skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This week, I was treated to a rough-cut of a DMO's forthcoming virtual reality promotion.
The glories of the city's convention center and hotels were revealed in full and fabulous 3D.
Writing for Associations Now, Samatha Whitehorn claims VR is destined to become "a mainstream feature of association meetings and destination marketing."
Little wonder, Whitehorn says. "The power of VR is that it gives the viewer a unique sense of empathic connection to people and events."
DMOs will tap VR to give their cities an edge in event planners' eyes, and even offer it as an alternative to live streaming, so folks unable to attend an event can join in from afar.
But wait a cotton-pickin' minute!
"VR's going to kill my event," every planner's shouting.
Not in my book.
I may be a curmudgeon, but VR is only higher octane View-Master.
Don't get me wrong: I loved View-Master as a kid. But it didn't keep me from exploring the world beyond my bedroom.
I predict VR will indeed find its niche—alongside the Pet Rock and the Cabbage Patch Kid.
What do you think?
"Event marketers are used to doing a marketing task and crossing it off their list," says BrightBull director Ricardo Molina. "Social media isn’t like that unfortunately."
Social media takes perseverance to pay off.
Molina offers 10 tips to help you reach the finish line:
1. Start with influencers. Ask them to share their opinions on a topic or discuss what they're reading at the moment.
2. Focus on your audience’s pain. Forget about amassing followers, and focus instead on engaging people by publishing relevant content.
3. Tell a story bigger than your event. Tap into industry trends and news. People will register for your event because your finger's on the pulse.
4. Automate, but don't go on autopilot. Unless you're engaged in online conversations, you're faking it. "Automation can be a great time saver, but unless your technology is enabling you to build better relationships online as well as making your life easier, it's suspect," Molina says.
5. Blog. LinkedIn posts have only hours to work, Tweets only minutes. "Great blog posts deliver traffic for years."
6. Don’t expect influencers to help overnight. Results will take months, and come only if you stay on task.
7. Stick to one voice. Inconsistency detracts. "There's nothing weirder than talking to someone on social media and one day they're all informal and jokey and their next post is like a corporate jargon-athon."
8. Enlist your team. Do more with more. "Even if all they do is retweet or give you a bit of a generic back slap for your content, it all counts."
9. Make social media a habit. "Social media isn't an add on 'seasoning' to an event marketing plan," Molina says. You must make a serious effort.
10. Invite followers. Inform, intrigue, instigate, incent; and eschew all me-talk. "If all you do is go 'me, me, me' it's not going to be the shocker of the century when people stop listening," Molina says.
Michael Hart contributed today's post. He's a business consultant and writer who focuses on the event industry.
Everybody’s heard at least a little bit of the political chatter over restrictions on LGBT people in Georgia and North Carolina lately.
A week or so ago, Georgia’s governor rejected a bill the legislature passed that would have allowed businesses not to serve gay people if it conflicted with their religious beliefs. About the same time, the North Carolina state governor said of a similar bill—this one creating a law about which public restroom people are supposed to use—“Bring it on!”
According to Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau CEO William Pate, the billion-dollar business the events industry brings to Atlanta every year had something to do with the Georgia governor’s decision. In North Carolina, a statement from the High Point Market Executive Committee made it clear customers are already starting to pull out of its event later this month—and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory isn’t budging.
So, did lobbying on behalf of the events industry make a difference in Georgia, but not North Carolina?
The truth is that it’s hard to know. While those of us who run tradeshows, conventions and conferences feel like we’re pretty important people—especially when we bring a citywide to town—the reality is that, compared to other industries, we’re small change.
But our customers are the real thing. And the fact that companies like Disney and Coca-Cola feel a need to take a political position in order to retain their customers tells you something about how much the way they approach their businesses has changed over the years. They aren’t just merely responding to markets anymore; they’re responding to the sentiments of their customers in ways that go beyond whether they’ll pay a certain price for a certain product.
Nothing in business is as simple as it once was—and that applies to the events industry as well. Yes, there are show organizers who still get away with selling their quota of 10 x 10s every year and creating a lineup of PowerPoint presentations by sponsors that they then call a conference program. But their days are numbered.
As customers in every part of the business world change how they do business, so must event organizers.
Event producers didn't have enough to do.
Now comes content.
No sweat.
BrightBull founder Ricardo Molina offers four keys to unlocking the time you need for content marketing:
1. Repurpose. Event production is a treasure trove of content. Your list of speakers and the producer’s notes about their expertise are "a quick polish away from being a 'who’s who' list." Transcripts of production research calls are "blog posts in the making." "Think about all the possible sources of content that already exist in your organization," Molina says. "You’ll be amazed how much there is."
2. Outsource. Why tackle the chore alone? "The world is full of great content creators," Molina says. Buying or bartering for third-party content can be a great way to acquire super stuff, quickly. Combine the task with your search for email lists.
3. Repackage. "Take one kick-ass piece of original content, e.g. an industry survey, and create a whole content series out of it," Molina says. Publish the findings as a report, an e-book and an infographic. Ask speakers to write responses to the findings for your blog.
4. Email less. Invest less time in emails, to free time for content. "Emails are "the event marketing security blanket," Molina says. "Event marketing plans are littered with them." But with all your time spent writing and blasting emails, you have none to spare for content. Change that.
