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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Social Media To-Do List – FaceBook For Biz & Twitter

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Is it just me or are these four guys about to break out in a rousing rendition of “Kumbaya” (smile)? For that matter, maybe this entire Social Media thing is based on that same soundtrack (smile)? Not sure but I am told by many sources that this is how business will be, and to a large extent already is, done.

I got a call this morning from a friend and colleague, Brandon Wright over at UltraClean Pro. I would call Brandon an “Uber Networker” and one with much loftier goals and projects than yours truly. You may know Brandon as the organizer of the monthly Smoke Out event and the recent Meridian Business Days. Among some of the things we discussed was his latest venture which is a radio show that will be airing on 630AM on Saturday mornings at 11:00AM commencing on July 18. I asked him the name of the show to which he replied “We don’t know.” I suggested that maybe they needed to work on that title a little bit before they went on the air. “We don’t know” don’t tell me much (smile). At any rate it will be about business and will feature actual live business people. What a novel idea (smile).

What was incredible about our conversation was that I had left a message on his FaceBook wall only moments before he called me and I later found out that he did not read the message until after he had called me. Strange forces are at work (smile). We went on to discuss that it would be nice to see some actual business generated as a direct result of our efforts with Social Media, something that neither of us has seen to date. However, we both agree that Social Media is creating opportunities in new areas that, once again, neither of us would have foreseen previously. Oh, to be young again and have the time to take advantage of said opportunities (smile). But, there is still time.

I left the seminar the other day with a pretty extensive to-do list and I have started working on that over the last couple of days. The two key areas that I have been concentrating on are FaceBook for Business and Twitter.

FaceBook: First let me say that while FaceBoook is great for posting stuff, I find it to be incredibly difficult to edit previously entered account information. Not user friendly in the least. My humble opinion and may be largely due to my lack of experience with this tool. However, I did manage to figure out a few things:

O.K., I Was Wrong About Social Media

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I really hate being wrong. It happened to me once before  ….. I thought I was wrong but I turned out to be right (smile). Seriously though, my initial expectations and perceptions of Social Media have turned out to be dead wrong.

I am what you would call a “traditional face-to-face networker”. I’ve been that way my entire career. Of course, in all fairness, until the last couple of years there were not too many alternatives (smile). Still, when Social Media came up on my radar, I was quick to dismiss it. For that matter, I was even quicker to brand it as a meaningless exercise which is how I still view video games and MySpace (smile). To wit:

1. I don’t understand it and, therefore, it sucks (smile).
2. It is for geeks and kids.
3. It is all social and has no business application.
4. I don’t have the time to play “games”.
5. If it is so neat, how come all of my key contacts aren’t using it? If it’s like a fax machine, you’ve got to have two to make it work.

And, of course, I would also demand immediate and measurable results that could be directly correlated to my efforts. However, here’s what I am finding out. And, please keep in mind that I did not start actively working Social Media, on any level, until February of this year, the birth date of this site.

Happy 4th Birthday! – How Far Have We Come?

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Not four years. Four months (smile). It was four months ago today that this site was opened. Wow, what a ride! This was originally designed to be my personal blog which would chronicle my exploration of social media. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that it had the potential to be much more when the realization came to me that it could actually be developed into a web page for our group which was something lingering on my to-do list. From there, it has continued to take on a life of it’s own (smile).

Let me say this…..I am passionate about networking and I am maybe even more passionate about networking groups. NetWorks! in particular (smile). This being the case, turning a “blind eye” to Social Media just does not make any sense. Presented with the choice between extinction and evolution, we have chosen the latter. As such, we have come from a position of being “well behind the curve” on this subject to at least being able to approach catching up with it. It has taken a lot of hard work but it has been worth it. This site reports on those efforts in hopes of saving you some of the time necessary to get on the “bus”.

The purpose of these pages is pretty pure and simple. Some might even call it “crass & base” (smile). We look to promote our group, NetWorks!, and it’s members in hopes of increasing revenue opportunities for all involved. That’s it. As we like to say, “It’s all about R.O.I.”. To that end, we choose to focus on what we call “Business-Social” media with the emphasis being placed on business. One of the ways we have chosen to do this is by making this site public so that others may, hopefully, benefit from the steps we have taken to harness the overall power of networking. Call it a public service (smile).

So, what have we learned so far?

Productivity – TweetLater & Zemanta

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Been a tough day today. Upgraded my anti-virus software and they are not getting a “shout out” from me (smile). Apparently I have the only computer in the entire universe where this package will block access to the Internet even if their firewall is not on. Five techs later, and doing remote diagnostics, they’re still scratching their ………… heads (smile).

Since this is my bully pulpit, I’m also going to have a quick rant. I am constantly amazed by people who do not have the courtesy to respond to phone messages and emails even if it is to say “No”. “No”, by the way, is fine. And, I have a memory like an elephant. I noticed a couple of tweets lately where some folks were generally asking for help with connections and other pertinent areas. And, I have the solution they seek. They are also among those who have ignored me so………….. they are dead to me (smile).  What goes around comes around.  Whatever happened to manners? Maybe it’s just me.

TweetLater:

So, I flat out suck at sending out tweets. When I think of one I am always in the middle of something and, therefore, no tweet. Still, I have recognized that tweets drive visits to this site and assist me with my “branding efforts”. Enter TweetLater. I’ve heard people talk about it and it is sweet! I can spend an hour on the weekend and program in a passel of tweets for the week. Then, I can just tweet as I can to add to the mix. You can schedule your tweets to go out on specific days and times and this schedule is always right at your fingertips. And, if you add a tweet, it always displays them chronologically. Easy to set up, easy to use, and free. One thing I was not sure of was that it defaults to an “RSS Feed”. Just add in your twitter account and it works great. I’m still not sure what the “RSS” does and, guess what, I don’t care (smile).