Lunch & Learn Promotion – Multiple Campaigns Can Get Complicated

As I dive further into the promotion of our Lunch and Learn event, things seem to be getting more and more complex. This condition is particularly aggravated by the fact that I am approaching this task in a multi-pronged format which includes: an event on FaceBook; the same on LinkedIn; a separate registration page on another party’s website; my impending direct mail campaign (more on that below); and whatever the hell the guy that is actually organizing this is doing on his own (smile).

I will say this, I have been pretty pleased with the results thus far. When last I looked, about 10 people had either expressed a very strong interest in attending this workshop or had already signed up. Most of these folks I know already which, in itself, is even more outstanding. I have also heard comments like … “We attended another workshop like this but it was put on by a bunch of young nerds. We think we would relate better to you.” I have decided to rename this event .. “Old Guy Teaches Social Media”. LOL You can register for the event here.

While attacking promotion from multiple angles just seems to make sense, managing it is creating a wee bit of a nightmare for me. As mentioned before, I am extremely sensitive to what I perceive to be the “spam-like” activity that often goes on in social media. Most of it, I am quite sure, is purely innocent. However, some examples would be:

• I accept your friend request on FaceBook and you immediately reward me by inviting me to your events on a daily basis, asking me repeatedly to become a fan of your page, and continuously suggest that I become a fan of other pages that I have never heard of. All of this prior to even saying “Hi”.
• You send me stupid gifts that I never asked for and ask me for even stupider gifts in return.
• Right now on LinkedIn I am being frequently invited to join a particular group, and this is by a bunch of different people, that I already belong to??????

This tells me that you think that, because we have connected, we are now best friends despite the fact that you have never attempted to contact me directly and … in the case of the LinkedIn example, you obviously don’t do your homework. On top of that, your invitation messages are typically completely automated which indicates that absolutely no thought was put into my selection other than to maybe check off my box along with 100 others. Even if you are sending a bulk message or invitation, and there are times when this is appropriate, at least please take the time to customize your form letter and show me and others a little of your personality. Thank you!

With this is mind, yesterday I sent out some specific invitations via FaceBook. I had already done this the day before via LinkedIn. I did not want to spam folks via FaceBook with the same invitation (basically) that I had already sent via LinkedIn, therefore, I needed a list from LinkedIn to crosscheck before sending. You would think this would be easy and you would be thinking wrong. LinkedIn event management is very quirky. For one thing, you can not cancel (delete) an event. Lame. You can see who is coming or who has expressed interest but if you want to get a list of who you chose to send your invitation, I could only figure out one way. Go to your sent box and find the invitation email and then expand the “send to” list to reveal the names and then copy and paste that into Word and format it however you like. How convenient.

Armed with this list from LinkedIn, I was then able to carefully send invitations out via FaceBook to those who had not already received them. And, at least FaceBook will generate a list of these for you. Now it was time to once again break new ground in my learning experience … direct mail. This has been on my to-do list for sometime but that time had not yet arrived. As I was getting ready to choose between Constant Contact and iContact, somebody on FaceBook had asked about this recently and a comment was left for that individual to check out MailChimp. The comment also included the word “FREE”. Naturally, that got my attention (smile).

MailChimp has a totally free account that will allow you to have up to 500 subscribers and send up to 3,000 emails per month. For me, and particularly right now, this will be more than adequate. From what I can tell, it has all the goodies. Here is a comparison of features vs. the competition. Is it the most intuitive of the software that I have used? No. Especially not for somebody like me who hates to follow directions. The first thing you need to do is create your list. Ideally, this will come from folks who have “opted in” via your website. I did not have that luxury so I chose to upload my contact list and then edit that later. MailChimp is very specific about the “do’s” and “don’t's” involved in using lists and I did appreciate that education. So, with all that in mind, I uploaded by Gmail list and found that 2/3 of it was rejected due to syntax errors. This means a missing or incorrectly formatted email address. Groan, more work for me to do. This, however, turned out to be a huge blessing …

All the addresses I really cared about were there. Now all I needed to do was delete from the list those that I did not want to use. I ended up deleting about 200 and had to do so … one at a time. It took me hours. There is no method that I could find that would allow you to check off boxes on the ones you did not want and then do a group delete. And, it’s not just “delete, delete, delete”. Each deletion requires a confirmation and then it takes you back to the start of the list and it displays 25 names per page so you have to continuously page forward. Thank God you can have multiple list and you can replicate an existing list.

You can also filter your list by criteria (they call this segmenting) but I’m not so sure that you can save a segmented list. At any rate, by using a master list, you can add tag words to a category field for each contact that would allow you to segment in that fashion and send out an email campaign to that segment only. For example, NetWorks! members will have “networks” as a tag in that category field. You can have multiple tags and then “segment” based on a search where that field “contains” the tag you are wishing to filter by. I was able to do this, create a test invitation, and then send it to myself at two different email addresses. And, it worked! Tomorrow I will “categorize” each contact, compare this list against my LinkedIn and FaceBook lists to make sure I am not “spamming” folks, and then proceed.

Final thoughts. I have all of these people who have supposedly signed up or expressed interest via LinkedIn or FaceBook events but have no idea of whether or not they have gone to the website to actually complete the registration process. This registration page is not mine and I need contact the owner, the actual event organizer, to balance the lists. Of course, a lot of this would not be an issue if I controlled all of this myself. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will be the scenario on my next workshop of seminar. Oh, can you guess what promotional method has generated the highest return thus far? LinkedIn. Go figure (smile).

Thanks for visiting!!

Craig

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Lunch and Learn Promotion – My Money Meets My Mouth

As a recap of my previous post … I have been asked to facilitate a “Lunch and Learn” for a member of our NetWorks! Boise Bing group: Roger Hawk with Action Coach. While this is actually not my event, I have also been asked to help promote it. The topic of the workshop is “Social Media Basics” with an emphasis on business related applications.

Here is where this becomes interesting … While I have written numerous blog posts on how to do this using social media, I have never had the occasion to actually do one myself. NetWorks! Boise is a closed organization and by invitation only. Therefore, events have never been needed or, for that matter, suitable. This workshop is an entirely different animal.

So, here is what I have done thus far ……

• A good deal of my communication is via email. I use Gmail for hosted accounts via Google Apps. Gmail’s standard signature line capabilities are abysmal however, by using a FireFox add-on called WiseStamp you can do some pretty cool stuff like … adding a link to the event to my signature line itself which is automatically inserted on all sent mail.
• Of course, I have blogged about the workshop. My blog posts are automatically fed to my profiles on FaceBook, LinkedIn, and my individual group sites which are based on a Ning platform. Whenever I develop a post on this site, that post is automatically sent out via Twitter. Additionally, I have dedicated a text widget box on the sidebar of this site to an image of the event flier that also serves as a hyperlink to its registration page.
• Naturally, status updates to Twitter, LinkedIn, and FaceBook have been sent simultaneously to all three sites by using Ping.fm. Furthermore, my blog updates are also read by TwitterFeed and tweets are automatically created and sent out via two Twitter accounts. Changes to status updates on LinkedIn will also show up in the weekly email that LinkedIn sends to all members showing updates within your particular network.
• An event was created on FaceBook and direct invitations will be going out tomorrow. I should mention that I am very sensitive to what I consider a high level of “spam-like” activity on FaceBook in regard to invitations to events and Fan Pages. Therefore, these invitations will be very targeted. This event was published on my friends’ walls.
• A similar event was set up on LinkedIn and targeted invitations have been sent on that and through LinkedIn. Additionally, links to the event were posted on two local LinkedIn groups that I belong to that would be suitable for this event.
• I have never done any direct email marketing so this seems like a good opportunity to give it a try. It has been on my “to-do” list. I will be looking at Constant Contact, iContact, and MailChimp for this application.
• As the event itself is being booked though Action Coach’s site, I will not be looking at tools like Evite or Eventbrite at this time. You can register for the event here.
• I will continue to promote the workshop in the time remaining prior to actually holding it.

True confession time …. I have not been what I would call a huge “connector” on any social media site. I have 116 “friends” on FaceBook, 222 “connections” on LinkedIn, and 1,469 “followers” on Twitter. I have done a terrible job with my Fan Page. Who would want to be the fan of a group that they may not be able to participate in? I continue to struggle with the “quality” vs. “quantity” question. In this instance, an “open event”, there is certainly a case to be made for “quantity”. Still, and I am even more embarrassed to say this, of all of these connections there are actually very few that I really “know”.  I am a very strong believer in “direct engagement” and will be doing my best in the immediate future to do much more of this with my existing connections. In this regard, I will continue to maintain a strong bent toward “quality”. The folks are already there. I just need to reach out.

Thanks for visiting!!

Craig

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Events – Create, Publicize, and Promote – Part III

Disclaimer: As with everything on this site, the following is representative of my best assessment of the tools discussed and their features and functions. As such, it is recommended that you not take my word as “being law” (smile).

Before we get started on Part III, here are links to Part I and Part II. If nothing else, reading these first might give you a little better feel for the conversation. Continuing ……

FaceBook: FaceBook creates some very interesting possibilities for creating and publicizing events. You first have to look at two things…even more enormous numbers in terms of members than LinkedIn (a plus) and a much more open network than LinkedIn (also a plus). Then you need to evaluate those areas on FaceBook that will allow you to create events. I count three. They are: your own profile page, FaceBook Group Pages, and FaceBook Fan Pages. If it is your goal to promote your business in addition to your event, I am going to suggest that you use Fan Pages for this purpose. Fan Pages, you see, are maybe more often used as Business Pages.

The events application is really very nice. It does allow you to broadcast your event to your friends in your network, email to contacts outside of FaceBook, and update your event to your profile. While folks who do not belong to FaceBook will be able to see your event, they must join the network in order to be able to RSVP. Speaking of RSVP, FaceBook does a nice job with that also. If you want to allow for on-line registration for a fee based event, you will want to use something like EventBrite or Constant Contact or your own website. Important Note: I  have never been entirely comfortable with FaceBook. Nothing against FaceBook mind you. I’m just not a FaceBook kinda’ guy. However, and this goes the same for LinkedIn, if you are wanting to be active in putting on events, there is not a better case than this for making as many damn friends on this site as you possibly can (smile).

Your Website or Blog: If you have a website and do not have the capability to create events and have attendees register on-line and pay on-line, I can just about guarantee that this oversight can be corrected. Call your web geek if that is not you. WordPress.org blogs can use a variety of third-party plug-ins to accomplish this task. This is a WordPress.com blog so that is a little more limited but even I could easily create an event or events on this site and then provide a link to a third-party source for on-line registration and payment and could use something as simple as an email with a link to direct folks to the event. Pretty easy.

iContact: If you have made the decision that emailing links to your event will at least be a part of your promotion efforts, but you would like a nice looking invitation to be a part of that email, consider iContact. For starting at $9.95 per month you will have access to over 200 templates and an email newsletter program to boot. Not too shabby.

Constant Contact: Constant Contact is very similar to iContact in terms of features and what it can do for you. A little bit more expensive, however, and this may also be an additional fee, it also has a product specifically designed for events, on-line registration, and on-line payment in one neat package. Definitely worth a look.

EventBrite: There are an awful lot of folks using this service so you had best take a look. Certainly would be a site to link to from your event invitation if that service did not provide for on-line registration and fee pay. Whereas iContact and Constant Contact charge flat monthly fees, EventBrite charges a per attendee fee based on a percent of the admission and a small service fee.

Evite: I have never heard of this service but just received an email invitation to an event via this. What’s better is it appears to be a free service. If it’s free, it’s for me, I’ll take three (smile).

Publishing and Promoting: Here’s where it can get fun and adventurous (smile). Use Twitter to post URL links to your events. Use Ping.fm to post these same links to multiple sites including Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and many others. Allow Twitterfeed to automatically post new events created in Ning (from the resident “events” RSS feed) to Twitter, FaceBook, and Ping.fm. The “Share on FaceBook” bookmarklet will allow you to capture the URL to any website that you are viewing, say your event on either Ning or EventBrite, and post that to your FaceBook profile. The Hootlet bookmarklet from Hootsuite will do the same thing for Twitter or Ping.fm. SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) will allow you to schedule tweets ahead of time and could then, therefore, give you the ability to repeat tweets regarding your event. A word of caution on that though. Apparently Twitter has banned repeating Tweets so you may be risking account suspension or worse. Am I missing any? Probably but that should be enough for you to have some fun.

I’m stickin’ a fork in this topic. I’m done. Ain’t gonna’ be no Part IV (smile). Thanks for visiting and best of luck with your events!

Craig

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Events – Create, Publicize, and Promote – Part II

Disclaimer: As with everything on this site, the following is representative of my best assessment of the tools discussed and their features and functions. As such, it is recommended that you not take my word as “being law” (smile).

Before we get into Part II of this subject, I might suggest that you read Part I. Then, as we delve into this further, I very much want you to THINK LINK. Links are perhaps the most under-appreciated rock stars of the internet industry. They are like that Intel commercial with the engineer who invented the USB (smile). On top of that, you also have hyperlinks that allow you to make anything into a one click transport to anywhere you please on the web.

When you “think link” … think about this: link from your website to an event, link from an event to your website, link from your email to an event or a website,  or link from an event to a registration form. The list goes on and on and they are invaluable for what we are about to discuss. And finally, we are going to be discussing at least four major sites that you can create your event on. As the goal is to make your event as easy to find as possible for your potential attendees …. if it’s me, I’m going to be making it visible wherever I can (multiple sites) and then provide links, where necessary, to complete the registration process.

This is all going to be pretty down and dirty. We’ll explore some options and maybe provide you with some ideas. Of course, lots of links to let you explore more on your own (smile).  Away we go …

Ning: Ning provided the incentive for this blog post so we will start here. If you are not familiar with this platform, Ning is a free service that allows you to create your own social network and in a lot of ways it incorporates FaceBook-like features. I have created three networks on Ning: two for our networking groups and one for Sales & Marketing Executives of Boise. Please feel free to visit our Bing! and Business Minds group sites.

Ning allows you to create a very nice event announcement, allows folks to RSVP to your event, and provides the ability to automatically email professional invitations to a variety of your contact lists. A link is provided in the email to go directly to the event to sign up. However, prior to being allowed to do this, you must go through the process of signing up for membership in the network itself. This is kind of like Ning’s version of the registration. This is great if your network is open which means that anybody can join. In that way, the process of registration should not be that difficult. If you choose to employ this method, I would suggest that you make your “open Ning network” completely open. If you choose to moderate membership requests, you are going to create a loss of registration opportunity while the person who wishes to attend your event awaits your approval to join your site. Not good.

Our networking sites, while visible to the public, are closed. Anybody can request membership but only our members are granted that authorization. One shortcoming of Ning is that it is either private or public. If it is private, nobody can view the site. If it is public, anybody can request to join. I wish Ning had a third option that would allow folks to navigate the site but not even allow them to request admittance but, for now at least, they don’t. So, using Ning to send out invitations creates a problem for us.

Suggested solution: Disable “RSVP”. Within the body of the event description provide a link back to whatever site you wish to use for on-line registration. This may be your website, your blog, or a third-party service like EventBrite (more on EventBrite later). Your event also has a field for a phone number for attendees to call to make reservations. Do not ask Ning to send out invitations. Instead, when you click on the event itself, look up at your web address bar on your browser and copy the identified URL. This is the direct link to this event and will allow folks to view the event on your site without them having to sign up for the site. They won’t even be asked to join your group. You may then, using standard email or something like iContact or Constant Contact (more on these later), include this link to your event as a part of your email message. Not perfect. Not optimum. But it will work.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn does present one opportunity not found present on Ning….. massive membership numbers. Anybody with a LinkedIn account will be able to find, view, and “register” for your event. While you can invite your connections on LinkedIn to your event, there is no provision to send your invitation out to others outside of your immediate LinkedIn connection list. Our suggested solution is very much like Ning … When you set up an event on LinkedIn you will also find a field where LinkedIn will generate a URL for the event web address. I did conduct a test and you can email that URL to folks you have on any contact list and they will be able to follow that back to view the event. They will need to be members of LinkedIn in order to confirm attendance so you will want to provide that link to your registration site. In addition, you can also choose to advertise your event on LinkedIn. I am guessing that this is a fee based service. One note of caution, unless things have changed, you had best plan to hold that event because the last time I tried to cancel one, there was no way to do that without going to support and asking them to do it for you. Lame. I consider the definitive guidebook on LinkedIn to be “Windmill Networking“. Click here to go to Neal’s site.

This is turning out to be a more complex topic than I had originally envisioned. My guess is that this is going to go to four parts (smile). I’ll try to do one daily to keep them all together. Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Events – Create, Publicize, and Promote – Part I

Standard disclaimer: The bulk of this blog is devoted to my quest to discover answers to dilemmas that have either been raised by me or by folks within my business circles. I have personally never done anything with creating events as it pertains to using social media as a tool to do so. So, I am in uncharted territory here and may end up raising more questions than I do answer them (smile).

This blog post is the direct result of a recent enhancement to the services that we provide our members of NetWorks! Boise. Our new dedicated group pages are based on a Ning platform and Ning has a rather nice capability to create and publicize member events. As a part of this, it will allow you to send out quite professional looking invitations. There is just one problem and it’s a big one. When invitations to the event are sent out to our member’s mailing list, the invitation is actually not only to the event, it is also to join our network. This might be great for some groups who are designed to be open and will accept membership from just about anybody who meets whatever criteria but, our group site is 100% by invitation only. You must be a member of our formal NetWorks! Boise group in order to be allowed as a member on the site.  “Houston, we have a problem.” And, like Apollo 13, I am faced with a table covered with various pieces of equipment and components as I try to create a device that will allow me to put a square peg in a round hole (smile).

The Challenge: Using social media sites and tools to create and publicize events is a rapidly increasing activity. I am sure that we have all received multiple invitations via email, FaceBook, and other sites. As it turns out, there are just a whole bunch of ways that folks can, and for that matter are, using these tools to assist them in this process. So, the question becomes, what is the best tool, or a combination of tools, available to accomplish this task?

Questions you will need to answer first:

1. Is my goal to only create and publish an event or is it to do that and promote it?
2. Is the event open to the public or closed?
3. Is there a fee or is it free?
4. Do you want to require folks to RSVP? How about register or pay on-line?

What are your criteria for selecting the best tool(s) to use?:

1. Professional invitation? How do you plan/wish to send these out?
2. Promote you, your company, your website, your event and in what order are these important?
3. Ease of finding your event and registering for it?
4. Follow-up on the event in terms of confirmations etc.?
5. Capture contact information for use with future events?

Get ready for Part II tomorrow as we are going to look at: Ning, FaceBook, FaceBook Business Pages, FaceBook Groups, LinkedIn, EventBrite, iContact,  Constant Contact, and Twitterfeed (as well as combinations of these), as possible tools to satisfy our needs.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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