There are a lot of cutting edge ‘conference style’ events happening in 2013 and I urge everyone to seek out the ones that do things differently. 

Events are the most wonderful place to consume the latest information in a truly unique environment shaped by every attendee. They can be bespoke and truly memorable experiences while harnessing the best in human nature. The value of face-to-face contact cannot be underestimated so do not write off events: just be aware of the bad and the ugly and use our list to avoid them. 

Here are ten things to look out for. If the event you are considering attending isn’t doing at least half of these things then that is a sign that it may not be the event for you! 

What the great events will be doing in 2013

1. The use of content marketing. If an event you plan to attend just uses messages like “must attend event” or the equally ubiquitous “unique networking opportunities” be very skeptical. I would wager that it won’t be the former and won’t provide the latter! The event to attend will be enticing you by demonstrating and proving the quality of the content and the uniqueness of the networking way before you actually attend the event. Content marketing ensures the event “proves” rather than simply pretends. 

2. Events which concentrate on the right audience using audience curation. This is so important especially as many events increase the amount of peer-to-peer learning to add value to participants. Here’s some more useful info on audience curation. 

3. The organiser paying / training / providing great support to speakers. I believe that you should not attend a decent sized event that has not offered to properly support, or pay the people in charge of delivering the learning. As I am sure you will agree, when you pay people it generally tends to increase the amount of time they commit and the quality!  

4. Conferences which include meeting design. At these events you are likely to learn more and have the right conversations. The event will be designed as an experience. Within the learning you will see a variety of session types, different durations and a great mix of learning and networking environments. 

5. Conferences where attendees have the opportunity to be “participants”. If you are planning to attend an event and you haven’t had the opportunity to influence the programme or even better, the opportunity to directly contribute, then do consider avoiding the event. Events are for you so your input is crucial! 

6. Social Media playing a much more active role in the event. Events and social media is a marriage made in heaven. Organisers should encourage engagement from all the stakeholders as social media can add value to everyone. If the event you are considering attending isn’t using social media to add value to your attendance I would question if you can be sure there will be value in other areas?

7. Conferences structuring delegates learning and networking before, during and after. The organsier should be helping you learn and network before, during and after the event. The event has to have a longer “shelf life” than its’ physical duration. 

8. Something unique! Anything! Even if it’s that smallest thing that looks different. Just a hint of tailoring of the event is a good indication that a lot more thought has gone into the other elements of the event. 

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You don't have to go to this extreme but please just something different!

 9. Conferences that announce the majority of their content months before the event. If this doesn’t happen it means that rather than honing fantastic, unique and dynamic content they have been doing something which they obviously consider much more important. 

10. Have exciting promotional material. If the event is using marketing material that has, for example, a picture of the destination city rather than any imagery that relates to the actual conference theme, taking a wide berth is recommended. If they use a traditional four page A4 brochure this smacks of the “production line approach” to your event. Avoid these events.

Make the most of the events you attend in 2013

My advice, as a consultant who sees under the bonnets of hundreds of events every year, is this – if you aren’t seeing more than half of the things on this list then think very seriously about attending that event. 

Seek out the innovative events and attend them. These events will be worth it. 

We are very lucky to work in events. For loads of reasons. Sometimes it may be the free food and wine tasting. Or the ‘room upgrade’ that you get EVEN without asking (once your hand over your business card of course) Or maybe it’s the last minute call to fill a corporate space at a sporting final or music festival. We do have a good life. So it’s with this background that we should be thanking our lucky stars that someone went and made EVERYTHING EVEN better for us and invented Social Media. But this Blog questions if we guilty of looking this particular gift horse in the mouth? Are we doing enough with it to add value to everyone who is involved in our events?

We have to take full advantage of Social Media. And all we have to do are two things:

REALISE THE POTENTIAL

And USE THAT POTENTIAL!

The perfect marriage

In one flick of a switch Social Media allowed us to do several things that had always been a big challenge for organisers. Almost overnight our life was made so much easier. Now I am sure you will recognise all of these concerns. These things really used to keep us up at night:

1. How do we find people who would be interested in our event but who are not on our aged and badly managed email database?

2. How do we find and follow what our competition is up to?

3. How do we enable attendees to talk about our event? How can they big it up for us?

4. How can we get our event out to more people so they can see how good it is?

5. How can we add more value to our sponsors and our exhibitors?

6. How do we create an effective way to properly engage people so we can hear what they think at our event?

To a large degree we don’t need to worry about these anymore so that gives us more time to think about the 100 things we do have to worry about! But Social Media has come to our aid on these particular bugbears.

How are you currently using Social Media?

I know we are all using Social Media at our events and I hope that this Blog doesn’t seem too trite. But I’d like to question are we all really using it to its full potential? Not until Gallus hired a ‘Social Sidekick’ did we realise its full potential.

My last Blog concentrated on Social Media as a way to deliver the Content Marketing Strategy and this is crucial in supporting your event. But looking outside that particular area I would like organisers to answer the following six questions. So here goes are you currently using Social Media to:

1. Search for delegates and potential sponsors and exhibitors? I mean it. Directly searching and targeting people through Social Media. Would you consider contacting a potential delegate who has made a relevant comment on LinkedIn? Or someone who plays an active role in the #hashtag community covering your event? Or how about if they just have a relevant job title and they work in the city your event is taking place? Social Media delivers the hottest of leads. You can be proactive and contact active companies who may want to spend their advertising dollar with you.

2. Do you follow your competitor feeds? Do you react to them? Do you know what content is re-tweeted by their followers? There is no more need to sign up with a false name. Follow them and see what they are all about!

3. When we look at Social Media there is arguable MUCH MORE in it for us than our attendees. So how do you help attendees engage? How do you educate them that promoting your event is a good thing for them? This is a crucial step that too many organisations have skipped.

4. Social Media loves content and evidence is proving that the more visual that content the more interaction people have with it. And here we are: we’ve lucked out again! We have great looking events with loads of content? So are you taking advantage of this? Blogs are great and other aspects covered in any content marketing strategy are very useful. But you have to start to think visual. Here’s Tech-Fest’s Pinterest board and a link to some videos from that event. We had a great looking event with great content so we have to make the most of that. And so should you!

5. Here’s something straight From our Consultancy Templates

You normally only get this when you hire us to consult. But we think it’s important that the industry as a whole starts to add more value to sponsors and exhibitors and Social Media really helps this. Here’s how you help support your sponsors and exhibitors to get maximum value from actively engaging in Social Media.

6. I can confidently say that we all have a hashtag at our event and we encourage tweeting on the day. But do we use that communication feed to impact the event on the day? It’s a great idea to have someone following the tweets and responding to them. But also highlighting to the organiser if something is wrong. Even if that is with one person. If an attendee commented negatively on the desert at a dinner how good would it be if you found him and offered another option? Or how about you noted her comment and then introduced him to the speaker after her session? These are simple examples but they do demonstrate the power SM has put in our hands to make our events EVENT BETTER.

Let’s not rest on our laurels. Let’s make sure we wring the sponge dry and get out of Social Media everything we can to increase the value for all of our stakeholders. Let’s make our great life a wee bit easier.

How To Rock The World Of Social Events

A Consultancy Report: On how to use Social Media at your event

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The influences

One reason for the blog is that there is a lack of awareness of the benefits of a ‘Content Marketing Strategy’. The idea of a ‘CMS’ is still pretty cutting edge so don’t be annoyed if you have arrived here not knowing exactly what one is. The lack of awareness of a ‘CMS’ isn’t a real surprise as the idea of a specific content led marketing strategy for business events is relatively new. Michael Heipel’s fantastic blog from April 2012 was one of the first and is still certainly one of the best on the subject.

The other two influences for this blog relate to specific events. I am speaking at the Event Innovation Summit held in Barcelona to be held on the 23rd October. In a short session I will cover how we sold out Tech-Fest in only six weeks: we did that (you wont be surprised to hear) mainly by implementing a ‘Content Marketing Strategy’. And finally I’ve just finished the ‘content marketing strategy’ for Gallus’s first Spanish event: ‘How To Rock The World Of Social Media’. The idea of a CMS is very much on my mind.

What is a CMS?

People attend events owing to the content and a CMS puts that content (rather than the messaging about the event) at the heart of the marketing message. Your strategy for marketing your event is based on actual content: blogs being one well established use of content. But it’s not only about the content it’s about the timing. The content marketing strategy starts way in advance of your event and really never probably finishes!

A holistic successful marketing campaign will mix traditional marketing messages with content based marketing.

Do we need one?

Developing and implementing a CMS certainly takes time but it takes a lot these days for someone to decide to attend your event. So earning their trust shouldn’t be easy. A CMS helps your attendees clear the many hurdles that sit between them and your event. And oh boy! Are those hurdles difficult to clear right now! Here’s a few of them:

- Your event is likely to be one of many competing for space in a crowded market

- You are likely to need your attendees to pay (and right now there are a myriad of problems behind that)

- If not to pay then they will at least need to spend time out the office

- How can your attendees be sure that they will receive what they want out of your event?

- Like Tech-Fest and even more so with ‘How To Rock The World Of Social Media’ you may be a new player on the scene or perhaps at least a new event

So how do you differentiate yourself and help persuade your potential attendee to be an actual attendee? The answer in part is a Content Marketing Strategy.

Content it’s all about content

Here is what I consider to be the fundamentals behind a successful content marketing strategy:

1. Don’t just tell people what they will get at your event PROVE IT

2. You have to start directing your prospective attendees to great content before they have decided to attend your event

3. Most of that content should be exclusive to your event (the more the better)

4. Attendees have to play an active role in either deciding on some of the content or at least taking part in its creation

5. Content has to be generated by attendees at your event

6. The content on the day has to be fantastic

7. Content from your event has to be used after your event to continue the content marketing cycle

8. You have to ensure that the event/s that your CMS support are included in your messaging

Ok. So we have one. How do we deliver it?

The answer to that – to a very large degree – is Social Media. Social Media and Events is a marriage made in heaven and no where is this more strongly demonstrated than in content delivery. An effective CMS has to take full advantage of Social Media allowing potential attendees to:

- Tailor their information feed

- Follow your feed with ease

- Engage with the content

- Instantly influence that content

- Ultimately direct them to your event (because don’t forget that’s what it’s all about)

Besides blogs what content can we use in our content marketing strategy?

Perhaps the best known and probably most used is blogging. Blogs by speakers, delegates and even sponsors and exhibitors can really point to the content at your event. But it shouldn’t stop there. Other content that can be use are:

1. Pictures of your venue / food / drinks / entertainment

2. Interviews, links, articles from your speakers

3. Clips from your exhibitors showing what they will have on show

4. Session summaries from your speakers

5. An overview of the event from the boss

6. Content created by delegates at last years events

7. Content recorded from the previous event or one of your similar events

8. Other people’s content related to your event

9. Interviews with delegates who are attending this year

10. Comments or reviews from past attendees

11. Answers from questions posed through social media

12. Results from a questionnaire covering the content at your event

Does it work?

As Michael explains in his blog it is now a major marketing strategy for the Word Newspaper Congress. I believe it was a major factor behind the success of Tech-Fest and it’s our main strategy for our event in Barcelona. So there is some strong evidence already.

If the CMS approach works then only the events that have true, valuable and unique content will survive. And wouldn’t it be great if we could help separate the wheat from the chaff. A CMS is surely one of the best ways for us to do that.

And finally the best thing is that you can decide if it works or not.

As I wrote at the start, this blog was multi-purpose. You’ve probably worked out this blog is part of my Content Marketing Strategy for; the Event Innovation Summit, Tech-Fest 2013 and How To Rock The World Of Social Media.

Hopefully by using a blog as part of a CMS and helping readers understand and learn from my content you are more likely to attend these events. And that is the power of a CMS.

To find out more about:

The Event Innovation Summit (Barcelona Oct 2012)

How To Rock The World Of Social Media (Barcelona Nov 2012)

Tech-Fest 2013 (London) by joining the LinkedIn group

Or have William help you develop a CMS for your events

A recent survey in the association sector in the UK found that just under half (49%) actually saw sponsorship FALL this year! That is worrying and it will no doubt be similar to the corporate World and no doubt reflected across the globe! So what’s going wrong? Why are sponsors not falling over themselves anymore to splash the cash at YOUR EVENT?

If your conference brochure looks like the one below it’s time to be worried. I have never been a fan of this logo heavy promotion: it’s a lazy way to approach value for sponsors.

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Loads of Sponsors and Very Little Value

I’ve never perceived any value in this approach and I’ve always looked to see what I can offer a sponsor instead of a logo placement. In the departments I’ve run and the events I’ve managed we also saw a healthy increase in sponsorship from our value added approach.

The competition for your sponsors marketing budget is heating up!

The truth is that our events compete with every other form of marketing and lead generation and we organisers sometimes forget that. With the Social Media revolution has come very stiff competition for the cash from the marketing budget that used to slip and slide its way to your event. Social Media is a threat (I would love to see what percentage of the fall in events sponsorship moved to digital marketing) but it is also an opportunity. So ask yourself is your event really adding value to your sponsors? Are you really providing the hottest and best leads that you can?

It’s now not just a lack of perceived value it’s an actual lack of value

I am fortunate that as a consultant I get to see loads of sponsorship packages. You may be surprised but the phrase “your logo will appear on……” is still the basis of many of these packages. I would argue that very, very few businesses sponsor events to simply promote their company. Sure awareness is important but what they want are leads and good ones at that. And traditionally exhibitions and conferences have never really delivered in the way that they should. It’s only now that sponsors are talking with their wallets.

Sponsorship heath check

Why don’t you pour yourself a hot drink and take five minutes to review your sponsorship package. And importantly try and look at it from your sponsor’s perspective. To get you going here are a few questions that I’d love you to answer:

1. What has changed in the sponsorship package to reflect the heat that you are feeling from Social Media and other digital marketing channels for your event?

2. What have you done to allow your event to piggy back on to Social Media to add more value for your sponsor?

3. How many times does your sponsorship package mention the phrase “your logo will appear on..” or something similar? The more the phrase it appears the less ‘true value’ you are probably adding!

4. What makes your event different from other events in your sector?

5. And crucially, what’s your Unique Selling Point? Not just unique from other events but unique from all other options for that marketing pound or dollar?

Gallus Events offer consultancy in events and are well placed to help you review your events sponsorship packages. Drop us a note if you’d like to hear more about our work in this area. And best of luck!

I’ve picked out 8 of the 10 things in his Blog that Pinocchio like marketers write to fool you into attending their event. Here they are in summary but don’t forget to read his post:

1. Space is limited

2. Tickets are going fast

3. For a limited time only

4. Only on Facebook

5. Our event reaches 1m industry professionals

6. We feature interactive sessions

7. Attend to become an expert

8. Connect with potential partners and clients

 So ,I thought, if this is what marketers really want to say how can I help the event managers actually deliver? So here goes: here’s how to “How To Tell The Truth About Your Amazing Event”

1. “Space is limited.” When it comes to learning and networking events size isn’t everything. Yes it’s great for the bottom line but it shouldn’t all be about profit. Think about how you are able to ensure that attendees meet ALL the people they want to meet. How can you structure the content so that attendees are able to take all of it in and crucially remember it? And finally set an attendance target that is achievable and really do close your bookings when you reach that number. We did this for Tech Fest 2012 when we reached 120 bookings because space really was limited.

2. “Tickets are going fast”. A solid strategic long term marketing strategy backed up by great content; contextual marketing; great content and proper networking will mean your tickets actually do ‘go fast’.

3. “For a limited time.” If you have a great event that is priced correctly you don’t need to offer early bird rates. I have not offered early booking rates for almost 10 years.

4. “Only on Facebook”. Don’t be fooled by Facebook. Don’t offer this as an option. Use Facebook for engagement not discounts. Oh!!! Controversial.

5. “We feature interactive sessions”. Use the tools at your disposal from the Conference Architect’s /Meeting Designer’s tool box. Interactive doesn’t mean a Q&A session. It means allowing attendees to create the content and the discussions; allowing them time to talk through the content.

6. “The Biggest Event in the Industry”. A great event is objective led. This is a silly, pointless and miss- directed objective. You shouldn’t be aiming for this. You should be aiming to run the best particular event in the industry: not the biggest.

7. “Attend to become an expert”. The point is that no one can become an expert from attending an event. But you can become better at what you do. But the content you cover has to be exceptional. So aim for exceptional content and amazing speakers. Learn how the brain learns; stimulate through all the senses; design experiences not events; support and educate your speakers.

8. “Connect with potential partners and clients”. Don’t be scared to put suppliers and purchasers together at times during the day. Help them find each other – do some match making! If they both want the conversations to happen then help them happen.