issues, hostage scenarios, or straight-forward criminal activity.

Does exposing your location also identify your routine?

If you consistently use social services, take the effort to use them in a way that doesn’t identify your daily routine.
Even if you like checking in at the corner cafe everyday at 5:15 – realize that it means you’ve publicized when and where you are a certain time everyday.

You probably don’t control who posts about you

Even if you make the conscious decision to avoid services that reveal your location, probability says that someone in your immediate social circle will consistently identify your location for you. This could be co-workers, family, friends, or absolute strangers.

A case example:

I often professionally go to networking events once a week as a speaker or panelist. I also visit several trade shows a month.

Even when I leave my phone off and my tablet computer in my bag,  I often come back to the ‘digital world’ only to discover multiple people saying things like “just had a great conversation with @BarryHurd in the coffee shop” or “waiting at the airport with @BarryHurd for our luggage.”

I also come back to a variety of photos of various events that have been tagged with my name: sometimes being uploaded in real-time before I even had a chance to say hello!

Educate Your Attendees

You’ve probably been at an event and seen a notice sign about “videography and photography currently underway, etc, etc.” – but have you ever seen a notice sign saying “your location is being broadcast, we hope you locked the backdoor to your house.”

In dealing with finance and banking professionals, celebrities, and other high-worth individuals: the potential for being victimized increases with the knowledge of where, when, and why they are in a specific location.

Photos and videos enabled by mass adoption of smart phones creates tremendous security risks if general safety steps are not taken.

Imagine the security risks of this tweet:

Or having a waiter tweeting:

While the example is a bit extreme, there are plenty of individuals who have reasonable requirements to maintain a certain level of privacy and security.

Setting Reasonable Social Expectations

There are reasonable and common sense expectations that multiple levels of a live event need to be educated on.
Most people don’t want to endanger other attendees or do anything inappropriate; they simply don’t know any better.

Some general expectations to consider:

Educate your attendees into asking simple questions

• Can I tag this with your name?
• Can I tweet about this?
• Can I share this conversation with my friends?

Post signage about times and areas that may be more restrictive on social broadcasting.

• After hour parties
• Executive suites & hotel rooms
• Specific closed door sessions

Provide a recommended safety delay to your attendees

• If your event ends Sunday night, ask attendees to post non-urgent updates on Monday.
• If you are planning an off-site after hours event, ask attendees to post non-urgent updates the next morning.
• If you have a special type of guest that shouldn’t be shared, notify attendees ahead of time or use special badges.

Make Balanced Decisions

People want to share experiences, communicate new ideas, and network at events.

You need to consider all the elements surrounding your event and the people who attend it to find a perfect recipe that balances enjoyment and safety.

Adopting general safety precautions and educating your community allows you to help attendees to make good decisions about what they do and when, why, and how they share it.

If you have any ideas about helping event professionals provide enjoyable and safe events, please leave any tips in the comments below.

Depending on your organization, the planning and budget requirements of a trade show could be owned by product managers, marketing directors, or general cross-departmental teams.

Unfortunately this means that many decision makers are perplexed by how much they should spend, where they should spend it, and what the expectations should be.

MarketingSherpa produced this great graphic detailing how companies think about marketing budget.
It helps put things in perspective:

An important part of this shows that many decision makers spend almost the same amount on trade shows as they do the entire web site or online business component.

For TradeShowSocialMedia: it is important to highlight because we service 8 of the 12 top cost areas through our multi-disciplinary teams. This allows us to maximize areas of opportunities that cross-over web design, trade show, and social media elements: while keeping an eye on marketing automation and lead processes.

Two important parts that didn’t get on the list

#1 Technology -  your ROI friend

Through-out hundreds of trade shows and all sorts of industries, we’ve noted a severe lack of investment in technology that has a focused return-on-investment. Many companies invest tens of thousands in trade show displays, yet fail to fill them with functional technology that aids business goals. (a common quote of our team is “it sure looks pretty, but what does it do?” )

#2 Training – the only thing you can’t forget

You can spend all the budget in the world on pretty floor displays.

All of that money will be flushed down the tube if you don’t take the time to strategically and tactically train your event staff.

This means that you need to have

• valid strategies in place to convert specific attendees to specific goals
• that you have designated a sales/conversion process to nurture your leads
• that you have designated employees with designated follow-up requirements
• that you have a method for tracking and analyzing what leads are important

Don’t forget, Trade Shows are complex recipes

One of the most critical ideas to keep in mind is that trade shows are multi-disciplinary. You can’t have a successful event experience with your trade show budget if you focus on one or two elements at the cost of the others.

Rather than think of the trade show budget comparison as something to compare against, use it as a simple checklist and ask yourself the question of “do we have this covered?”

If you don’t have an area covered properly, think about whether or not you can handle it in-house or need external support. By identifying these areas you can create a holistic event strategy and develop multiple areas of ROI.

While comparing what others are doing may provide some strategic insight, making sure you don’t ignore one of these categories accidentally will help you avoid dropping the ball at an event.

Do you have any helpful tips for spending your trade show budget?
Do you fall into some of the same budget ranges or are you different?

Our top three elements for a good trade show display

#1 Train Your Team

If there is ever a time for having a 30 and 60 second elevator pitch memorized, it is when you are manning your trade show booth. You should have two or three prospect types identified for your business. Examples prospect types could be consumer, wholesale, or industry press.

The FIRST thing your trade show display should support is the benefit statements around these core business prospects. Your booth team should be trained to make a friendly greeting and immediately ask “are you A,B,C, or other?”

Once you’ve identified what they are, give them the appropriate benefit statement and handle the following questions appropriately.

#2 Energy. Charisma. Optimism.

No one wants to engage with a boring booth staff. Attendees don’t usually want to engage with someone and start a conversation. Your booth staff should be polite, inviting, and professionally engaging.

This means that your team shouldn’t be going out for late night parties and show up the next day exhausted. You have a once in a lifetime chance to make a first impression and communicate clearly and accurately.

#3 The Follow-up Plan

If you don’t have a follow-up plan in place BEFORE the event, that fancy-dancy trade show display will have a drastically reduced return on investment.

This is the element that often gets forgotten after an event when team members become exhausted and days and weeks pass before follow-up contact is made with interested event attendees.

What do all three elements entail?

Your Team

Some tips for combining the best team elements to support your trade show display

#1 Pay someone else to setup/takedown the booth

In many cases you can find cheap, temporary labor at a variety of staffing firms. They don’t need to be rocket scientist or genius salespeople. They need to be able to lift boxes, operate a screwdriver, and plug-in equipment. A few hour of temp staffing can eliminate having your energy sucked out of you before the show even begins.

#2 Establish booth partners and friends

Reach out to the event organizer and coordinate two or three booth around you with teams you know.

If you don’t know any of them, reach out to them a few weeks earlier and introduce yourselves on a conference call and meet the night before for drinks.

By having friends around you that have casual familiarity with your team, everyone can agree on ways to find out what each other vendor is trying to accomplish. A lot of karmic goodwill can be shared with people that are just ten feet away.

#3 Hold short, repetitive contests with your team (and even include your booth partners/friends)

Try to hold a simple, yet friendly contest as a spur-of-the-moment reward for doing a great job. You want to provide a reason for your team to push just a little harder to be in an ‘Top of the Game” mindset.

If you work with two or three partners nearby, an impromptu competition amongst teams can open up some great team collaboration.

What are some of your tips for a great trade show display?

I believe that a functioning trade show display is not a display, but an experience.

It begins with this initial problem:

All companies are not brands.

• Brands are bigger than a company.
• Brands evoke a feeling, invite a relationship, give a promise.
• Brands make themselves something different.

Something different does not fit within the confines of a 10×10 trade show display.

Why am I saying this?

As communicators that are responsible for relaying our brand message at the event floor, event teams need to keep in mind that people do not come to trade shows to find out informational bullet points on a glossy brochure… they come to the event to experience satisfaction, leadership, innovation, and many other ‘feelings.’

One of those feelings is collaboration and community: the need to be included within a group of professionals that is doing things the right way.

The right way does not include:

• setting up a generic drop cloth on your pop-up table
• having employees sit down and look at soda cans
• having booth staff that can’t hold a basic conversation
• alienating your customers before they have the chance to be customers

The right way does include:

• trying new and inventive technology and techniques
• displaying character (trust, reliability, and reputation)
• offering guidance and insight (whether it drives the bottom line or not)
• defining success through failing gracefully (rather than falsely claiming perfection)

I realize the bullet points listed in “the right way” may cause some professionals to ask a lot of questions or even cringe at those thoughts. So many marketers try to create a fictional 10×10 box (or 40×40 if you are a big corporation) and claim perfection for everything within it. They create a fictional stage that seems like a musical on broadway… with proper lighting, stage tricks, and actors.

The truth isn’t always as sexy as fiction, but it does hold something that is impossible to falsify: integrity, honesty, transparency.

A business who can fail rapidly and has the character to pick themselves up gracefully will earn the respect of the audience. They may take a lump or two on the head, but in the long run they will have displayed something that can’t be forced into a 10×10 booth.

Why am I writing about the on TSSM?

A lot of our inquiries are from all sorts of companies wanting to explore digital tactics to enhance a trade show display.

One of the core problems with using social media and digital tactics is that it is NEW and applying the concepts tactically requires a commitment to leadership qualities and ‘failing gracefully.’

Why do I need to be able to ‘fail gracefully?’

When you enter a marketplace and attempt to disrupt an industry, you are introducing elements that haven’t been present before.

In many cases this idea revolves around the core products and services you offer at a trade show. When new media is applied on top of the existing level of change, you create dozens of unexpected ripples in the event.

Knowing how to spot these ripples and to have the character to fail quickly gives you the benefit to rapidly move through multiple benefit scenarios.

What is a benefit scenario?

A benefit scenario is best described by this example:

Imagine you are a retail store with two competitors. All three businesses decide to have employees stand at the intersection and lay claim to a corner.

They try different things ranging from glowing signs to singing clowns. Eventually someone moves into the open corner and a version of musical chairs ensues where everyone tries to identify ‘the perfect corner.’

After a few days one thinks that they have the secret sauce to winning.
The next day one of the other companies copies what they are doing and ‘one-ups’ them.
This goes on for days, weeks, and years.

Eventually all three businesses go bankrupt.
They didn’t realize the intersection was a bad place to be.

The winning forth business never openly engaged at the intersection with competitors. The fourth business never claimed success or even talked about what they were doing.

They simply failed at a dozen different intersections until they found the perfect one without any competitors.

Digital is about discovering new intersections

The digital evolution of events has forced competition for attention and interaction at temporary intersections (in many cases, literal intersections at the trade show floor)

New media allows organizations to analyze, research, apply, and evolve quickly. It accelerates the ability to learn, to fail quickly, to fail often, and to find success faster. At the end of the day it allows trade show displays at events to become both physical and digital manifestations that engage audiences where demand is highest and the competition the lowest.

The big question is whether or not you are capable of maneuvering your process to take advantage of the market opportunity.

What does this mean for your trade show display?

Before spending all of your budget on designing the ultimate visual experience, give some serious thought about where your audience is converging at different intersections.

You have to think physically and digitally, as well as emotionally. Your trade show display (i.e. experience) needs to meet the core demands of your target audience and enable them to locate you in a marketplace full of noise and empty sales promises.

1. 1. Don’t assume your audience knows what a QR code is.
   2. If your audience doesn’t use QR applications, don’t focus on QR codes.
   3. Always provide a short URL alternative (bit.ly is free)
   4. QR codes are not limited to one version. Use different codes to track different pieces of collateral.
   5. Use away-from-booth QR tactics. Think about lanyards, brochures, night clubs, hotel rooms.
   6. Encourage competition and entertainment. Scavenger hunts. Bingo Cards. Random Winners.
   7. Train your staff. If they can’t explain a QR code in 30 seconds, why have them in your booth strategy?
   8. Provide ‘click to engage’ functionality (appointment scheduling, info request, phone conversations.)
   9. Tell people what to expect when they scan a QR code.
   10. Make it enjoyable and fun.

BONUS TIP: make it social. When someone scans a QR code you should encourage with them to engage with you in the real world. Face-to-Face interactions are typically leaps and bounds more effective at generating a lead. Use the process of scanning a QR code to educate your event team to better understand who the person is, what they are interested in, and more effectively form a relationship with them.

THREE IDEAS TO CONSIDER

#1 Don’t waste that fancy booth space.

If you paid thousands of dollars to have a spiffy booth display and have it manned by friendly professionals don’t waste your time, budget, and energy convincing your live audience to engage using a smartphone.
Talk to them! A good conversation will always convert better than a computer screen!

#2 Your QR code audience may not be attending the event!

If an attendee has a smartphone in-hand, engage with them on the smartphone and realize that they are connected to hundreds of industry professionals not attending the show. One of the key value points of using QR codes is that it extends outside of physical world. (Don’t think physical, think digital!)

#3 Provide a value-to-click incentive.

Value-to-click is the idea that you have provided enought value, intrigue, or social validation to encourage someone to scan your QR code. If you haven’t created a situation that inspires someone to take action and click/scan your QR code, all you have is wasted collateral space with a black and white square.

FYI: This entire post could optionally use MS Tags as well. When weighing the choice between using QR codes or Microsoft Tags, understanding your audience is critical to your trade show success. In some cases you may find that one is preferable, that you should offer both, or neither.

Do you have any tips to share on using QR codes in your event plan?

Related articles by me:
QR Codes at Events
What is a QR code? (via barryhurd.com)

You Need Critical Mass, Start Early

The best communication strategies take weeks and months to properly implement. In order to maximize your online footprint, try to give yourself the most room to naturally grow into the results you want.

It is especially important that you give yourself time for exploration and conversation with your audience. The more time you give yourself, the more options you have for testing different ideas and making sure your event maximizes on low-hanging benefits.

Setup the Basics

For starters you should define your brand on the common sense social networks that are used by your audience.

Setting up all your profiles requires a consistent brand message, a short bio, a long bio, a profile image, a handful of ‘related images’, and access to any other content you may have (whitepapers, videos, press releases, etc.)

Try to collect 90% of the materials you need and get to work. Don’t delay your digital campaign while you wait for one or two extra items to be created; the benefits lost to inaction is not worth the wait.

Top Recommendations

Search Optimization

When setting up the above profiles make sure you keep in mind that these profiles will show up in search results via Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter.

As you begin to setup profiles, use the most likely search term for your event as the profile name (without the year or date)

If your event is called “Trade Show Expo 2011″ try to optimize for “Trade Show Expo”

If you use the year or date attached to your profile name, you force yourself into starting a new account each event cycle and beginning from scratch.

Search engines will reward you with more 1st page results for your event name based on the number of profiles you maintain. A strong first page presence affects the perception of event attendees, potential sponsors, and other interested parties.

• it “controls” the lead funnel and prevents interested parties from clicking on irrelevant search results.
• it establishes new areas of communication to refine your tactics and narrow in on specific audiences.
• it allows you to engage people with the tools they choose to use (not the ones you choose for them.)
• it provides an on-going and growing event asset that builds with time.

Social Optimization

When creating social accounts you need to give thought to your social conversion strategy. The whole point of having your event be present on digital channels is to drive business results across your business.

Having ROI with Social sites requires that you know “when, where, why, who, and how”

The easiest way to do this is with some basic online analytics and foundational marketing strategies.

Top Recommendations

• Google Analytics: provides essential visitor data and you can also track conversion funnels and social traction.
• Bit.ly: provides short URLs to track ads, radio spots, collateral pieces, and social traction.
• Addthis or Sharewith: these services track the number of times a specific item is shared online.
  Both services offer free packages that are great for understanding what is ‘hot or not’

Sponsor & Vendor Optimization

Take the entire 101 Setup from above and put on your ‘sponsor hat’ to think about how preferred partners need to be educated. Collect a spreadsheet of all your events partners and apply some strategic thought for how everyone can have a win-win event.

Event Optimization

REMEMBER: The entire purpose of your 101 setup is not to examine your social media and digital presence solely from a marketing perspective, but a holistic business perspective.

Many event managers fall into a marketing abyss trying to justify using digital communication to drive attendance and ticket sales (which can be good things if done right), but they fail to maximize returns on using social media to engage audiences, plan effective content schedules, or provide supply to significant industry demand.

When thinking about your digital 101 strategy, try to envision the opportunities and risks asssociated with several sections of your event. Each one of these niche areas of your event will reveal a nugget of wisdom that leads you to making better longterm business decisions.

What are useful tips you’ve ran across for planning a digital event strategy?