-
Integrating Event Marketing and Social Media
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
We've written before that social media is not a strategy, it's a vehicle with which to enact your strategy. An important part of many companies' marketing strategy is event marketing, which focuses on face-to-face interaction by attending, sponsoring and speaking at trade shows, industry meet-ups, etc. But even though the focus is face-to-face interaction, events are also a great opportunity to extend the lifetime value of the event by correctly integrating social media. Here are three ways that you can easily incorporate social media into event marketing:
Utilize Hashtags on Twitter
Hashtags are a favorite tool of conferences and event organizers, they enable Tweets about the conference or event to be organized and searchable. When an event has a hashtag, use it, follow it, and get in on the conversation. By establishing yourself as a thought leader, you will gain valuable followers who will spread your ideas and content in the future.
Health Decisions, a clinical research organization (and one of our clients!) took hashtags one step further last week when they attended Biotech 2010, a conference to unite the Southeast life science comnunity. They changed their website for the event to include a Twitter feed of Tweets with the conference's designated hashtag (#biotech10).
Health Decisions turned their website into a destination for people at the conference by converting their website into an aggregator of relevant conversation, while making it simple for visitors to begin following them on Twitter. The website update also let normal visitors and prospects of the site know that Health Decisions was at the conference and what was going on at the conference at that time.
Blog about the event
Just because the event is over doesn't mean the conversation is. A well-written and opinionated blog post can move the post-event conversation to your website. After the Internet Summit in Raleigh this past fall, we wrote a blog post recapping the ups and downs of the summit. The post had several positive results including:
1) It garnered over 225 views, meaning that even though we did not sponsor or present at the summit, we got the eyeballs equivalent to a keynote speaker.
2) It established us as not just attendees of the summit, but also knowledgeable and analytical listeners of those who did present.
3) Arguably most importantly, we still have an SERP rank of 3 for "Internet Summit in Raleigh", which is great for long tail and could be really helpful during the summit next year.
Contribute to others' social media early and often
Social media is at its best when it is social. Well before you even get to the event, read and comment on other attendees' blogs and websites, start following people who Tweet about the event, and begin conversations on the event's Facebook page. Think of it as pre-networking networking.
By doing these things, in addition to showing knowledge and interest in the industry, you'll have something concrete and engaging to talk about when you meet these people in real life and get to put a face on that Twitter profile pic.
What others ways could you integrate social media into event marketing? What's worked well and what didn't?
-
Big Relaunch of the GetHiFi.com Site
Joel Sutherland
Joel Sutherland leads operations at NMC where he has launched over 250 sites and served as lead developer on the company's CMS which serves millions of unique visits each year. Joel has an Honors Degree in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead Scholar. Follow Joel on Twitter.
For some time now we've been working on our new Web Marketing platform, HiFi. We first launched a marketing site for it back in September. At that point it was just a simple landing page with a cool rainbow header.
This time around, we worked with a local designer, Lenny Terenzi to get a really killer design. We just re-launched GetHiFi.com on the design last week. Today, we put up a 38-slide slideshow that documented the process of taking Lenny's complex design and turning it into a website. We thought it would be interesting to followers of this blog since it covers HTML5, CSS Sprites and a bit of jQuery. So if that is something you're interested in, head over to the post to read more about it:
Building a Complex, High-Performance Site with HTML5, CSS, and jQuery
-
Social Media Should Be Embraced Through An Entire Organization
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
Organizations may have an individual designated as the Social Media Expert or Twitter Intern, but it's important for social media to be embraced at every level of the organization, even if not everyone is a guru. And here's why:
Everyone should understand at least the basics of social media
Social media marketing is expanding rapidly. A recent report by Forrester estimated that social media will grow 34% annually over the next 5 years. That's more than both mobile and email marketing. If the members of your organization don't understand at least the very basics of social media, you won't be able to keep up.
The best way for the less-than tech savvy people in your organization to get acclimated with this relatively new and ever-changing medium is to encourage them to participate in it. Not only will this prepare your company for the future but it will also have an immediate impact.
Social media keeps people in your organization creatively energized
You may think that Twitter and Facebook are just a waste of time but a recent article by Wired argues that social networks actually make employees more productive by stimulating the mind. Studies found that "regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills significantly, in part by making it easier for workers to sift through their memories in search of relevant clues."
Because social networks encourage participation and sharing, they may even be more valuable for enhancing creativity than regular breaks thanks to built-in incentives to entertain like Retweets.
Expanded social media means connecting with your customers, clients and prospects in more places
Each person who is participating in a social media environment is giving your organization another opportunity to both reach out to prospective clients as well as troubleshoot current customer issues as they happen. An amazing example of a successful company-wide embrace of social media is Best Buy's Twelpforce. Best Buy encouraged all of its employees to utilize Twitter for promotions and the company's online customer service. Employees could add the hashtag of #twelpforce to a tweet from their personal Twitter account and get credit for the customer service.
Whether or not your organization incorporates a specific strategy like 'Twelpforce', encouraging employees to participate in social media will expand the reach of your brand.
People inherently have different networks and more networks means spreading your message further
A social media guru may have 2000 followers on Twitter, 900 Facebook friends, and is a Super User on Foursquare, but it's likely all those connections are based on social media itself, and not on your product, brand or service. The connections that employees at every level of your company have made throughout their career are much more valuable and more diverse than that of a single user, no matter how popular.
That means a message will spread furthest when spread through every level of your organization and not just the PR and social media marketing segments.
"Entire Organization" does not mean "Everyone," there needs to be some order and structure
All social media was not created equal and some people are going to use Twitter more than Facebook, some are going to be more professional with LinkedIn, and some are going to get really excited about Google's new Buzz. That's okay. The key is to have participation at every level of the company and to be organized as a whole.
Ad Age wrote an article earlier in the week that discussed who should be in charge of the social media for a company, highlighting the dangers of keeping social media too centralized, not having a standardized practice, and lack of accountability.
Despite these dangers, encouraging social media and providing guidance can have an extremely positive immediate external and internal impact on your business as well as prepare it for the future of marketing.
Do you have any non-marketing people succesffuly using social media for you business?
-
Good Web Design Remains Important in B2B Online Marketing
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
A recent survey of B2B customers by RainToday had some interesting findings about the importance of different elements in a B2B marketer's online presence. The chart above, posted by HubSpot, outlines the top 10 important factors. The new study gives credence to philosophies that web designers and marketers have been espousing to B2B firms for years.
For example, when B2B marketers approach us about our services, we frequently hear “our customers don’t care about design – they come here for facts and to find our phone number.” It’s a statement that I’ve repeatedly heard over the years. Even if they don't explicitly state it, it's implicitly evident in the way they treat the design process or creative costs.
While I'm the first to admit that content is an essential, and likely the most important, aspect of a company's web presence, it's also critical to understand the importance of design. In fact, design is inherently relevant for the rest of the surveyed website elements, as it is the design that will highlight things like white papers, presentations, case studies, etc. Without a well-thought-out layout and attractive design, these other important features will be hidden or cumbersome to the user.
A couple of our B2B clients that have really taken this study to heart are Health Decisions and CloudSwitch. Both of these companies have similar targets of highly technical and sophisticated executives. They not only do a wonderful job of creating voluminous content in different formats, they both also placed a high priority on design, making sure their site resisted the template look of many B2B sites.
From our initial discussions, both clients were clear that they wanted their web design to be a distinguisher from their competitors, and that they wanted to make their content and calls to action available in an attractive and informed manner. The strategy has worked. Both companies frequently receive compliments on their sites and online marketing efforts, confirming that prospects are noticing.
As B2B marketers prepare to embark on a redesign, they will be well served to not only create good content and use inbound marketing, but to also place a priority on good design and informed layout. Are you a B2B marketer that has placed an emphasis on design as well as content? What has the result been? Look forward to hearing other opinions and cases.
-
Reminder: Join Us Today at 4:00 EST for Our Virtual Open House
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Today's the day, folks! We're hosting our inaugural Virtual Open House at 4 pm EST. All you have to do is go to newmediacampaigns.com/openhouse at 4 EST and our entire team will be in there waiting.
The open house is being held in the chat program, 37signals' campfire, we use all day at NMC. Our team consists of highly regarded designers, developers, and online strategists with experience in every vertical. Not to mention, we consider ourselves pretty friendly. We're happy to answer any questions you may have, whether they're related to your website, jQuery, PHP, Buzz, anything!
If you're a reader of this blog or a follower or fan of ours in social media, today's an excellent opportunity to meet the folks behind NMC. Really hope to see you there!
-
NMC Holds Virtual Open House on Friday February 12th at 4:00 EST
Joel Sutherland
Joel Sutherland leads operations at NMC where he has launched over 250 sites and served as lead developer on the company's CMS which serves millions of unique visits each year. Joel has an Honors Degree in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead Scholar. Follow Joel on Twitter.
Last week, Clay Schossow was interviewed by Inc. about our "virtual" work environment. You can read the article online on the Inc. Blog. As a quick summary, back in March one of our top developers, Josh Lockhart moved to Madison, WI but stayed with us, working virtually. It started as an experiment for us but has become a great success, leading to more freedom for our NC employees. This is partially due to our use of a Campfire and Basecamp, two products made by 37Signals.
Campfire is a company chat room that we all log in to each morning. Whether we are working in our offices, at the coffee shop next door, or in Madison, WI, it allows everyone at NMC to keep in touch. One of the great features of Campfire is that it allows guests to join the chat.
This Friday, we're going to open up our chat room to our customers, blog subscribers and anyone else that wants to join. Everyone from NMC will be there, ready to answer any questions you might have. Whether it is about your website, one of our jQuery plugins, what it is like to work virtually -- anything.
All you'll need to do to join is head to newmediacampaigns.com/openhouse on Friday at 4:00. We look forward to this experiment and getting to know you all better.
-
Season's Greetings and Happy New Year from the NMC Team!
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
With the holiday season and a lot of projects wrapping up, it's been rather quiet on the blog for the past few weeks. Just wanted to wish all of our readers a Happy 2010 and thank them for their support over the past year. Below is a blast email we sent out to clients earlier today. One of our priorities in 2010 is to send quarterly updates to our clients, readers, and others. If you'd like to receive these, please fill use the form in the sidebar to receive our newsletter.
Season's greetings and happy New Year from the NMC team!
2009 was a fun and busy year at New Media Campaigns. Our team doubled in size, we launched over 100 sites, we recommitted to our blog, and we even had two people get engaged! Through all of these happenings, we were proud to be able to stay true to our core principles of quality work at affordable prices with great service.
However, we recognize none of this would have been possible without your support, feedback, and business. We truly appreciate it all, and we want to wish you a happy holiday season and a joyous 2010!
Below are some more highlights from the past year. We look forward to making 2010 an even bigger success!
Best,
The New Media Campaigns Team
PS - To keep up with our daily happenings in 2010, follow us on Twitter, join our somewhat lonely Facebook page, and subscribe to our Blog.
NMC News Highlights from 2009
NMC Team Grows to 7 and Launches 350th Site
Featured across Web for jQuery Tools
Highlighted Sites from 2009
Looking Forward to 2010
Quarterly Email Newsletter
Updated NMC Website Design and Layout
-
Social networks aren't ideal for online ads
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
It was big news in mid-October when studies showed that Facebook (the king of all online social networks and the example I'll use in this post) now accounts for 1 in 4 Internet pageviews in the U.S. while Google accounts for (only?) 1 in 12.
According to Nielsen, Google gets 153 million unique visitors each month compared to Facebook's 105 million. But the 105 million Facebook visitors spend more than twice as long there (more than 5 hours on average) each month.
What this means is there is a huge amount of people spending a ton of time on social networking sites. Facebook allows you to target a specific audience exclusively, limiting your ads to say, single males in their twenties, living in Dallas, who are interested in Pokemon (there are 140 of them) if you wanted to.
That's all good and well.
But the problem with social networks, as far as online ads go, is what people are doing while they're on the sites. Social networks are wildly popular because they're extremely good at one thing, socializing.
Users spend an exorbitant amount of time checking up on their friends through status updates, confirming event invitations, writing messages, scanning through hundreds of pictures, and the old-school among them might even do some poking.
What they aren't doing is looking at those little ads in the sidebar.
People on social network sites expect their experience to be all about their network. That's why ads on social networks often see click-through rates of 4 in 10,000, one fifth of the Web average.
Don't place ads that aren't specifically designed for both your target audience AND the social network itself
A big part of the reason that CTRs are so low for social network ads is because marketers haven't exactly figured out the medium yet. So make sure if you're participating in this still-developing ad platform, you think specifically about what your target will be doing when they come into contact with your ad.
This is not to say it's impossible to have positive ROI with social network ads, especially since their cost per click is relatively low. If you need to reach a very specific audience and have a great online offer as well as a targetted landing page, social network ads can still be effective.
Search engines are a better venue for general ads
When someone is searching online, they're looking for an answer to a problem, question or curiosity and are counting on the seach engine to find that answer. Because their next destination is unknown, users' mindsets are more open.
This uncertainty allows online ads to enter as a potential solution to their search and is the reason that average click-through rates on search engines are between 9 and 15 in 10,000.
Social network marketing is best done through networking.
Organizations and professionals should utilize these popular sites the way they were meant to be utilized. They should engage their audience by communicating with them in hopes of becoming a part of their network. They should not try distracting them while they are engaging with the people and companies who have already earned their attention. It won't work.
How have you faired with marketing on social networks?
-
Recap of Internet Summit 2009 in Raleigh
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Yesterday was the second annual Internet Summit in Raleigh. We were excited about the event, so we sent three NMC Team members, including myself. The event boasted an impressive speaker list, including the founder of Technorati, president of Pandora, and the CEO of Lending Tree.
With these big names on the roster and an imposing (maybe read: pretentious) event title like the Internet Summit, it was clear that the event was trying to reach national exposure and pull attendees from across the country. I applaud the Triangle area for trying to cement our reputation as a hotbed of tech and startups by hosting the Summit.
The panel topics ranged from the very technical (Cloud computing) to entrpreneurial (Growth & Liquidity) to buzzwords du jour (Social Media and Real Time). While I enjoyed all of the different options, and we often found ourselves splitting up to see different panels because there were a couple good ones in the same time slot, I think it may have been overly ambitious to cram the whole Internet into a single day.
I would've preferred if they made one or two areas, say Search Marketing and Social media, the focus of the majority of panels and then sprinkled in other topics, rather than having such a broad focus and single panels covering entire industries. The decision to stay broad caused for a lot of high level discussion didn'tplay well with the knowledgeable and inquisitive audience (at least the ones I spoke with) who would have preferred in depth case studies or a look into an industry's future, rather than hearing comments like "content is important in social media."
That's a general overview of the conference: some good discussion, but could have used some more specifics and even to be spread over two days. Now let's get to some specifics.
The Highs
- There were several panels that provided some really great discussion. Through good moderation and interesting panelists, they managed to avoid the tendency to be broad and really focus on specifics. The top few panels that I caught were Search Marketing, Online Advertising Strategies, and Email Marketing. Email Marketing really stuck out as an awesome panel -- even though it's a common topic, the panel featured execs from industry leaders Bronto, iContact, and Emma. The panelists were very open, interesting, and thoughful.
- The overall setup and running of the conference. The conference was hosted at the Raleigh Convention Center, which provided a lot of space to walk around, post up with your lap top, make phone calls, and host side meetings. Furthermore, the wireless was flawless, and the conference had side areas for bloggers to craft posts and for media to gather. The Demo showcase was a nice touch to highlight local startups doing exciting and interesting things in the space. The food was great, the after party beer was quenching, and the overall aesthetics were well thought out. Thank you to the convention center for doing such a great job!
- Final keynotes from Pandora president Joe Kennedy and Lending Tree CEO Doug Lebda. Both of these guys gave really great speeches. Kennedy spoke about the importance of "disruptive innovation" (I was a little worried at first) in entrepreneurship and drew a phenomenal extended metaphor to the birth of modern film with The Great Train Robbery. Furthermore, he provided some really interesting facts about Pandora's business, including the stat they have 20,000 new iPhone app registrations every day! Lebda was one of the most engaging speakers I've ever seen. Period. He did an unusual format for his keynote and structured it as a Q & A with the CEO of Peak10. He was incredibly honest and interesting, and the majority of his answers were centered around his entrepreneurial journey, his failures, how his company has evolved, and what he's learned. The committee hit it out of the park by choosing these two speakers.
As you can see there were several factors that made the conference a joy to attend.
The Lows
- Keynote by Richard Jalichandra, president of Technoratti. Everyone in the audience and in the tweetstream agreed that this speech was horrendous. He was pretentious, unprepared, and boring. Other people informed me that he was the same at past conferences, such as BlogWorld. IS09 should've done some research and realized that he should not have been put on the list.
- Many panels lacked specificity that was desired by a knowledgeable audience. This point was mentioned in my overview, but is worth coming back to. A panel of four people, none of them especially notable, were given 60 minutes to cover social media. That strategy will almost never work, as there's just far too much to cover and discuss. The conference would've been better served to bring in a renowned expert on a specific area of social media and have them go to town on that specific element, rather than trying to cover the whole space. Again, this could also be fixed by having a multiple day format.
Since I enjoyed the experience overall, I don't want to be too negative and will just leave it with those two lows, as those were the two most glaring errors.
Bottom Line: Was it Worth the Price of a Ticket?
One of the best things about living, working, and playing in the triangle area is the low cost of living. The conference maintained that theme by being a very cheap ticket, between $295 and $395 depending on day of registration, compared to other industry fairs like Web 2.0 that cost closer to $1,000.
So, if you're a local and didn't have to worry about flying or booking a hotel and losing a day or two of work, then yes, it was definitely worth the cost of admission.
However, if you traveled a good distance and had to tack on a flight, hotel room for a night, and missed work time for travel, then you probably didn't get your money's worth.
With that being said, it's really important to remember that this was only the second year of the conference. For a second year event, it was very polished, and it wouldn't surprise me if it is worth traveling to next year or the year after. So, definitely keep your eye on this one, as it might be a deal in the coming years.
Did you attend the conference? What were your thoughts?
Thanks again for all of the panelists, speakers (except Jalichandra), volunteers, staff, and to the city of Raleigh! Also, if the conference folks need any talented panelists next year, our Nov 2010 looks pretty open right now ;).
-
Looking forward to Internet Summit 2009 in Raleigh
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
Clay, Kris and I are looking forward to spending today in Raleigh for The 2nd Annual Internet Summit! The Summit is designed to promote innovating thought on the Internet and surrounding technologies. As a Raleigh web design firm, this is right up our alley. Some of the big-name speakers we're excited to hear from include:
- Richard Jalichandra, President and CEO of Technorati Media
- Joe Kennedy, President and CEO of Pandora
- John Kosner, Senior VP and GM of Digital Media for ESPN
- Matt Van Horn, the Business Development Manager from Digg
- Brian Williams, CEO & Co-Founder of Viget. Viget is a local company that we especially enjoy hearing from.
Personally, I plan on attending panels on Search Marketing, Cloud Computing, Social Media, Design & Usability, Email Marketing and Real-Time/Twitter. I know Clay and Kris plan on going to more of the technological panels like Analytics, CIO/CTO Roundtable and Growth and Liquidity.
Keeping in spirit with its purpose, the Summit emailed all attendees early in the week and established a Twitter hashtag for the event, #isum09. So if you're interested in what's going on at this very minute of the Summit, be sure to search Twitter!
Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe to email updates
-
You are currently reading our
Internet Marketing Blog
-
Go to our Development Blog to read about new technologies, techniques, and tutorials for developers and designers.
Network with Us