A short but very important Thursday Thought I’d like to Share…
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
We all have good days and bad day but life is short, and unpredictable. It’s up to us to make the best of each day. You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow and nothing is guaranteed so take a deep breath and enjoy today!
Thank you so much to the Event Manager Blog for including my insight and experiences within the newly launched 2018 Edition of Social Media for Events: A Complete Guide to Marketing Your Events Using Social Media.
The guide shares 42 strategies, ideas, tips and tactics on using social media to promote events. Levering social media at live events is crucial for generating engagement before, during and after the conference. However with social media rapidly evolving it’s not something that’s always easy to develop a strategy around especially since KPI’s around live events are sometimes challenging to measure.
I’ve been fortunate to have an extensive event marketing background which has helped me to develop innovative social media campaigns to enhance a variety of live events. It’s crucial to always take chances and push the limit. Failure is important to enable you to measure successes over the long term. Always think outside the box and take chances, that’s how you and you brand can excel and stand out!
So, what are you waiting for, check out the 2018 Edition of Social Media for Events: A Complete Guide to Marketing Your Events Using Social Media.
What do you think of the guide, anything you would add? Leave me a comment below or shoot me a Tweet!
Ahead of the close of 2017 I was thrilled to see my name included as one of the Top 29 Event Industry Influencers to Follow from a newly released article from Tom Pick/G2 Planet. I have extensive experience working within the Event Industry and am thrilled to be included with so many colleagues from one of my old employers BizBash Media.
My father Richard Aaron was the President of BizBash for many years ahead of his recent retirement and took a chance hiring me as the economy was tanking in 2007 to work within his event team. I had just completed my Master of Public Administration and couldn’t find a job that fit my background and he encouraged me to join him and get some experience outside of my traditional interests. Working at BizBash as an Event Marketing Manager I traveled the United States supporting nine core markets learning first hand from him and others how to execute the onsite event managements for all of the trade shows and events the company put together. I developed content for email, social media, direct mail and other channels to convert and engage audiences.
As social media emerged as a dominant channel driving both engagement and revenue for many of our events my interests quickly migrated into learning about digital and social strategy. Within BizBash Events we developed a social media lounge a core part of our large scale tradeshows deepening relationships with Event Influencers within core markets and showcasing what real time event success looked like with giveaways, live twitter feeds and more. We were one of the first to develop this type of strategy and it was fascinating and exciting.
It was love at first sight for me. Seeing social media so deeply integrated into the success of our overall event success really hit home. I knew I had to work to deepen my digital marketing background and move forward in future roles with more focus on social media and the strategies of implementation for ongoing success. I worked alongside a fantastic team and mentor (my father) who took a chance on a young twenty something and deeply impacted my long term career success. Since BizBash I’ve worked at several events and publishing companies (Crain Communications, IQPC, Euromoney Institutional Investor) and have implemented tactics I learned from my event days.
Within my role at CFA Institute I work to support some of our larger global events developing social media strategies for ongoing success. At one of our annual conferences I developed a social media lounge featuring a social media vending machine where a tweet with a unique hashtag dispensed a prize to the participating delegate. Not something you traditionally see at financial events but a real wow-factor and attention grabber for many of our attendees. I’ve also lead our internal team annual kickoff meeting for the last two years bringing some of my old BizBash “outside the box” event skills to make work meetings more engaging including a live graphic artist, digital caricatures and hashtag cookies and chocolates to tie the theme together.
I’m so grateful to Tom Pick and G2 Planet for the Inclusion and to my father for taking a chance on me. It’s important to have a mentor that supports you and helps you refine your skills as the years go on. He’s always been a sounding board for many of my ideas helping me to think outside the box and refine for success and I’m grateful beyond words.
“To be the best, you must be able to handle the worst.”
― Ziad K. Abdelnour
I’m thrilled to include a guest post from Aaron Wittersheim who is the Chief Operating Officer at Straight North, an Internet marketing agency specializing in SEO, PPC and web design. Within my post “Four Trends Marketers Shouldn’t Ignore” I included information that content marketing and native growth will eventually outpace display and search. I connected with Aaron and learned more about lead validation which is the process from separating sales leads from non-sales inquires and his team brought to light a very interesting lead validation study. The presentation and forward from Aaron is below.
“You’ve spent a lot of time fine-tuning your lead generation website into a high-performance machine. However, if you’re not incorporating lead validation into your efforts, you’re driving without a roadmap. You might get where you want to go, but it will be almost completely by accident.
Lead validation is essential because measuring your site’s performance by the number of conversions alone is not enough. Here at Straight North, a Chicago SEO expert firm, we’ve spent a lot of time reviewing hundreds of thousands of conversions, and found that conversions aren’t sales leads nearly half of the time.
That means half of conversions are things such as job applications or incomplete form submissions, which shouldn’t be counted (but Google analytics numbers can trick you into counting). Lead validation also takes phone calls into consideration, something Google doesn’t track (but can have a big impact on the success of your campaign).
If you’re still on the fence about incorporating lead validation into your lead generation campaign, consider the information in the following presentation. We’ve complied some of the most compelling arguments for lead validation, illustrating how critical it can be for the success of any Internet marketing effort. You’ve put a lot of work into your lead generation website, so make sure it doesn’t go to waste.”
– Aaron Wittersheim is the Chief Operating Officer at Straight North,
Social media is constantly evolving as are the tools available for marketers to improve their brand and audiences within their social media channels and campaigns. Below I’ve outlined the Five Tools I’m using currently using or have my eye on to leverage within my 2017 plans.
1. Tweriod: One of the questions I get asked all the time is how to find out when your audience is online within Twitter, and what the best times to tweet are. Well, I stumbled upon Tweiod a few years back and have been spreading the word ever since! Tweiod gives you the ability to start tweeting when others are listening by providing you the best times to tweet. The tool analyzes your tweets and followers tweets and provides a detailed analysis of when your audience is active, and when you should start tweeting for maximum visibility and engagement. Paired with a scheduling tool this is a marketers dream to amplify engagement and build long term success!
So how does it work? You sign in with Twitter allowing the tool read access to get a list of all of your followers and their tweets. The tool runs it’s analysis and when finished will Direct Message or Email you an update. It provides a breakdown showing the most exposure when you tweet over a specific day, weekends, or a combined view. They provide an upgrade to their premium plan depending on the number of followers you have ranging from $3.99-$15. I run an analysis every quarter or so and adjust my tweets accordingly.
2. Livestream provides the ability to broadcast live to a wider Facebook Audience. They announced recently the ability to install the app within your company Facebook page and then choose whether you want to broadcast from your smartphone or computer. CFA Institute has been working with Livestream since I joined to broadcast high quality sessions from our global events to a wider audience. We’ve got a channel full of broadcasts we’re always working to integrate these into our social media audience and raise visibility to a wider audience.
Once you’re live you’ll be able to engage viewers though comments and your users will have the opportunity to engage with each other providing an interactive broadcasting tool. Following the end of your event your broadcast will continue to be available for people to find and engage with. We’ll be integrating this into our 2016 Events Strategy and I will report back on how this works within our mix.
3. Click to Tweet: If you’ve visited by blog before (or have paid any attention to this post) you’ve already noticed I’ve included click to tweet buttons within a good amount of my content. As a content producer my goal is to make it simple and easy for readers (like you!) to share my content across social media (and Twitter). Click to Tweet is hands down the easiest way to promote, share, and track your content within Twitter. You login and create the message you want tweeted including hashtags, handles, etc and it generates a basic link for you to paste into your content. You can simply hyperlink the words click to tweet or develop a visual image to easily drive engagement.
We recently integrated this into one of our marketing campaigns within an email an saw almost 500 tweet from our click to tweet button in the email within the first 12 hours, a total success for our first try. The free plan allows your five links with auto shortening and tracking and upgrades range from $5 monthly for unlimited links to $500 a year for an enterprise plan to manage multiple accounts (ideal for a business).
4. Rafflercopter: One of the tools I have my eye on to integrate into my social media marketing mix this year is Rafflecopter. Social Media is all about engagement, and Rafflecopter provides an easy way for you to create a content to get people engaged with your account and build your following. I’m a sucker for entering any raffle where I have a chance to win something (really, anything!) and this tool keeps popping up within my feeds! I see endless opportunities for brands and marketers to incorporate this into tool into their strategy to mix things up and make it fun. Hey, after all everyone likes a chance to win something with 51% of US millennials would share information with companies in exchange for an incentive (USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future). Click to Tweet.
It’s easy to get started, signing up takes a matter of seconds and once you’re logged in you can setup a giveaway within a few minutes. You first choose your prize and decide how people can enter through numerous options (and yes, you can click more than one!). Next you’ll setup a time parameter and set your contest live! They’ve got a free trial you can easily get started with, and it’s inexpensive to continue with their upgraded plans.
5. Pablo by Buffer: The human brain processes images 60,000 times quicker than text and 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Social Media Platforms and Images go hand and hand for success with research by Twitter sharing that adding a photo URL into your tweet can boost retweets by an impressive 35%. Click to Tweet.
Pablo by Buffer makes it easy to design engaging images for your social media channels within minutes. The Buffer Blog (one of my favorite sources of content) has a post here about how to get started and integrate into your mix.
The tool provides ready to go templates, images, and quotes for you to use and it makes it fun to style you image adjusting your font or color, switching the photo from blurred to black and white, and adding a line of text or an icon in. It also allows you to upload an image of your own to overlay with text. We use this all the time during events to highlight speaker quotes in live time and drive engagement online. Once you’ve developed your image you can easily share to your social channels, download, or add into your buffer scheduling matrix. The only downside is they’re desktop only, hopefully a mobile version will come soon for those of us on the go, but to make life better, it’s completely free to use!
What do you think of the tools I’ve suggested? I would love to hear if they’ve helped you at all, and please take a moment and share your favorite tool with me within the comments or send me a tweet!
This September I’ll be speaking with April Rudin during CFA Institute’s Alpha and Gender Diversity: The Competitive Edge Conference in Boston. We’ll be delivering a pre-conference workshop on building a strong personal brand through social media. In a nutshell social media is the crucial piece for managing and establishing your personal brand online. Not only is social media free it also provides accessible tools to communicate with infinite “niches” to fit into. It allows us to stay hyper networked 24/7 while gaining instant access to information. After our session in Boston we’ll be able to connect with conference delegates and stay in touch and continue conversations in live time.
So, What Exactly is Personal Branding? Within Barry Feldman’s Blog Post he nailed it: You, my friend, are a brand. Therefore, personal branding is the process of managing and optimizing the way that you’re presented to others. While self-help management techniques are about self -improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging (i.e. You’re a brand. I’m a brand. We’re all brands, whether we aim to be or not.)
Below I’ve outlined a summary of our presentation sharing Four Tips for Building a Social Media Strategy for Your Personal Brand.
Tip #1: Determine Your Area of Expertise
Before you can establish your personal brand it’s important to determine what sets you apart from others. The world of personal branding is flooded so you just can’t choose a general field like “marketing” or “social media.” It’s more beneficial to focus on finding a specific niche so you’ll have an advantage to prove that you know what you’re talking about and stand out. Although your audience might smaller, it will also be much more relevant. Your area of expertise should be something you’re authentically interested in. After you determine your 1-3 areas of expertise it’s important to prioritize becoming a thought leader-producing content regularly and staying on topic and therefore gaining trust. Before long you’ll have proof of your expertise!
Tip #2: Remember that your digital reputation stays for life! Treat it as if it were permanent.
Sharing across social media will help draw others to you and help grow your personal brand. Although social media can be overwhelming and confusing remember that it was initially setup as a forum to start conversations, providing the perfect forum to add value and drive engagement. While it’s important to take a proactive approach to generating social media engagement by getting involved within your community. However, be smart along the way and remember that so much depends on reputation- so you should guard it with your life.
It’s important to build a personal brand because it’s the only thing you’re going to have. Your reputation online, and in the new business world is pretty much the game, so you’ve got to be a good person. You can’t hide anything, and more importantly, you’ve got to be out there at some level.- Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk stated it well, it’s important to remember that a reputation is your greatest asset follows you everywhere you go. The web is permanent, and anything you say is etched into a digital presence that isn’t easily removed. Being thoughtful in what you publish and engaging others tactfully goes a long way in positioning yourself in the right light.
Tip 3: Assume Everyone Can Help You
Think of being and influencer Like Being an intern, everyone MUST prove themselves. As you work on building your social media footprint and generating engagement it’s important to remember to always respond and assume that your followers, fans and connections can help you. Social Media 101 states that engagement and conversation always outweigh self-promotion. It’s important to have an opinion, ask questions, and follow people back on social media (really…it’s okay!). When you get unusual followers, specifically the good ones, always reach out with a personal comment/message. I’ve been fortunate to amass a large social media footprint by actively participating in conversations within my community and taking time out of my day to retweet, share content, and engage with my followers. Remember, social media has little to do with what we say about ourselves, and has everything to do with what people say about us.
Tip #4: Understand Exactly What NOT to Do on Social Media:
Although this may seem like a given, and I’ve covered some basics of what to do, it’s also important to address what NOT to do within social media.
Conclusion: Hopefully these tips have been helpful in thinking about how you present yourself online. Establishing a personal brand on social media is something anyone can do, start small, stay focused, and drive engagement through your actions. Social media is a powerful way to amplify your message, whatever that message may be, whatever the audience.
I would love to know which of these tips might work for you, leave a comment below or send me a tweet @marissapick. As a reminder, you can follow the conversation online during CFA Institute’s Alpha and Gender Diversity: The Competitive Edge Conference September 14-15th by following the #CFAWomen hashtag.
