Influential Marketing Blog

How To Live Blog (Or Twitter) An Event Effectively

Photo Credit: Josh Hallett (hyku)

There are two types of content creators at any event. The ones who are creating content because they want to, and those who are creating content because they have to (often because they have been sent to "cover" the event for a team or organization). For both, the toughest question to answer is how to do this in a way that results in quality content, but also doesn't detract from your experience of actually being at an event and participating in it. This post is about a few tips and ideas that should help you deal with that challenge based on what I've learned from attending dozens of events and watching how hundreds of people create content:

1. Have a purpose. Creating content in a live context can be a great traffic driver to your site, or a brilliant way to connect with those who are sharing ideas and will be reading your efforts soon. Before you get into it, however, make sure you know what you want to get out of it. Are you trying to educate colleagues? Drive more visitors to your site? Have a goal before you start.
2. Focus on the 1st take. In a real time environment, you don't have time to touch up a photo in photoshop or edit a video. A blog post must be 95% right the first time you write it. Speed is the toughest part of covering an event live - and the best way to manage it is to practice getting things right on the first take so you don't have to go back and fix them.
3. Create realistic targets. Do NOT ever think that you can live blog every session you attend and pack your day. That's the surest way to give yourself a major headache and feelings of inadequacy. Even pro bloggers who are covering events professionally take breaks - and your goal should be to share great content, not a high volume of crappy content.
   
4. Publish nuggets, not manifestos. Think about this - real time means you need to get content up and out quickly. Using shorter content sharing quick thoughts is much better for this. So save the big ideas for a recap post or something that comes later and focus on speed in the short term. Twitter is great for this as well - but don't just tweet everything a speaker says. Instead, focus on finding the best soundbites. And always tag your content with the hashtag (keyword) being used by people at the event (or create one if one does not exist).
   
5. Have a point of view. Speed doesn't mean lack of substance, however. The worst kind of content to come out of events is where people share what is happening on stage in a word for word "book report style" format. Most social media events already have someone assigned to do that. And trust me, you don't want to be "that guy (or girl)." Always have a point of view on what is happening on stage.
6. Share the real pulse of the event. Often the most interesting thing about an event isn't just what people say, but the intangibles about the event. Did everyone head back to their hotel rooms during the breaks or were they networking? What sessions were the most popular? Keep your eye out for broader trends that help you to understand the vibe and pulse of the event on a greater level.
7. Offer an insider perspective. Being an attendee or speaker at an event gives you a unique insider view of what is happening. If you can, try to share as much of that experience online as you can. Remember, the people following live are most likely those who were interested in the event but could not make it themselves, so give them a good look inside the event.
8. Get help on content promotion. Creating content from an event in real time is complicated enough, but you will probably find yourself simply running out to time when it comes to effectively promoting all the content you're creating. So get some help to submit your posts to Digg and other sites, or to point people to some of your content. Promotion is great real time, but it's most effective if you can split the duties.
   
9. Represent the virtual attendees. When you find yourself with an audience following your content in a live fashion, you have the option to be their representative at an event. This means you could poll your audience and ask a question in a session on their behalf - or ask others to follow up directly with those individuals as well. Be their voice and they will thank you for it.
10. Do a recap. No matter how many posts or tweets you get out during an event, always do a recap of the event and what you learned as part of your effort. Often, you'll find this post lets you talk about things you just didn't have time to during the event. And it will most probably be your most visited effort from the entire event.
    

6 Non-Salesy Ways To Ask Your Customers To Promote You

Want to know the #1 reason your customers don't recommend you to their friends? It isn't because they don't like your product, or because they don't care or are too busy. The real reason is either because you don't ask them to, or you don't make it easy for them to do it. If you ask them in the right way, however, the word of mouth referrals and additional business you can get from the experience will easily be more powerful that just about any other advertising or marketing you could do. Here are a few ideas for getting your customers to promote you to their family, friends and social networks in a way that won't make it appear as if you're paying them to like you:

1. Share the credit. When you create a new video using the software offered with the new Flip digital video cameras, there is an option at the end of the movie editing process to "share the credit" with Flip. Checking the box means that there will be a small screen that appears at the end of your movie saying that you created your masterpiece with Flip. It's a great and simple way to let their users "share the credit" with them (see image at the end of this post).
2. Let them be a fan. For those of you who are active Facebook users, this phrase likely has the meaning of creating a "fan page" but beyond Facebook, people often want to their circle of friends (and sometimes to the world) to know the brands they love. So on Facebook and even offline, give your customers and employees some visual way to declare that they support your brand. Give them t-shirts or bumper stickers. Let them put a badge on their blog or join your group on LinkedIn. However you do it, find as many ways as possible for them to identify themselves with you.
3. Encourage online reviews. It is no secret that online reviews can have big impact on whether someone decides to purchase something or not. Instead of getting customers to blindly fill out surveys or registration cards, try asking them to go online to a prominent site, or social network, or even their own blog and ask them to talk about their experience. Having these opinions searchable and public online will do far more for you than a great survey response.
4. Refer a friend. At one point it was common to see a "tell a friend" button on just about every website. Though that practice may not be as common as it once was, you should consider bringing it back for your site. Offline you can achieve the same thing through giving people extra business cards or other materials to pass along to their friends. Sometimes all you really need to do is make sure you are giving your supporters enough material to share with others.
5. Pass along an offer. Along similar lines is the idea of having a specific promotional offer that your customers can share with their contacts. Among the best types of offers are those which offer something for them AND something for your customer. One example is the friends and family discount that Clear Card offers. If you sign someone else up, you'll get a free month, and the person you sign up does as well.
6. Offer useful content. Nothing can promote your brand quite like offering content that solves a need. If you answer a customer's question or help them share something useful, you'll be one your way to getting them to promote your point of view just by passing the content along.

Example of "Sharing the Credit":

Ariana Huffington Shares 4 Secrets Of Creating A Successful Blog

Yesterday at the MarketingProfs event, Ariana Huffington took the stage for a keynote presentation sharing some lessons she has learned about building a successful blog network with the Huffington Post. Though she definitely ignored my advice to speakers about spending some time at an event to get to know the attendees (she was barely off the stage before heading out the door), she did share some interesting points in her talk that should be useful to most marketers:

1. Make it easy for contributors to contribute. One of the hallmarks of growth for the Huffington Post has been the site's ability to become the defacto location for any big celebrity to share their thoughts via a blog post. Not a purist about blogging, Ariana's point of view on blog posts was simple - if someone shares their thoughts transparently and honestly, the site can publish it as a blog post. To make it easy for Hollywood celebs like George Clooney and Jamie Lee Curtis, she has a team ready 24/7 to capture blog posts via dictation, email, or any other method someone might submit it. Benefit: You don't have to try and teach Rene Zellweger how to use Wordpress (potentially a full time job on its own).
2. Have a point of view. In one particularly revealing moment, Ariana talked about how journalism should not be an exercise in covering all sides of a story, but an investigative search for the truth - which is usually on one side or another. Of course, anyone who reads the Huffington Post knows which side she thinks the truth is on ... but there is a certain logic in media seeking the truth instead of working hard to keep everyone happy with a mention of their points of view. The only trouble, of course, is who gets to decide the truth. Benefit: Visitors to your site have a clear idea of what you stand for and what your voice will be.
3. Provide a safe environment. As Ariana explained it, getting new contributors would be tough if they felt that they could be attacked on a personal basis on everything they wrote. For that reason, she also has a team of real time comment "pre-moderators" who approve or reject comments in real time. Benefit: Arnold Schwarzenegger can blog about California issues without getting an influx of comments asking what the hell he was thinking starring in that dumb male pregnancy movie.
4. Build on your big hits. One point when it was clear the Huffington Post arrived was when PerezHilton.com linked to the site. Interestingly, this big hit also offered a chance for the site to understand how big spikes like this relate to capturing consistent readers. Ariana shared that 72% of the visitors to Huffington Post from that hit never returned. Of the remaining 28%, they came and went, and over time, they found that 7% stuck around and became regular readers. Multiple that effect over three years of traffic and big hits, and the result is their current traffic of more than 20 million unique visitors per month. Benefit: Getting noticed consistently by the big sites can lead to a measurable subscriber gain if you focus on measuring it.

7 Ways To Publish A Book For Marketing

I love books. Not just for the power of conveying an idea through a printed form, but also for the emotional significance of actually holding a book in your hands. More and more recently I have been books become a brilliant marketing tool for everyone, from political candidates to technology companies. Along the way, there are several ideas that I have collected for how using a book could be an effective part of a marketing strategy. Here are a few:

1. Explain a complex idea - Some businesses or product lines are based on something complex that is not easily understood. One example of using a book to explain a concept like this was a book Microsoft was handing out earlier this year at CES about their Windows Home Server product. It was called "Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?" and took a kids book approach to explaining why anyone would want a server in their home.
2. Commission an existing author or writer - This can be a great way to build on an existing author's profile and audience by working with him or her to commission a new piece. Hilton Hotels used this strategy as part of their Olympic marketing effort when they commissioned an award-winning kids author named Todd Parr to create a new book for them around their marketing tagline "Be Hospitable." Johnson & Johnson used a similar strategy back in 2002 with Understanding Children, a book they supported the creation of from Richard Saul Wurman (well known author and creator of the TED conference).
3. Partner with a "co-author" - There are two types of situations to use a co-author - the first is if you are actually a team and share similar ideas that you want to publish together. The second is to get someone who will do the actual writing while you help to provide direction and content. This second method is the one usually preferred by politician or famous person when they get a writer to help them create a "tell-all" biography of their lives.
4. Offer a book template - Though in a very different category, the Disease Control Priorities Project has an interesting way of distributing their content in a book form. You can go online, select various chapters from a group of publications and create your own book. The model of offering a template and letting people assemble their own books with your branding/message integrated is one that could work in many other industries.
5. Commemorate an experience - Art galleries use this technique often, creating limited edition books that commemorate their exhibits and the artwork contained in them. They work well because the art is so visual and many of these exhibits can be gatherings of work that will be dispersed after the exhibit and never again brought together - so the book seems very archival and worthwhile.
6. Organize a collaboration - There are some great examples of this technique - from Seth Godin's The Big Moo collaborative book a few years ago, to the Age of Conversation parts 1 and 2 (Disclaimer - I am a contributing author to Part II) which gathered together lots of contributors and invited them to write on a related theme to bring all these pieces together into a book. The resulting publication is often something that has built in marketing support as all the contributors will promote it to their networks.
7. Sponsor a branded printing - This may be the simplest way to use a book for marketing as you are basically using a book that has already been published which aligns to your product or brand in some way and reprinting a branded edition. Pretty much any book ever published can be reprinted in a branded version, usually with a new custom foreword or different cover depending on the number of units purchased.

How To Respond To A Blog Crisis In 5 Steps

A blogger has just said something bad about your company and it's getting picked up and repeated by others rapidly online ... what do you do? One of the toughest things to understand about responding to a negative situation on blogs is the speed with which the conversations happen. Speed matters because in a matter of minutes, content can go viral and not responding early means that your voice is missing in the crucial early conversations and therefore not represented as anyone carries the conversation forward. Aside from that, if you do not respond quickly, you give others a chance to respond for you - and perhaps not favourably. So how do you deal with a negative blog situation if one did arise, and do it quickly?*

Here are a few tips:

1. Identify the participants: Every blog crisis has three categories of participants: the source, the commenters and the promoters. The source is the place where the story started, the commenters are those who are discussing it, and the promoters are the people spreading the story online. By far the easiest way to build a picture of these people is to simply follow links ... visit the original site, click on "About" pages, click on people's name in blog comments and keep a list of these people.
2. Evaluate the conversation - In addition to tone of comments (positive, negative), look for frequency, how many different people are commenting and the date and time of last comment to see how active and wide reaching the conversation is. Going beyond blogs, read the "backchannel" of conversation by searching for your keywords and the source blogger on Twitter Search. Often bloggers will offer a running commentary through Twitter, giving you vital background information and possibly even a way to engage the blogger in a real time discussion.
3. Respond authentically - On blogs, as opposed to other less immediate and personal forms of media, you cannot rely on a carefully crafted press release to create some ambiguity or delicately respond to a crisis. You need to actually have a point of view and share it authentically. This may be an apology, or a promise to investigate further, or a correction of fact. Doing it authentically means you need to have a real person comment (not an anonymous company account).
4. Publish your point of view - Simply commenting, however, is not the most powerful way to respond to a negative situation. The best way is to publish your point of view on some form of social media that is an asset for your company. This means publishing something on your own corporate blog (if you have one). Then every comment or subsequent discussion can point people back to this content, and even bring the conversation about the issue onto your site.
5. Monitor and respond to conversation - The most challenging thing about responding to a blog crisis is that you need to keep monitoring the conversation and responding to commentary and dialogue. At some point, it will usually die down ... but in social media and on blogs you need to follow through on any conversations you have started, or else risk undoing any positive work you may have done as people feel you are not paying attention to them.
   

* As you may have realized, this post assumes already that you will be responding to a blogger. There are some very real situations where we have counseled clients NOT to respond to particular blog attacks and where I personally have chosen not to respond to bloggers who may have posted negatively about me. Unfortunately, there is no hard rule for when to respond or when not to as each situation is different.

Note: This post is republished from the original on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Blog.

An Insider's Guide To Marketing On Flickr

Now that I am getting back on the grid after three weeks in Asia, I thought a good follow up post to my time covering the Olympics in Beijing would be sharing some tips on one site that I ended up very actively using throughout the Olympics: Flickr. I have had a Flickr account for several years now, but always looked at the examples of Brian Solis and Josh Hallet (among others) and felt I wasn't quite the super user of Flickr that I aspired to be. While I'm not as profilic in capturing the people from all the events I attend as those two, I do consider myself an enthusiastic amateur photographer and at one point even considered doing it professionally. Now that I find myself squarely on the amateur side, I do have the same drive to have my photos seen and appreciated (below is a "Best of Beijing" gallery I just put together) ...

While working on the Lenovo Voices of the Olympic Games project from Beijing, I also rapidly discovered that Flickr can be a marketing goldmine for the right project. Over about ten days, I uploaded hundreds of photos into 21 sets covering everything from scorpions in the street market at Wangfujing to an epic (and underreported) women's beach volleyball match between Russia and Georgia. The biggest lesson I learned is that Flickr offers one of the largest image archives and communities online and one that is often not targeted because marketers aren't yet good at creating the one thing they need to have credibility in Flickr ... quality non-marketing images.

This is a big deal because Flickr is not just a community of photos, it is a community where high quality photography is appreciated. Sure, people use Flickr to share their point and shoot photos with family, but the power users of Flickr and the communities that you would care about as a marketer are usually looking at very high quality images. So before you try to use any of the techniques in this insiders guide, you need to make sure your photographs are actually good enough to bother. Assuming they are, here are a few things I learned about using Flickr for marketing ...

1. Go Pro - Getting a Flickr "Pro" account is like the green fees in golf. Of course, you can upload up to 200 images for free and have an account without paying, but you don't get the "pro" icon next to your name and your account doesn't have the same authority for members of the community. If you are going to use Flickr to do any marketing, put up the 25 bucks and get yourself a pro account. (PS - I'm not getting any commission from anyone for telling you that!)
2. Create Collection homepages - Flickr photos are arranged into sets and collections. Sets are like photo galleries or albums, and collections group various photo albums together. As you organize your photos, think about how to make each set about a certain them, and then group them together into collections. Once you have a collection homepage, this can be the public URL that you send people to. In my case, I created a Tiny URL for my public collection from Flickr at www.tinyurl.com/beijingflickr. That way, I could use the same URL even as I added new galleries to the collection each day.
3. Think thumbnails - Sets, collections and individual images are represented by thumbnails. These are the visual elements that need to engage someone before they are inspired to click and delve further into your account. When you take and crop your photos, paying attention to how the thumbnails look matters. More importantly, whenever you create a new set the thumbnail is set by the first image. Make sure you change it to the one that offers the most compelling reason to click and see the rest of the set.
4. Tag properly - Tagging sometimes seems like the online equivalent of going to the dentist, you know you should do it but always manage to put it off in place of doing something else first. On Flickr, tags are a big reason that people can find images and tagging yours properly is a necessary step. Use the right descriptive keywords, but also check and see what people are already searching for and see if any of those tags may apply to your images. Aside from direct links, many of your image views on Flickr will likely come from people searching for these tags.
5. Share real time - One of the most powerful benefits of Flickr is that when you are at an event or something current that people are likely to care about in a particular timeframe, speed of getting photos online matters. If you have a blog, configure it to work with Flickr. If you are using a computer, use the Flickr Uploadr tool to get your images online faster. The closer to your event you can get your photos up, the more likely it is that people will use them to refer to, share with others and drive traffic to.
6. Join and contribute to groups - No matter what you are taking pictures of, chances are there is a Flickr group with others who are already sharing photos of it. People who are active in Flickr groups tend to also be some of Flickr's most active (and often influential) members. As a result, joining groups not only lets you be part of a greater community and conversation on a certain theme, it can often give you a direct connection to Flickr users who really matter. Remember, what you post into a group must be relevant and on topic or else you risk alienating yourself and your brand.
7. Actively promote and approve reuse - Lots of services, bloggers and media are now using Flickr images to power their own stories and media. Once you start getting your imagery noticed, you will likely start to receive invitations from individual bloggers and services like NowPublic asking for permission to reuse your photos. This means your photos are gaining traction. Try to approve the requests quickly and encourage more people to use your images ... and credit you properly for them, of course.
8. Sex it up - Ok, this is a pretty gratuitious strategy, but it does work to feature scantily clad people in images to get more eye traffic. In my case, this meant creating a separate gallery in my Flickr account for the dancing beach girls from the beach volleyball event at the Olympics. I'm not surprised to say that it's still the top performing gallery of all 21 and continues to bring in views which then often continue from people looking through other images in my collection.
9. Enable stats - Flickr has a great new tool which allows you to get deeper metrics on your photos. They have smartly realized, however, that not everyone cares about using something like this. So instead of giving it to all their users, they have a step where you need to ask for it to be turned on in your account, and 24 hours later you will start to get metrics on overall views, engagement and referalls. The last point is particularly useful, as now you can see who else is driving people to your photo collections.
10. Keep going - This is a challenge I will face as I move forward from the Olympics where I had a higher volume of photos than I may have in coming weeks. Nonetheless, now that I have started to use Flickr to promote my images, I hope to continue at future events and keep some momentum going. If you start to use Flickr for marketing, your challenge will be the same ... to avoid having one big spike and then no more activity.

This post is mostly focused on photography, but over the next few weeks I intend to try them out for some video that I created during the Beijing Games as well. I may post an update if this changes these recommendations signficantly, but for now I am anticipating using many of the same techniques to promote the videos I put onto Flickr just as I have been doing for photography.

How To Get Your Event Marketing To Go Viral

Over the last several weeks I have found myself working on answers to the same question for both client work as well as some personal efforts around Personality Not Included. The question is a simple one that most marketers will deal with at some point in their career: how to get your product or service to stand out at an event that you are sponsoring or participating in? Despite the much exaggerated death of conferences and real life events at the hands of the virtual world and social networks, in most industries these events are still alive and well. In many cases, they offer the best opportunity to get your product or service in front of the right decision makers in an efficient and big way.

So how can you be sure you are getting the best value out of the events that you are participating in and even get your efforts to be talked about by conference attendees? Here are a few steps to consider:

1. Decide to sponsor or not to sponsor. The surest way to have a presence is to actually pay for a sponsorship. In most cases, having some kind of sponsorship is a good idea as it gives you a specific platform to build from and a guaranteed way in. This doesn't mean you can't engage in guerilla activities around it, but it makes it much less likely that you will be barred from the event or that your efforts will be shut down. The exception is if you are trying to market to an event where sponsorship is either unavailable, or far outside your price range.
2. Think around your sponsorship. Once you finalize a sponsorship, you will have a list of things that you get. This may mean "inclusion" in the brochure and on the website. It might also offer a table at the venue for the event. This list of elements is your starting point to brainstorm. If you are allowed 4 free passes, what could you do to give those away and generate interest? What can you do to go beyond just the few pieces you are offered and make your sponsorship work harder?
3. Distribute seeds instead of planting them. One of the keys to standing out at an event is not just reaching people individually and telling them what you do. That's the hard way to do it and you will be fighting an uphill battle to stand out among all the other brands doing the same thing. Instead, think of each person you interact with as someone who can carry the seed of your idea to someone else. Your goal isn't just to convince them, it's to give them some way, large or small to carry your message forward.
4. Follow up by networking. The classic mistake many marketers make when planning their event marketing strategy is simply thinking in terms of "staffing." The most successful event marketing you can do is building on your sponsorship by networking with event participants. Instead of just sending the 4 junior people to man the booths, think about sending a few people to roam and attend the event. Get to know the speakers and get others interested in what you do.

Taking my own advice, I decided to sponsor the MashMeet San Francisco event tonight (as well as the Mashmeet LA event on Friday). I have a table where I will be selling and signing copies of Personality Not Included (that's the sponsorship). The challenge for me was bringing the book more relevance to the Web 2.0 savvy crowd that will be at the party and breaking out of just having a single table that people may or may not visit. Any ideas on what I might do? Since it's meant to be a surprise, I'll share details on what I decided in a timed post later today (check back at 6pm PST, 9pm EST)!

6 Secrets of Successful Book Marketing

I've probably worked on hundreds of marketing campaigns in my time over the past ten years working at agencies. And what I realized these past few weeks as I've been launching my own book, is that I've never worked on a book launch among all those campaigns and that it's different when it's your own project as opposed to something you work on for someone else. I thought about doing a recap of the entire marketing effort behind PNI (including the things I am still planning but haven't yet launched), but that's only something you can do a year or longer after launching the book and seeing the results of effort. Of course, waiting that long seems like way too long to share some things I have already learned, so here's a first list of some "secrets" I've learned so far about working in the publishing industry which will hopefully be useful for you whether you are launching your own book, or some other product or service:

1. Provide a vision. Lots of people will want to try and help you with a book when you come out with it because it is exciting. The trick is to keep them excited about it beyond the initial buzz of meeting you or hearing that you have a book out.  My vision for the book had partially to do with a very short and powerful elevator pitch ("personality matters") which I have been talking about since my first post about the power of personality picking it as the trend to watch for 2008 back in my first post of the new year. The vision for the book is what people can believe in, and what has propelled much of the buzz from people so far talking about it.
2. Avoid the big bang. Lots of books launch with a big burst of activity and then fade away. Instead, my marketing strategy for PNI extends for more than a year. There is lots of activity now and you could be forgiven for thinking that I am using the same "big bang" approach as other books ... but trust me when I say that there is a much longer term approach to how I am promoting this book.  I expect peak sales for PNI to come a year or two from now, and hopefully continue. I aimed to write a book that was international, had a shelf life beyond the usual 2 years and that would build word of mouth as more people puchased, read, and used the ideas within it. "Bum rushing charts" is great for a spike, but I am building a brand around the book that I want to last for far longer than a weekend.
3. Know your competition. I know that I released a book in the same time frame as the long awaited Groundswell from Charlene and Josh from Forrester (both of whom I know and have great respect and admiration for). On occasion, I get a question about what it is like to be "competing" with them by having PNI come out within a week of Groundswell. I don't see it like that firstly because we have very different books (mine is only peripherally about social media and is actually more of a marketing/branding/entrepreneurship book). Secondly, and more importantly, we are not with the same publisher. My real competition is any other book from McGraw-Hill that is part of their Spring 2008 catalog which is competing for marketing resources from the MH team. So far PNI is the lead title from McGraw-Hill's entire Spring catalog. That's why we managed to presell more than half of our entire first edition run to bookstores (more than 10,000 units) before the book was even released.
4. Get used to uncertainty. When you launch a book, there are a lot of elements that are out of your control. The actual release date, the binding, the timelines ... everything will start to seem a bit haphazard and uncoordinated. Luckily, I have a lot of experience working with big brands, so the experience of working in an environment where you are not quite sure of everything that others are doing to work on the same challenge as you is a very familiar situation for me. The main way I have learned to tackle this is by sharing more openly what I am doing and reacting to new information quickly as I get it.
5. Build a team one by one. My book is all about how you need to make the individuals in your organization the ones that can speak for your brand and bring it to life. In publishing, this means selling the concept of the book to all the people from my publisher who may have the chance to touch it. I have been directly emailing more than 25 individuals in offices around the world at McGraw-Hill to build relationships with them and bring them into the marketing team for PNI. I know what it's like to have multiple projects to work on each day ... I've done that in agencies for many years. Now that I'm the client, I'm taking my own advice and trying to make my project the one that team members choose to work on more than any of the other ones on their plate.  I want PNI to be the project they tell their families about with excitement after getting home from a day of work.
6. Launch quickly, iterate and move on. This is a lesson that more and more marketers are starting to embrace, in part because of the perceived success of a brand like Google in just trying lots of things, seeing what works, and then focusing on that.  The nice thing about being my own client is that I have ultimate say on whether to do something or not. And the tact I've taken with most campaigns around the book launch is to decide quickly and do it. The virtual interview idea that I had on book launch day (March 28th) which resulted in buzz on more than 60 blogs was an idea that I had just four days earlier. It fit with my strategy, was implementable and so I did it. I will soon be launching a follow up to that effort (next week) that should get even more buzz. Stay tuned for that announcement next Monday.

This list is based on a few months of promotional effort for Personality Not Included.  As time runs on, I hope to have even more insights to share ... as well as more detailed results behind them to illustrate just how effective they really are.

6 Lessons on Creating A Great Learning Event from OMS

This is not about how to throw a great party.  That would definitely be a worthwhile topic as well, but the point of this post is to share some lessons on creating a great event focused on learning.  Whether it is a conference, seminar, session or just about any other type of business event focused on learning - there are some great lessons I took from the Online Marketing Summit http://www.onlinemarketingsummit last week.  These were not from a great session, however, but from the event itself and how it was put together.  Aaron Kahlow and his team from Business Online did several things that made OMS an example worth paying attention to if you need to put together an event for your team or are trying to put on a successful industry event.  Here are 6 key lessons that may help you:

1. Have a host instead of an "introducer" - Anyone who attended the event was sure to get lots of Aaron-time, as he led many of the sessions himself and made it his mission to host the event.  Though this was not always a good thing (like spending the first 10 minutes of our panel on powerpoint - something I doubt he would have wanted any of us to do had one of us been moderator), at the end of the day you had the feeling that there was a real person who really cared and was doing his best to make sure the event was useful for everyone.
2. Create a great content archive - Learning is not just about what happens at an event but how easily accessible all the information is after the event.  The plan from OMS was to have all presentations online, every session video recorded and available online, and generally producing a content archive from the event that would ensure that even if some attendees were stuck on conference calls during the event (um, like me) or had to choose one session over another, the archive of learning would still be available.
3. Encourage 1 to 1 information sharing - During the day, there were long breaks planned into the schedule, and a unique roundtable style lunch where each table was focused on a particular "pain point" that attendees identified as important to them before the event.  These topics were even included on the name badges, allowing attendees to most easily find someone else with a similar challenge to them and start useful informal conversations.
4. Target communities where people are - OMS has its own online community and set of forums, which I have to admit I did log into but did not engage in much discussion on.  I did, however, join the Facebook group early and managed to revisit it multiple times leading up the event only because I was already using Facebook.  The conversation at the event with several people proved that this Facebook group was a key element in some people deciding to attend and for others, was a great way to connect with others.
5. Focus on the questions - Many of the sessions throughout OMS were heavily made up of questions from the audience.  Aside from engaging the audience in this format, it also showed some of the key issues and points that attendees were struggling with and helped panelists and other speakers to focus their responses on these issues. I believe it also gave attendees more of a voice at the event than the they usually have.
6. Pay for real feedback - Every conference hands out survey forms at the end, and OMS did that too.  But in addition to that, Aaron and the Business Online team hosted a second happy hour on the second day with the request that attendees come to share their real feedback in conversation about how they felt the event was and what could be better.  Though it was a tough crowd (standing between people, free booze and socializing is a hard place to be), the feedback that came out of that session was far richer than I am sure most events get, and OMS will likely be much better for it.

9 Ways to Stand Out As A Conference or Tradeshow Speaker

Last Thursday, I spent the day at my first event of 2008 called the Social Networking Conference (SNC) in Miami to present a session called "Secrets of Creating Talkability."  The event kicks of a string of speaking appearances I will be making over the next few months as I start to get ready for my book launch in March.  The SNC event was far more vendor-friendly than many others I have been to ... allowing vendors to do full 30 minute presentations about their products and even running these sessions at the same time as the educational sessions.  With all these competing sessions, it got me thinking about the necessity of standing out as a speaker to get the most value out of participating at these events.  So I thought this Monday I would share a few tips on what I have found works when it comes to standing out as a speaker at a tradeshow, conference or other industry event.

1. Have a simple theme - Speaking is not that much different from messaging a product or brand.  You need to go in having a theme for what you will be talking about and a central message you want to leave people with.  Focusing on what this message should be to best help you get value out of your appearance (without overtly pitching or being too "salesy") is a necessity
2. Fly solo - You can be part of a panel, moderate a panel, or have your own session.  If you can pull it off, I highly recommend trying to get your own session.  If you can create something memorable and engaging, the value of that appearance can go straight to you without being shared.  In perception also, speakers who have their own sessions tend to be looked at by other attendees as the biggest experts.
3. Ditch the bullets, go visual - Before my presentation at SNC, I reread Garr Reynolds great book on presentations called Presentation Zen.  I highly recommend picking it up as it has many wonderful lessons on how to create a stronger presentation.  Chief among them is to use strong visuals and as little text as possible.  And definitely ditch the bullet points.
4. Make your point quickly - Whether you have your own session or are part of a panel, this point is important to remember.  Much of the "conversation" on these panels consists of repetition.  The less you fall into this trap, the more people will respect and listen to you when you do speak.
5. Ask and take questions - Taking questions while you talk is a great way to involve the audience, and even better is to ask questions to help tailor your presentation.  When I started my presentation about talkability at SNC, I asked who already had a social network and who was considering starting one to get a sense of the room.  It helped me to tailor my examples and discussion to what would be more useful for the audience.
6. Talk last - Timing is another important element in standing out as a speaker, particularly when you are in a session with others.  Speaking last about a point gives you the chance to offer a unique and considered point of view, and also gives you the benefit of hearing other's points of view first.  This is not about having the last word, but about having a chance to distill other's voices and your own into a short point of view people will remember.
7. Offer to connect - Adding a URL to the end of your presentation or mentioning one in a presentation is one way of offering to connect, but it is self serving.  Instead of doing that, I mentioned during my presentation that I love to try out new social networks and would be willing to try any new ones from people in the audience if they sent me an invite.  That alone resulted in more than a few follow up emails from people, invites to Linked In, followers on Twitter and several Facebook friend requests. 
8. Stick around - The biggest mistake many speakers make is to run out of an event right after they present.  We are all busy, and it's tough to afford to take an entire day out to speak and attend an event.  If you need to skip the event, my advice is to skip the part before you speak.  Sticking around after you speak is invaluable to give people a chance to connect with you.  And if you don't do it, what's the point of being at the event anyway?
9. Stay real - The last point on my list of tips for standing out as a speaker has to do with ego.  I've got one just like most bloggers and speakers out there.  The challenge is not to let it get in the way of dealing authentically with people.  Everyone has something to offer and whether they are trying to sell you something or are in a position to help you, staying real will pay off in the long term.  By the way, related to point #8, nothing helps you stay more real than actually staying to watch another session beside the one you spoke at. 

Hopefully these tips help you to get more out of your speaking appearances.  As always, I'm interested to see if they work for you and what your experience has been.  And for any others doing the speaking rounds, any other tips you would share?