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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Ning – Create Your Private Social Network

With the advent last week of launching our second group, in discussions with our Wednesday group that were leading up to this, one of the first things everybody asked was … “We’re not going to have both groups on the same website are we?”. That and … “We aren’t going to be sharing the same CRM!”. Certainly, I had planned for the latter (separate CRM’s for both groups) but, the former? Not so much. It did occur to me that I could easily set up an additional page for this group, still on this site, but beyond that … nada.

So, necessity being the mother of invention, it became time to once again look at alternatives. Fortunately, through a LinkedIn connection, I was able to find the perfect tool … Ning. Ning allows me to not only set up a separate and distinct site for each group, it also allows for better promotion of our members and their companies as each will have their own dedicated page within the site itself. Furthermore, they can customize their page and share information both publicly and privately in terms of forums, photos, videos, links, blogs, discussion boards, and probably 100′s of other third party applications and widgets. Pretty sweet! Ning actually allows you to set up your own private social network. While not anywhere as sophisticated as something like FaceBook, there are certain things about its simplicity that I find to be inherently attractive.

Getting Started: Setup was pretty easy. So darn easy that I was anticipating the other shoe to drop (smile). Ning is a free service. However, there are upgrade options. The three main upgrades are: remove Google ads from your page ($24.95/mo.), remove Ning promotions ($24.95/mo.), and use your own domain name ($4.95/mo.). The Google ads are not that intrusive, the Ning promotion even less so, and I can get a domain name and use that and have it forward to the “ning.com” address for less than that if I felt it necessary to do so. Of the three, I may opt to remove the Google ads only because they occupy valuable real estate on the right hand side bar. For that matter, I am told that if I do this, I can sell my own ads. Capitalism. Yummy (smile).

What you are seeing above is a partial screen shot of the page (still under construction) for our Wednesday group. Once this has been completed, a similar page will be developed for our Tuesday group. The basic layout that you see is one of Ning’s standard themes, however, there are also third party themes available on the internet. You do have flexibility in terms of colors, column layouts, and what widgets or categories you wish to display (photos, videos, forum, blogs, activities, events, members, etc.).

A few key things to be aware of: Ning approaches “privacy” issues in a more simplistic manner than I would prefer. It is pretty much either all “private” or all “public”. If you make the site private, membership is by invitation only and no one can get past the main page. If you make it “public”, anyone can sign up but you can limit viewing prior to that to either the main page only or everything. As I want people to be able to learn about our members, I have elected to make this site public. However, if somebody does request to join, I do have the option to review and accept or reject that application. That’s going to have to work. There is one private area even in a public setting ….. groups. These are communities or teams that can be established within the site and be totally private and by invitation only, even in a public site. This will serve as an area where members can collaborate on sensitive topics. Not perfect, but workable.

Unlike WordPress.com accounts, Ning appears to be very “widget friendly”. For example, I was able to use my GizaPage contact badge in a “text widget” box on my personal page. As in WordPress, text widgets are a man’s best friend. They are multi-purpose for either text, widgets, links, etc.. They do accept HTML coding. The main page can have multiple text boxes. From what I can tell, the individual member pages are limited to one. Still, with some creativity, you can make that work.

Well, have to get ready for the Boise State football game. Ranked #5 in the country by the way (smile). Give Ning a try. I think you will like it!

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Tweaking NetWorks! Boise – Zoho CRM, Ning, Wave?

marcelnunis.com

I was off fishing for a week and so now it is back to work. That sucks (smile). Yesterday we launched our second networking group and it’s going to be a good one. What is very exciting to me is that this group will be able to develop based on the foundations and systems laid out by the first group while it is also creating the need for me to evaluate new tools and tweak existing ones. This will be of benefit to both groups as well as those that may come in the future. Right now I am pretty close to pulling the trigger on three applications ……..

Zoho CRM: We presently use the paid version of FreeCRM to track the lead opportunities generated by our Wednesday group. I like it and it works well. However, the monthly fees have doubled since we first started using it less than 2 years ago. And, the last major update to the program was last April. More important is that I am finding out that our members do not use all of the features that I had originally considered to be necessities. Finally, my understanding of our needs in this area has also evolved. Time to see what else is out there that might better fit our application.

I had looked at Zoho some time back and, looking at it yesterday, it would appear to fit our needs. It is actually a pretty nice interface and does allow for custom account record fields, custom report creation, and filtering by things like “date last modified”. We actually need two users for our purposes and Zoho offers up to three users for the low low price of $0.00 per month. Sweeeeet! Additionally, Zoho offers a suite of applications, most free, that may become beneficial in the future. My plan is to start our new group on this package and get the bugs worked out. Following that, I will migrate our existing group over from FreeCRM to Zoho. Last night I did a test export from FreeCRM and then did an import to Zoho and it worked perfectly. Here’s a screen shot, Sorry about the resolution:

Ning: With only one group, this site has worked just fine for our purposes. It would be very easy to set up an additional page for the new group that featured those members and their companies. However, I want each group to have not only their own separate page, I want to be able to place more emphasis on who they are and what they do. More personal things including blog feeds, photos, etc.. Finally, having the ability to collaborate privately vs. publicly, would also be a plus. WordPress is just not well suited for this application. Ning is. Turns out that Ning gives you the ability to develop your very own social network. And, it is slick! I ran across this via a connection on LinkedIn who operates a networking group in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I’m pretty pumped. You can use Ning for free if you will allow some fairly non-intrusive Google Ads. For $24.95/month you can get rid of those and even put in some ads of your own. For another $24.95/month you can rid yourself of Ning promotions and for $4.95/month you can use your own domain name. I understand that it is very easy to set up and will meet all of our needs. Necessity really is the mother of invention (smile). Click on the screen shot to go to NetworkInCDA’s site.

courtesy of NetworkInCDA

The future of this page: Once I have the Ning sites set up, this page will serve as a portal to the individual group sites, inform folks about the NetWorks! Boise system as a whole, continue to blog on Social and Business-Social media, and perhaps showcase other services that I am considering offering. The URL will remain the same but the page title will include “Sales Results LLC” which is the legal entity encompassing the “NetWorks! Boise” dba.

Google Wave: I am a little premature on this as selective invitations for this new application are just now going out today and I have yet to see one in my inbox (smile). I should have signed up for one sooner. These invitations are being sent out prior to the general Google Wave launch. However, from what I have seen and read, this thing potentially is a real game changer. Simply put, as I understand it, it will allow our group to collaborate in real time in a “email like” format. The key word here is “collaboration”. Let’s say that various members are all tracking on the same opportunity generated by one of our groups. Instead of conducting research totally independently, they will have the ability to privately collaborate their efforts with each other. Or, “Member A” wishes to connect with “Company B”. Somebody in the group probably knows someone at “Company B”. This will allow us to get the request for help out system wide, in privacy, in a timely manner. The possibilities for this tool are …. mind boggling! Mashable is great source to learn more. Click here to go to their most recent article and do a search for others.

Enough from me for today. Thanks for visiting!

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Taking NetWorks! Boise To The Next Level

sacredhands.co.uk

First off, I do need to make it clear that our intentions are not quite as lofty as those shown in the scene depicted to your left (smile). That being said, there is nothing wrong with constantly trying to improve on what you already have. In fact, I consider that goal to be both a mandate and a requirement.

On October 27 of this year, NetWorks! Boise will celebrate it’s two year anniversary. By this date, our CRM database will  hold close to 3,000 opportunity records shared by this group during our weekly meetings. We have traveled a huge distance. Those who have been with us since the beginning will confirm that the NetWorks! which folks see today is absolutely nothing like the NetWorks! model that was introduced two short years ago. We have continued to evolve and have continued to get better. Evolution never ceases.

It has been no great secret that all along I have planned to develop NetWorks! Boise into multiple independent groups with each being based on the same model. To that end, I have been gathering potential member names with plans to launch the second group this coming spring. That schedule has been unexpectedly greatly accelerated. A few weeks ago I was approached by a friend who has been actively involved in another networking group here in town. I have always felt that, at least by looking at their membership, this was probably a pretty good group. Turns out that, at least for a few of their members, these folks are interested in getting a little “more” ROI from their efforts. So, I got the call … “Craig, I have some people interested in starting a new group and I was wondering if you had ever thought about opening another NetWorks! Boise”. Ohhhhh yeah (smile). This individual has visited a NetWorks! meeting and likes our “accountability” which is a huge part of what leads to our phenomenal “results”. That, my friends, is a topic for another post unto itself.

Well, a few of us had a meeting over coffee, discussed the group, and came up with some names. Of those names there are some that I know quite well, some that I know marginally, some that I know “of”, and some that I do not know at all. Never heard of them. What’s exciting is the possibility of reinforcing existing relationships and building new ones. I am not going to name names at this time but, this is quite the list of peeps. Well connected, well recognized, proven networkers, and they all love to “refer”. As for their skill sets ……. let’s just say that I’m drooling.

Our “BING” (Business Intelligence – Not Gossip) group has taken the art of knowing “who, what, and where” to “gold standard” levels. I am constantly amazed at the number of times I hear about the latest breaking business news and just smile knowing that this was already registered in our CRM for maybe months prior to this announcement. We have this down to a fine science.

Here come the best parts ……