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!

Image courtesy of ON24

This is a guest post by Cece Salomon-Lee. She is the author of PR Meets Marketing blog and senior marketing communications manager with ON24. While her company recently launched a virtual show product, the thoughts expressed in this posting are not representative of ON24 and are personal views of the author.

I recently read Julius’ post about the 5 signs that you event is Web 1.0. Since virtual trade shows are starting to emerge as another technology offering for event planners, I offered to write a post about this. Consider a virtual show as a lighter version of Second Life.

They’re not exactly an immersive 3D environment. Rather it’s like take a webcast to the next level with a mix of social networking, online presentations, and booth staff.
Virtual trade shows seem a natural way to reduce costs while meeting the exceedingly difficult task of generating results with your marketing programs. But ONLY if you go in knowing what to expect.

There are some distinct differences to be aware of if you plan to participate in or plan a virtual show:

Interactions are Different
Whether it’s catching the person’s eye or approaching a person who’s just entered your booth, you can visually determine when and how to approach someone who comes to your booth at a face-to-face (F2F) event. When you’re online, these physical cues are not available. Unlike F2F, you don’t want to start personal chats with everyone who comes to your virtual booth. Rather, most tend to initiate a chat with you first or engage in a group chat at the booth.

“Staff” the Booth
While interactions in the booth are different it’s very important to “staff” the booth. You would never leave a booth empty in between sessions, right? The came applies for “staffing” a virtual booth. The difference is that you’re doing it from a computer. It’s important that designated individuals are monitoring the show during peak work hours, especially when live presentations are being held.

The difference? You’re not stuck staying at the booth for 10-12 hours. Rather, the shifts can be 1 or 2 hours long - as long as SOMEONE is available to answer any questions or chat with attendees. And since it’s online, you can have more than one chat at a time.

The Show Lives On
Most virtual shows have 1-3 days of “live” content. Meaning that webinars or online presentations are happening on a specific day or time. While most people tend to visit the virtual show during this time, remember, all the presentations, booths and documents live on after this initial rush.
No - you don’t have to be in booth staff purgatory forever. It just means you have to be aware that people may drop by the show occasionally. Be sure to update information and/or presentations to reflect what is accurate for your company.

Conclusion
Virtual trade shows won’t be for everyone. However, it is something to consider if you’re faced with limited budget and reduced travel requirements, while bringing together a group of people around a specific topic. Granted, you may not be networking around the golf course, but you can raise a virtual glass in the communications lounge instead!

PerfectTablePlan helps you in making wise seating choices, which you obviously don’t want to get wrong.

Andy sent me over a complimentary copy of PerfectTablePlan (now what a great way to be nice with me) for me to play and I loved it.

You know I am a fan of free software and possibly open source as well, but what the hell PerfectTablePlan is not just a small gadget, it actually helps and it is extremely cheap.

I don’t like guys charging hundreds of dollars and selling air, on the same perspective I am fine with those trying hard to make a living and passionate about something.

What I liked:

- Auto wizard once you have set the type of relationship between guests.

- Attention to details. Because it’s all about that. Being able to manage RSVP as well is key.

- Intuitive platform. You do not have to be Linus Torvalds to make it work.

- Importing feature. Import your spreadsheet and erase Excel from your system.

- Tutorials. They got very easy tutorials to guide you. It takes less than an hour to understand all the features

I found the program not buggy at all and funny. If you are planning a wedding you will love marking two people who are not meant to seat next to each other with a death-sign. Hilarious.

Regardless the pitching and promotion, which I am not fond of anyway, they have been very nice and seem very passionate and gentle. That definitely deserved our attention.

PerfectTablePlan Website

Moreganize allows you to share polls, surveys and to do’s so you can make everyone attending your meeting happy.

We recently featured Gathergrid and pretty much loved the idea of being able to question your attendees to work out the best time to meet.

Moreganize pushes the concept even further introducing shared to do’s, polls and surveys.

We are all facing RSVP issues nowadays and as the calendar gets crowded we definitely want to make sure that our meeting is going to be a success.

We were impressed by the ease of registration of Moreganize, which ticks off the annoying “I have to register to another service” thingy.

Here are few examples of what you can do with the service.

- Survey
- To do List
- Opinion poll

Link to Moreganize

Photo by: luc legay

The latest posts have talked extensively on how it is increasingly important to integrate twitter in events. This post answers the whys and hows.

I was recently at ad:tech London and complained on how they did not integrate twitter during the event, although a lot of people attending the event were twitting about it. Last weekend I attended BarCampLondon5 and @cyberdees and @cianw, members of the eBay organization, showed me how to embed the service.

What is twitter?

Why you need to integrate twitter in your event?

- Creating @eventname will help you in communicating with your attendees and collect early feedback about your choices
- Using @eventname to talk about the event will help in actually promoting the event in the community and get more sponsors
- Telling people to use #eventname will help to group the talks about your event under one tag. Hashtag as well as @eventtrack aggregate events by #eventname. It will be then easy to track discussion, feedback and user experience.
- Live twitting, the ability to see on one screen the live twits during an event, helps twitterers to recognize themselves and network more efficiently.

How do you integrate twitter in your event?

- Use a large monitor connected to a computer
- Download Adobe AIr and TwitterCamp
- Make sure that the screen can be read easily by attendees

This is how they did it at BarCampLondon5

Comments and suggestions

Have you used twitter at your event? Then please share your experience.

Setting the time for an event can be a bit of an hassle. Coordinating the needs of everyone involved is a tedious job and there are not many tools to help.

Gathergrid helps in polling the best time in an elegant fashion.

How does it work?

Needless to say that once you have found out your time amiando would be the best method to host your event.

Have a look and tell me what you think!

Link to Gathergrid

Photo by: fr3d.org

We really love the iphone and all the cool things we can do with it. As I said in this previous post, it helps me in being organized, do things online and keep track of my contacts in an very effective way. If you don’t have the device you may be missing out on few opportunities.

I felt that the previous post was not complete so there you go.

5. Eventful

Do you know eventful at all? Well if you are a planner you need to know this service. It’s the largest world collection of events. You can to list your event there and see what is going on in your area. It’s social and web 2.0. If you don’t list events there you may be loosing potential attendees. Urgent!

Download Eventful application for Iphone

4. Locly

First great thing is that it integrates with the above.
Second great thing, if you have GPS you can get an awful lot of great services in your area, from twitterers to venues. If you are under pressure and cannot afford not to know about your area, you really need to get this app. Futuristic!

Download Locly application for iphone

3. Zenbe Lists

I already discussed to do lists. In a phone environment, these are crucial.
Evernote is your personal application to do that. If you wan to share to do’s with colleagues or staff, this is the app you are looking for. The recipient does not need a phone, an iphone or an app, they will get your list on their email. Marvellous!

Download Zenbe Lists application for iphone

2. A Personal Assistant

I love services that consolidate instead of fragmenting.
I don’t want another account, another password, another username. I already have done a lot of work in getting a social profile, now I want it all in one place. That’s what this app does. Helpful!

Download A Personal Assistant application for iphone

1. AirMe

The iphone stimulates you to take pics and share it with the world.
This is a nice and fun activity, but it can be productive as well. When you need printed documents to be seen by your colleagues, your nice device can become a built in scanner and fax. AirMe allows to share your pics easily and possibly geotagging them in services such as flickr. Remarkable!

Download AirMe application for iphone

If your favourite app is not listed, comment now! We want to get busy reading your suggestion.

Photo by: psd

This blog started as a hobby in April 2007. At the time there were very few blogs about the subject. A year and a half later I find myself with a new job thanks to this blog and I am very happy to share that with you.

Without the thousands of readers and the popularity of the community built around the blog none of this would have been possible and the biggest ‘thank you’ goes to You reading this post.

Long story short, I got in touch with the great guys at amiando and I am now in charge of supporting the product, both online and in the UK. I would have never worked for a product that I do not believe in and amiando really nailed the issues with event platforms, firstly by listening to its customers.

What does that mean for the blog? Nothing much.

This blog remains advertising free. I’ll be talking about amiando when there will be a reason to do so and with the usual tone.

I invited you in the past to join the Linkedin Event Planning and Management Group. Most of the merit of this achievement goes to the group. I strongly invite you to join as there are other opportunities out there and in time of recession you definitely want to find new ways to improve your career or your business.

If you want to meet me to discuss further the matter, I’ll host a networking event called ‘Linked in London‘ where top professionals from Linkedin will participate, come along and mention this post, we’ll have a chat.

Thank you

Julius

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

[BarcampLondon4] Julius Solaris - The Quest for a complete open source event management solution from Melinda Seckington on Vimeo.

As always you are more than welcome to leave your comment.