Silent Dance viral event promoted via Facebook

Facebook Events is a free yet effective application that can be used to promote parties, marketing events, product launches and other significant happenings.

The format of the Event is similar to Facebook Groups – there are wall feature where invited members can post, discussion boards, photos, links and videos. Invited friends can be made admin officers in the event page which in turn gives them the opportunity to invite other people in their own networks.

Here are 10 tips for you:

1. Select your guest list

Remember to be appropriate. It´s no use sending out a London party invite to folk in Singapore.
Targeted. Relevant. Respectful.
Make sure you follow these 3 criteria when selecting your invitees. It also helps if you really know them, rather than some person you have never met or talked to. You are hovering dangerously close to spam if you invite your whole database.

2. Don´t go event crazy!

No one wants to receive a gazillion different invites every week. Easy cowboy. Keep events to one a month so you are not abusing this application or your friends’ ´patience!

3. Use a catchy headline

A high open rate and high response rate all depend on how you sell in the offer. If you´d like some help with writing catchy headlines check out this awesome presentation from Times Online Editor Tom Whitwell.
If your event includes a high profile celeb or venue make sure it´s featured in the subject title. You cannot change the title afterwards so maybe practice in draft first.

4. Piccies

Make sure it’s eye-catching and inclusive and connected to the event itself. If you do not include a photo Facebook substitute a giant question mark, ugggh!

5. Compelling content

Write on the wall, start and seed some discussion threads (ask friends to participate to get the ball rolling), add some videos if you own them and as many relevant photos as you want.

6. Invite, invite, invite

Make sure you send a PERSONAL note in the invite. Something friendly, inviting, warm and informative. What´s on offer? Why would this be good for the invitee to attend? Remember the KISS principle: Keep it Simple, Stupid! You can always run some tests too, trying out different copy to different segmented groups. Make sure the country and time zones are prominent.

7. Snip, Tweet or Tiny it!

You may like to use snip urls to send people to the event page or external landing pages or a website. These are memorable urls to replace long Facebook ones. Then make sure you tweet this URL and post it on your status update, profile info, groups, notes or fan pages. Tweet (for Twitter) will even track response so you can measure your event response.

8. The Secret is in the Follow Up

Comment on your event wall yourself and when people reply and RSVP go to their wall and send them a thank you for coming / or sorry you can´t make it note. You can also leave comments on their added photos, videos, discussion threads or wall posts. This all goes into the Newsfeed. One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your Facebook event is to sending follow up emails to attendees.

9. Maintaining Interest long-term

Facebook currently has millions of members and thousands of event pages. A new event gets created in just a matter of minutes. This poses a challenge on how you can maintain interest on your event. You have to make sure that your friends are aware of your events with enough notice in the short term but do not zone out in the long-term. Update your events regularly. Post a new blog entry.

10. How to avoid spamming warning/alert to your Facebook account

You definitely don’t want your Facebook account to be flagged for spamming. It may take several weeks before your account is reinstated or worse, it will have a lifetime ban which leaves you no choice to but to create another one. LIMIT your seeding. Avoid sending email messages with the same content all the time. Try Social Ads and Marketplace or comment on Birthdays.

A little bit more indulgence. Hard days of researching to bring you effective tools for your event planning business or career.

Download them on your PC, ipod, pda and read them. I am sure you will get inspired and remember that every little bit counts.

Management

1. Practical Project Management
2. Event Management Tips and Guidance for Success
3. A Project Management Primer or “a guide to making projects work (v2.0)”

Planning

4. Event Planning Checklist
5. Event Planning Guide – Successful Meeting and Convention Planning
6. Inclusive and Accessible special Event Planning

Wedding Planning

7. Wedding Planning Workbook

Fundraising

8. Fundraising Guide for NGOs
9. Volunteer Management Practices and Retention

Networking

10. The 10 Mistakes We Make at Networking Events and How to Avoid Them
11. Smart Networking: End the Resistance, Prepare for Success and Get 24/7 Results Without the 24/7 Effort

Marketing

12. The Effects of Sponsorship and Experience on Customer Attitudes
13. How to Write a Marketing Plan
14. The New Rules of Viral Marketing : How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free
15. Let’s Talk. Social Media for Small Businesses

EventOrb is a nifty event marketing service that allows promoters to do a number of things such as:

- Create unlimited events
- Add photos from the event before or after it has taken place
- Add videos of the event
- Search for events all around the world by proximity, date, time of day or category

They recently re-launched their event calendar, a great service that allows promoters to push event marketing even further, let me quote from their blog:

….So we decided to take our event calendar to the next level by allowing you to create a concise version of an event and even upload a flyer – all of this, without leaving the calendar page. When you’re done, “presto”, your event magically appears on the calendar.

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Link to Event Calendar – EventOrb

CitySocialising is a great local service to help beating the personal barriers that prevent you from getting a better job, improving your social life, being active. Apart from that, it is an awesome threat to traditional event professionals.

Jo is organising Sunday lunch Hampstead and walk and has invited you to attend.

Graham is organising 18-20s west end drinks! and has invited you to attend.

Kelly is organising Cocktail tasting class and has invited you to attend.

I don’t know who Jo, Graham or Kelly are but hey, these events are cool! Usually these kind of mail makes it very quickly to my Spam folder but in this instance I just can’t do it. The events are very relevant, targeted on my area and to my needs. What if I’ll get a special invitation tomorrow to an unmissable event?

What is it?

I had the chance to have a look at how Sanchita, the CEO, explains the reasoning behind CitySocialising.com:

The idea for CitySocialising came from our research into the social requirements of professionals living and working in UK cities. We found that a huge percentage of those in their 20s and 30s were particularly interested in meeting people in London and expand their circle of friends, and identified that this was because:

- There’s a higher likelihood of people in this age group relocating to new cities for work or with partners, arriving with none or few friends in the area.
- Existing friends are more likely to be settling in relationships or moving away in their 20s & 30s, meaning that finding new friends to socialise with is more appealing.
- Social lives can become stale, or social circles dissipate after relationship breakdowns, and opportunities to meet new people are reduced.
- Increasing demands at work allows less time to organise the social lives that suit them.

I can immediately tell you this is not like Meetup.com.

Well, first of all you need to pay to attend members events. At the very beginning I thought this was not a good idea. 30K members in the UK answered my question though. Money is indeed a good way to test motivation and they priced very well.

Secondly they select event hosts in their user base.

Why should you care?

- If you got out from the “I am a professional planner and there is no one as cool as me, or if there is, I got better shoes” attitude, you realized your competition is now users. If you got skills you can make your way into whatever community, if you don’t … well, if you are still reading, I am sure you do!

- You should explore the pricing. I told you free is the new black, almost free is fine, giving the perception it is for free relying on an upfront payment it’s interesting.

- If your brand is out of ideas and you don’t know how to develop existing as well as new relationships, follow this suggestion. Throw your Kotler in the garbage because things are changing fast and only the skilled are taking advantage. Do your research, sponsor user generated events and you will develop intimate connections with your customers.

Link to CitySocialising.com

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The horrible economic trends as well as the impressive movement of user generated events is challenging the traditional scheme of paid events.

If you charge for your events you may soon be in real trouble. If you charge a lot for your events you are probably already facing tough challenges.

The Economy

Pretty straight forward. There are not enough money to be spent on events as before. Companies buying tickets for your conferences are now hesitating on such expenditure. There is simply not the disposable income there used to be. As simple as that.

The Technology

Online meetings are now preferred to conferences. Linkedin/Xing is now preferred to your 3000£/$/€ networking event.

User Generated Events

Meetups, BarCamps, unconferences and the like are now offering free alternatives to your paid events. Getting together a location and asking people to pay for their drinks is now accepted. Nobody wants to mix any more with sponsors, stalls, banners and so forth. Meetups are run by users and most of them are not sponsored. The conventional infrastructure around events is shaking.

Scarcity

You cannot rely any more on scarcity.

I don’t have to wait for big exhibitions to come along in order to network with top professionals. It’s all coming to my city and for free, possibly on a monthly basis.

Now, how do you deal with that? How do you compete with free, zero, nada, niet, niente?

Innovate

You will soon realize that if you manage events conventionally, the demand will drop sensibly.

Few tips.

If you use social media and social networks, if you know what twitter is, if you integrate sponsors gently and wisely, you will definitely find new ways to engage and make a profit.

If you think this is not going to happen and you feel safe where you are, start reading another blog!

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- Social Networking Sites for Conferences
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- Social Networking: What is it?

Many people lately have been asking me to promote their events on social networks. My response to most of them is this post.

Social Media and social networks now offer great potential to cut costs on event promotions. Social media and social networks are just buzzwords to gain your attention.

Well now that I do have your attention I’ll tell you how to do it.

1. Linkedin Q&A

Linkedin has a Q&A section. A lot of marketers are using it to push their own conference/event or to get sponsors. Most of the people ask “Who is attending eventname ?”.

Then in the description they will go for paragraphs stating how the conference is going to be great and how you can’t  miss it. I did it myself. Results were appalling and I felt pretty idiot about it.

My suggestions;

- Be engaging in the question. If Frank Sinatra is performing, be catchy and ask “Would you like to meet Frank Sinatra?”.

- Target the need of attendees. If you don’t have great performers or if your objective is different, you want to make sure to be relevant. “Would you like to network with top professionals?” “Come and join us for an entertaining night at eventname”

- Offer something. Announcing is cool, but what’s in it for me reading? Promo codes, discounts, competitions should be part of this process. If you are restating your press release just use different media, it’s not gonna work here.

- Forward the question to those in your network from the event area or within the relevant industry. If you have a small Linkedin network you may want to read this post.

2. Blogs

You probably haven’t noticed that there are plenty of bloggers out there who offer promo codes on their blogs. It’s probably the oldest model to promote events and web 2.0 has revamped it.

How do you get to bloggers?

- Make sure you do your research and contact opinion leaders.

- Double check that they are already doing it. If they don’t do advertising (such as me), they won’t be happy of your pitches.

- Try to understand the point of view of the blogger, display interest for his/her posts and do your homework.

- Be relevant with the reward. Money is not necessary the best way to reward opinionated people.

- Check the Google Page Rank to optimize indexing

3. Mobiles

Hey I am sure you have some advertising budget there. I mean it can’t always be for free.

If so, a little bird told me that iPhone users are great targets.

- AdMob is doing great in integrating advertising in most of the iPhone applications. It is very relevant and personal.

- I also love the way The Deck is integrating ads in Twitterrific, a popular iPhone application for Twitter.

If money is not an option:

- I suggest you publish your event on Eventful. Eventful does integrate with applications such as Where! that displays events close to you, based on your GPS location. GPS is the social networking of the near future and you cannot afford to ignore it.

4. Upcoming

I can’t believe you don’t know Upcoming!

If you are still using direct mail to promote your events, it will proove ineffective shortly.

Upcoming is a strong candidate to become the platform where you publish your events. Eventful is great, but Upcoming has the Yahoo! power to push events socially and make them relevant for a number of people.

- Publishing your event on Upcoming comes at no cost and a 9yrs old kid is completely capable of doing it.

- You can promote your event within Groups and by choosing relevant tags.

- You can also see how many people saved the event to their calendar to manage demand.

5. Facebook

Ok, you know I am not the biggest fan of Facebook, but I feel very stupid ignoring 90+ Million users. Your target should be somewhere in that figure!

- You have an event section on your Facebook profile, as always don’t be lazy and fill it up in every part. Upload logos, pics and videos from previous or related events.

- The social component is very important. As for the Linkedin example I suggest you send the event to your friends and invite them to spread the word. Now, I am aware a lot of people use Facebook for their personal contacts. I have no particular issue with that, although you are missing out on the gigantic proportion of people doing business via Facebook.

I suggest you keep your personal life somewhere else if you want to be out there and get something out of social networks. My approach is to keep my personal stuff offline, full stop.

If you feel all of the above is not enough, feel free to contact me and we’ll discuss it further. If you have your opinion about it, as always, comments are now open!

Photo by: Cristiano Betta

Smart brands are tackling Meetups to get targeted audience and generate buzz.

I already talked about using Meetups to target your audience and create relevant experiences. Last night Smirnoff provided me a case study and possibly a good review.

The London Bloggers Meetup is one of the most vibrant Meetups of the city. Andy Bargery manages it in an exceptional way.

A great mix of professionals, creative people and hobbyists gather monthly to exchange opinions about their passion.

Several brands have taken advantage of such great mix in the last months, to name a few Berocca and Stella Artois.

Last night Smirnoff displayed a great way to engage on a very personal level.

Apart from free drinks , which are obviously more than welcome, they introduced cocktail classes. The bartender customized the drink according to your blog and your persona.

The location was amazing and the PR agency did extremely well.

Smirnoff was very gentle and did not push the night or show a “do this/do that attitude”. The atmosphere and level of engagement raised to the roof.

Some bullet points for you to enjoy:

- Engage on a personal level
- Free drinks are cool but make me learn something
- Spoil me as an intelligent person and according to who I am
- Be gentle, don’t push the night
- Use Meetups to target opinion leaders, organizers are eager to get sponsors.

Vote: 8,5

If you ever attended a marketing class, course, degree you probably heard of Everett Rogers and his book “Diffusion of Innovations”. He synthesized very well the level of adoption of new products and categorized the adopters in groups. You can see the graph resulting below:

Source: Wikipedia

It is pretty straightforward and gives you great insights about who you will probably deal with at your next event.

Applying Rogers’ Bell Curve to Events

Events are by definition a new product. Although you may have a recurring events, the intangible, co-productive component of the service will make every event unique and thus new to the perception of the customer.

This model applies to events that last over time (4 days+), although you can definitely apply the same model to say registration process at a given event.

Tension

The element I want you to focus on is tension. Positive tension is key to successful events. Call it passion, motivation, teamwork, drive.

Think about the events you attended in the past. Could you feel the staff particularly helpful, aware of what to do, experienced and collaborative. This is the customer perception of tension.

What usually happens with tension

The image below shows the level of tension and its behavior during the planning and execution of an event, next to the Rogers’ graph.

If we look at the Planning section of the graph, it will be easy to note how the level of positive tension tends to increase, reaching its peak at the beginning of an event.

After the peak, the level of motivation starts a steep descent. This is due to several factors coming in. The staff is tired of repeating the same processes everyday and the overall motivation organically drops.

There are two issues with that

- The level of satisfaction is profoundly linked with the above. Therefore the less motivation, the less the customer satisfaction.

- Only Innovators and Early Adopters will experience your peak. This means you performed at your best with only 15% (and possibly 2.5%) of your customer base.

With goods and tangible products you can afford to address your efforts only to these people. They will talk positively about your product and serve as hooks for the Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.

This scenario does not apply to events

Events as intangible services do not stay the same over time.

In cheap words, you need to keep it up all the way to the end.

You cannot afford to miss out on the 75% of your customer base. You need to show them a great level of performance.

A new model

Here is how it should look like:

As an event manager you need to make sure the positive tension of the team stays at the same level for the whole event. It doesn’t matter whether you are managing a 3 months display or a 4 days exhibition. The customer paid for that and expects to get what was promised and possibly more than that.

If you allow the tension to drop, it will be like selling perfectly working Iphones to 15% of your customers and models with cracked screens to the rest.

How to keep the tension steady

- Design shorter shifts.

- Work carefully during planning and make sure everyone (this includes you) knows what to do if things go wrong.

- Do not stress staff too much during the first part of your event. Do not apply pressure and don’t get overwhelmed by the need to succeed.

- Stimulate your staff when they do not expect it. If the staff is responding to a large number of customers do not apply pressure during these moments. Observe and evaluate, only after suggest improvements.

- Treat every customer with the same level of service.

Photo by: perhapstoopink

I know sometime this blog gets too techie. Open source, online platforms etc. For those who don’t want to struggle with complex platforms and so forth here are 5 free templates to use with Microsoft Excel and Open Proj.

WBS, Gantt and Budget. All in one

Download OpenProj and get this template I prepared for you.

Event Toolkit

Are you unsure on what to bring with you at your next event. Be it a wedding or a wine tasting tour you will find a great collection here.

Wedding Work Breakdown Structure

An all time favorite. WBS is a must for weddings.

Event Budget

A simple budget template from Microsoft

Marketing Campaign

A good template to track your marketing campaign for Excel

For more have a look here

I talked in the past about trying to find an open source, free and complete alternative to expensive EM software.  Well Amiando it’s the closest solution to that. They have released a new version of the already great platform. I must admit it kicks asses, to use an allegoric phrase.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think an open source solution would be great but these guys did exceptionally well.

Who should use Amiando?

Mostly those working with events up to 400 people, both professional and not. If you don’t want to bother yourself with messy accounting and looking for a straightforward solution, it does not get any better than this, should you organize a party, a meeting or a conference.

Flexibility

They created a module system in which you add the modules you need. That answers to one of the most painful issues with events. Every event needs different organizational tools. The platform is flexible enough to accommodate very different needs.

Ticketing

They started with the ticketing service and then expanded on that. They addressed the major issue with Paypal. A lot of organizers had troubles with using Paypal for ticketing. They keep Paypal as an option, but they developed their internal payment system in which they take care about everything, invoicing and International VAT charges included. Wow.

Web 2.0 and Social integration

Finally I don’t have the feeling of being in 1997 while looking at an online platform. These guys nailed the concept of integration with Social Media and Networks. You can actually add Youtube videos or Flickr photos. If you use Facebook you are pretty much used to that but in our field we are talking big news! You are actually able to share information on major social networking websites, get buttons to promote your event as well as

Support

There is a free of charge number to avoid mess ups.

Directions

Very easy just add the address of the location and a Google map.

Amiando Website