• For Part 1, “Designing Your Strategy“, Tara Dunion of the Consumer Electronics Association talked about their process for building up a social media presence for the CES using a whole host of outposts over the last few years;

• In Part 2, “Plans and Platforms“, Sterling Raphael of NFi Studios walked us through the three different websites they created for the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) tradeshow – a consumer social media aggregation site, a attendee/exhibitor matching site, and a community site;

• And in Part 3, “Building Engagement“, Peter Hutchins of ASAE gave us some great insight into the strategic thinking behind their use of social media around events for member engagement and community building.

Here for your perusal are our slides; the recordings are also available here.  Enjoy and let us know if you have any questions!
Social Networking for Events Part 1 of 3: Designing a Strategy
View more presentations from SocialFish.

Social Networking For Events Part 2 of 3: Plans and Platforms
View more presentations from SocialFish.

Social Networking for Events Part 3 of 3: Building Engagement
View more presentations from SocialFish.

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When: Every FRIDAY at 1pm ET (10am PT)

Where: On Twitter at #engage365 or from the engage365 tweetchat page

July 30th Facilitator: open

Topic: open

Chat Rules/Etiquette: Just be cool and considerate. Offer up good points, challenge others points of view and listen. And, it’s okay to just lurk.

Past Transcripts:

Here’s a clip from our most recent chat session…

@michellebruno: You still have to focus on having an outstanding event that people will want to attend not always about “tactics” to get them in #engage365

• July 20, 2010 (Traci Browne) – Getting attendees and exhibitors to register early
• July 23, 2010 (Jeff Korhan) – QR Codes
• July 9, 2010 (Lindsey Rosenthal) – Blending communities
• June 25, 2010 (Samuel Smith) – Different social media tools and aggregators for events
• June 16, 2010 (Jeff Korhan) – return on social media engagement
• June 11, 2010 (Maddie Grant) – World Cup social media and Twitter failure
• June 4, 2010 (Chris Uschan) – engaging attendees and your community after the event
• May 28, 2010 (Traci Browne) – ideas for using social media to promote events
• May 21, 2010 (Jeff Hurt) – What is engagement? Levels of engagement… awesome chat!
• May 14, 2010 (Jeff Korhan) – Facebook privacy, LinkedIn groups, Blerts. Paper.li
• May 7, 2010 (Maddie Grant) – communicating with attendees, exhibitors; online communities
• April 30, 2010 (Adrian Segar) – Facebook, quality of conversations
• April 23, 2010 (Eric Lukazewski & Lindsey Rosenthal) – generational learning, learn vs communicate, online registration/exhibitor kits, F2F vs virtual
• April 16, 2010 (Jeff Hurt) -IT & social media, exhibit mktg & SM, Wifi at Events, ideas to help attendees embrace/use social media
• April 9, 2010 (Jeff Korhan) – social media hub, content, sharing guidelines, considerations, privacy, and protecting/spreading original content, collaboration tools, Buzz2010

Upcoming Chat Schedule

Contact Maddie Grant (Chat Organizer).

As one of the organizers of Untech10, I have, of course, been thinking a lot about not only how awesome it all was and how great it felt to be part of it, but also what this means as a case study for the use of social media. Here are a few initial thoughts about “lessons” that might have come out of it. See what you think, I’d love to hear your takeaways and ideas about this.

1. Build capacity for social media word of mouth BEFORE you need it.

UnTech10 could not have happened had ASAE not already had a strong social media presence. Lots of people planning on attending the Technology conference were already following (and using) the hashtag a few days before the conference was due to start. We started spreading the word about a potential “Plan B” before there even was a Plan B. Everyone was paying attention via Twitter and helping us pass that message along – so when the conference cancellation was confirmed, everyone was ready and waiting to talk about the back up plan and to ask how they could be involved.

2. Always harness and nurture that all-important sense of shared value, shared purpose, shared community.

The Technology Conference, just one of the many conferences put on by ASAE every year, has been an amazing vehicle for fostering relationships between association execs, vendors, thought leaders. In my original post in the run-up to Tech10, I actually wanted to make a little trip down memory lane and explain why this was such a special conference for Lindy and me. I know we’re not the only ones who have made lifelong friends at this conference. Live events, especially recurring ones, have a huge part to play in building that kind of community around an organization, those friendships and collegial relationships that keep people coming back to it year after year. That community had to be there in the first place in order for us to want to keep the spirit alive by planning the unconference, otherwise no-one would have cared. There had to be that collective groan of disappointment when we first realized the snow was so bad as to risk Tech being cancelled – and that collective urge to create something new out of this.

3. Get out of the way of your champions.

ASAE could not officially endorse what we were planning for the unconference for various insurance-related reasons, but they were also, in my opinion, completely aware of the beauty of staying out of the way of this member-driven effort. How could this not be an amazing marketing coup for them, to be so awesome that a bunch of their members would go and bust a gut for three days to create their own conference in homage to a cancelled conference? If this doesn’t get them some new members, I’ll be shocked. We all love ASAE and we did it for them. Had they tried to direct or control the proceedings, we might not have pulled it off. Hats off to them for letting us run with it.

4. Enable the right people in the right place at the right time to shine.

The planning of UnTech10 was an amazing collaborative effort. Sponsorship offers poured in from the moment we announced that we were planning something. But I will tell you now, those of us in the core organizing group all had some “special sauce” to bring to the table – but plenty of others could have done the same. Our professional communities are FULL of smart people with something to offer. I think one huge implication of social media is that you now have the ability to find talent throughout your community ecosystem, in places you might not have known to look had you been planning a project through normal organizational structures. The people whose expertise you need might not actually be on one of your committees – but when you tap into that groundswell of conversation and collaboration that is social media, you can find all kinds of awesome people to help you create something important. It’s crucial to level that playing field and encourage that diversity of talent.

5. Design in public.

This has always been one of our SocialFish mantras, but we were really able to put our money where our mouth is for unTech10. When we had the conference site set up, we asked all the original Tech speakers to put their session info into a draft schedule wiki – either for the Thursday in-person day if they were able to make it down to the Renaissance Hotel, or for the Friday webinar slots if they could provide their session virtually. We used Twitter to post out updates and reminders and announcements as we went along. We posted a cut-off time for speakers to put in their session info, so we could start putting together the schedule. We posted a cut-off time for sponsorship offers, so we could start finalizing logistics like the food for the live day. We told speakers when the draft schedule would be up, then when the final one was up. We explained to them that we were going to try our best to accommodate everyone who could show up in person, and in order to do that we’d have to combine topics and speakers, mess with their content, and not only that, but that we’d let them know at around 10 pm the night before when they would be speaking and who with.

Granted, these were exceptional circumstances – but no-one batted an eye at any of this. Everyone scrambled to add their info to the wiki. Everyone seemed OK with how we put the schedule together – because everyone knew what we were trying to accomplish from the get-go.

6. Sometimes “hybrid” means more virtual than live.

I think we’re all beginning to get used to thinking about incorporating content for a virtual audience in our live events. But unTech was different. Because of the blizzards in DC, we knew from the minute we started planning it that we were trying to provide the most useful and valuable content that we could for a mostly virtual audience. (In the end, we had close to 500 people watching via webcast, and 75 in the room). So it wasn’t just about filming everything. It was about making sure everyone – speakers and participants – incorporated the virtual audience into the way they participated. It was about speakers describing (or not really relying on) their slides in case the virtual audience couldn’t see them well. It was about taking special care during any group discussion to make sure people spoke into the microphones. It was about providing “on-camera” content for the virtual audience during the parts which would not come across well on film (like our breakout sessions, where the room divided up into three groups to talk about particular subjects). It was about ensuring that Day Two provided a full day of webinars to keep that energy going.

So these are my initial thoughts, barely ten days later. In this little video, filmed on Friday February 12, Day Two of unTech, Lindy and I (on about 3 hours sleep) attempt to answer some questions from Kiki L’Italien for the Delcor SweetSpot about the planning of the unconference. I thought you might enjoy this if you haven’t seen it already. I’m going to be on the SweetSpot with KiKi this coming Friday to talk more about it all, immediately followed by our usual Engage365 Water Cooler Chat right here on Engage365. I hope you’ll join us so we can talk about what other lessons you think might have come out of this crazy experiment. See you there!

(photo credits: Lindy Dreyer)

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Join us for our Water Cooler chats every FRIDAY at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions or just drop in to kill some time and hang out with your peeps on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you!

Last week we talked about a whole bunch of stuff, including Apple’s big iPad announcement and some stuff we want to experiment with at ASAE’s #Tech10 conference.   Check out the replay (under “completed events below) for the scoop on that!

Join us today!

***NOTE: There will be NO CHAT NEXT FRIDAY, 2/12, as we will be at ASAE’s Technology Conference.***

Just wanted to point everyone to this recent 2010 Social Media in Marketing survey by Exhibitor Magazine. (Thanks to Mike and Eric Hatch for the hat tip). This is the first survey I’ve seen personally (though I am sure there are others, if you know of good ones please post links in the comments!) that speaks to the event/tradeshow industry specifically.

Have a look and see what you think. Are you surprised by the results? Anything jump out as being a surprise? Any social media sites missing that you think have a decent impact on exhibit marketing?

Join us for our Water Cooler chats every FRIDAY at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions or just drop in to kill some time and hang out with your peeps on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you!

Last week we had a FANTASTIC conversation about listening – the implications of listening for membership (e.g. do we really listen to our member now?), how listening can be good for buy-in (though buy-in may be necessary to start listening!), and how listening matters for events. CHECK OUT THE REPLAY and also Jeff Hurt’s great post on the Art of Listening and Science of Responding.

Join us today!

We basically talked about three approaches to building an event blog and the pros and cons of each:

A single author blog – example: Floored (National Restaurant Association show blog)

A multi-author blog – example: AGU Fall Meeting (American Geophysical Union conference blog)

Event content as part of a year-round organizational blog – example: Speaking for Real Estate (National Association of Realtors – Conferences and Expo blog category)

We also talked about Buzz2009, the advanced social media marketing conference we put on last year, and how the entire event site was built around the blog, which fed all the social media outposts AND traditional email communications we used to promote and market the conference. Check out our living case study.

There is no doubt that blogging is hard work. You need to figure out who will author the blog, how you will manage that process, how you will develop your content strategy for the blog and keep the momentum going… but starting a blog around your next big event can help focus all of these questions and can be the perfect way to try it out and see if you catch the blogging bug.

Oh and while we’re on the subject of webinars, check out the next two on the schedule (free of course!!):

Corbin Ball, Meetings 2.0 – How to Use Social Media to Market, Manage and Improve Events

Beth Kanter, The Trainer’s Social Media Tool Box: Sharing My Best Practices and Tips

Check out the awesomeness and register!

Join us for our Water Cooler chats every FRIDAY at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions or just drop in to kill some time and hang out with your peeps on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you!

Last week, we mostly tried to figure out how to use our new CoverItLive chat platform… but the beauty of it is, you can actually replay the chat, as well as link it to Twitter without actually having the chat ON Twitter which we’re trying to avoid. We’ll continue to work out the kinks as we go!  The embed below may not work until the chat is live, we’ll see how it goes.

Join us for our Water Cooler chats every FRIDAY at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions or just drop in to kill some time and hang out with your peeps on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you!

Last week we discussed two hot events-specific news stories:

The ABC news story about the FAA’s three week gathering (our take? nothing wrong with a little partying, everyone knows the best learning happens outside the conference sessions);

and this - Exhibitor Coalition Plans Best Practices Initiative – about exhibitors revolting against exhorbitant fees. (Our take? The only way to come up with best practices that everyone can agree on is to do it publicly in a wiki where any interested industry person can help craft them.)

We also talked about Kiki L’Italien’s great new #sweetspot, her Ustream live video chat which will be every Friday at noon EST – we’re hoping to tag team, by continuing the conversation that starts there about hot topics in association social media (e.g. “the “sweet spots”) on our chat, if there’s enough interest. W00t!

See you by the Water Cooler!

Click Here for the chat room!

p.s. testing out CoverItLive for this chat. Feedback welcome; let us know if this is better.  I hope so, we’ve been looking for something other than Meebo for a long time.

Join us for our Water Cooler chats every FRIDAY at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions or just drop in to kill some time and hang out with your peeps on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you!

On our inaugural chat on 12/18, we discussed:

- using social media for event attendee marketing

- an association that tried to do a “cease and desist” on a tweetup during their conference

- the difficulties inherent in trying to set up an online community site for an event specifically

- Tweckling at conferences

It was awesome.  Hope you’ll join us today!

Click Here for the chat room!