Engage or Give Up !

It’s all the rage ! A social media strategy for your company, brand or event.

A Facebook group for your event, a Fan page for your product, a Twitter account for your brand. But all of these tools are of no use unless you engage with them.

So here, offered with caution – I just know I’m going to cop some flack for this post – are a few ideas for your social media strategy.

Strategy – Have one !

It’s all very well to create an account and stick a page up on any of the social media spaces. However unless there is a strategy driving why you are using social media, you’ll struggle from the start.  Facebook and MySpace are littered with pages that have been created and forgotten. 

Schedule the time to service these pages ; appoint a community manager who’s job it is spacificially to update entries and work out how and why social media slots in with your other communication and marketing spend.

Continually Engage

The social media experience is a personal one. People become you friend or join your group because they want a relationship with you.  Continual engagement is your opportunity to build relationship with your client, customer or fan.

Make them feel special.

Plan special offers just for people in a particular social media space and focus it on the kind of user they are.  Someone who engages on Facebook wants a more personal experience than someone following you on Twitter.

The average social media space user has 76 friends so create micro events for you media space friends.  Tell them they can come and bring just one friend who hasn’t joined the group as yet. Exclusivity is the key.

Work with the social media suppliers.

Companies like Facebook and MySpace have editorial and marketing departments that can work with you to help you develop and grow your strategy.  Your growth, is their growth too. So contact them as see what they can do for you.

Don’t place all your eggs in one basket.

Finally remember – each friend or contact is only connected to you whilst you maintain your profile.  You don’t own the user data, they do.  So if your strategy is to use social media to build your data base, you need to use tools like Sign-up.to or Mail Chimp to drive your data base, where you own the contact details.

Also remember, if in the UK, any mail sign up scheme must send a verification e mail to a person signing up, to ensure it’s not only a genuine e mail address but also owned by the person adding the address to the list.

Seth Godin – The London Session transcript.

On Tuesday 17 February 2009 Seth Godin made a rare public presentation in London.

Titled The London Session it focused on Seth’s recent work in Leadership thinking.  As the material covered by Seth on the day was so vast the event producers issued an audio file of Seth’s presentation and this transcript.

Both are intended to be a reference point for attendees on the day to go back and review what they heard in the presentation.  Neither are intended as either stand alone presentation assets.

Sincere thanks to Chris and April Naden of Noble Transcription Services in the US for their great work in transferring the Audio file to a transcript.

If blogging material from this transcript please attribute Seth Godin as the author of the material and that it is derived from an event produced by Evil Genius Media + Events.

The Transcript can be downloaded here. Seth Godin the London Session Transcript

The Audio file can be found here.

Seth Godin – The London Session Transcript by Seth Godin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://evilgeniusmedia.wordpress.com/media-and-corporate-events/.<

Seth’s London Session Audio

In February of this Evil Genius Media was proud to present change agent and thought leader Seth Godin in a one off presentation in London.

The Audio of Seth Godins London Session presentation is available via the Link below.

It is available for either down load or streaming from the site.  The file is approx 85MB.

Seth Godin – The London Session. Recorded Feb17 2009 by Evil Genius Media

How to generate Word of Mouth for your event.

Time is such a valuable commodity for people today.  When you ask someone to attend your event, your often asking them to gift you something - their time –  that will increase the pressure in their working day or even make it longer.

Many corporate events I have produced are compulsory to attend for staff and sometimes even suppliers !  What a great way to create resistance to your message before you’ve even begun.

Have you asked if you’ve created enough value to make it essential for your customers and potential clients to attend or are you focused on why it’s important for you that they attend.    

How much better would the expectation be if it was considered a reward to attend the new product launch, or annual sales event.  How much more ready to listen and take in the message would staff, customers and suppliers be if there was a slight barrier to attend or if there was a reward for talking about the event and bringing someone along ?

Here are a few ideas to kick your thinking off.

How about a reduction in price as more people attend ?

Once you have a certain number of people attending and your costs are covered how about some kind of rebate for every attendee with the rebate increasing until the event is full ?

How about a voucher for a free drink or an item at the staff canteen for each person who tells someone else and then brings them along ?

This is a great solution if it’s a not compulsory to attend event at your workplace, perhaps on a worthy subject but one that does not generate a lot of enthusiasm. Don’t make it a free lunch etc at the event.  The idea is to generate word of mouth to get people talking about it before the event and to give both people a reward for attending with someone. When they use their voucher etc, they will probably sit and talk about the event as that’s what got them the reward.

How about a lunch or morning tea etc if you get your entire dept, or section, or team to attend ?

They have to register on a website, nominating a team leader who will organise everyone arriving together etc and they have to have a 100% strike rate with their group to win the reward.

How about a 5 minute slot on the main stage at the annual conference to the dept or team that are first to get 100% of the department to register for the event.

They get to tell the rest of the company about their dept and their achievements over the last 12 months and their dept goals for the next 12 months.  It makes them celebrity’s for the weekend or day of the conference.

How about a special closed door meet and greet session with the company CEO or celebrity ambassador if you have one for the supplier or client who brings the most registered attendees.

You have to ensure a mecanisim that verifys that all their registered attendees are at the event.  The meet and greet gives a supplier an audience with the CEO and time to network with their contact within the company.

OK now your reward for reading all the way to the bottom of the post !

This post is dedicated to Seth Godins 3,000th post ( In a row ! )  Seth is an author who constantly finds ways to reward his readers.  I’d love his traffic, but more than that I’d love his concise and focused talent. Then I would deserve his traffic.  Keep going Seth and I’ll keep trying to hone my skill.

I have a signed by the author copy of two of Seth’s titles to give away.  Tribes and Meatball Sundae.

E mail me your best word of mouth ideas to generate event attendance or reward ideas for event attendees via the contact page on this site.  I’ll post the best 10 with author attribute and a link to your site and will select randomly the best two to receive one of the books each.

The books will be sent via mail to where ever you are on the globe !

Don’t ever do this !

I am on the 19:01 train from Oxford to London.

At Reading a man and a woman get on and sit in the seats opposite me.

He pulls out a pad and begins writing a list of questions.
He then asks the woman, “ What else should we ask them about their business ?”

She looks a little shocked and panicked, “ I don’t know ! “ What are we going to say ?”
“ We’ve got to get this right. This could be a really big customer. We have to act confident. Do you have the samples ?”

The Woman pulls out a somewhat dishevelled swatch of luxury paper samples.

You can see where this is going can’t you ?

Even if you think you are going to a sales call, the client sees it as a presentation.

A chance for you to present your credentials and wow them with more than they expect. Why oh why would you consider going into a golden opportunity like this unprepared.

Write and rehearse your sales presentations, your elevator pitches, in fact any interaction that’s important to the growth or development of your business.

If the presentation is not worth rehearsing, it’s probably not worth giving.

Many make One.

Many people contributed to the success of Seth Godin – The London Session.

Most of all, you ! By coming along.

Photo by Claes Gellerbrink

Thanks for helping…

Moo.com for the inspirational business cards the attendees received.

Dog Tooth for the brilliant stickers.

E Tickets.to for the ticket service. ( With a special thanks to Karen. )

The team from Little, Brown and Piatkus.

Brendan for all his help on the day.

The team at Church House for going the extra mile.

Christel and Maria for ushering.

See you tomorrow.

It’s been a busy month in the lab of the Evil Genius.

Tomorrow is Seth’s presentation in London and my thoughts turn to all of you who are attending.

Evil Genius Media + Events is genuinely focused on creating the most memorable experience for every guest and client that we produce events for.  We know that many of you are travelling significant distances to attend this event.

I know that Seth has done a great deal of work toward tomorrows presentation, and we at EGM hope that when you attend tomorrow you will feel we have done the same.

I’m off today to meet with Seth and lock down those final few little details and although I know I just won’t have the time tomorrow. I sincerely hope I get to meet as many of you as possible.

Best Wishes

Mark Muggeridge – Director Media and Events Services.

#SethLDN – Official Supplier Appointed

As Evil Genius Media gears up for the presentation of Seth Godin – The London Session on Tuesday 17 Feb we are pleased to announce the official Tweet supplier of this event.

Leading UK Social Media agency Ryan McMillan will be on board to tweet the event live as Seth takes the stage.

To follow the event on Twitter follow RMM at RMM_LND  .

Ryan McMillan have over the last year supplied research, and stratergy for clients such as Sony Europe, Discovery Channel and Buckingham Palace.  The excellent blog covering development in social media can be reached via the link in our Blogroll.

 

 

We all present. Everyday.

How good are your presentation skills ?

I don’t give many presentations I hear you say.

Well, yes you do.

You make presentations in meetings to clients when you first meet them and they are sizing you up.

When you are briefing staff on a new project, and are assigning roles.

You make a presentation in weekly staff meetings, or board meetings, or any meetings.

They may be short in length, without speaker support such as slides or props, or audio support. They are all little presentations. 

Time is valuable and face to face communications occur less and less. When you’re giving a presentation, any presentation, don’t you want to be the best you can, get your message across ?

Inspire the client with confidence, excite your staff about the new project and enthuse them with the challenge of the role you’ve set them, make people feel that it was actually worth attending that meeting.

We all present, everyday. Making impressions we’re not even aware of.

Be aware, be brilliant. Present well.

#Sethldn It’s Next week.

So excuse us if we are a little stretched and not blogging as usual.

However for the Lucky ones that have a ticket to the remarkable event, here are a few details you will need.

Seth Godin _ The London Session.

Presented by Evil Genius Media + Events

What time does the venue open ?

12:30 Foyer – To get you out of the cold. Brrr !

13:00 Auditorium- To get your seat !

Remind me what time The London Session Starts.

13:30 sharp ! It finishes at 16:30 on the dot.

I’ve forgotten where the venue is.

It’s the Church House Conference Centre, Deans Yard, Westminster, London SW1P 3NZ . Their website with lots of directions is HERE.

HINT :  Deans Yard is accessed via a small archway with a security cabin and a gate. This is located on Victoria St.  When looking at the archway Westminster Abbey should be on your left !

Go through the archway into Dean’s Yard and head towards the large building facing you at the end of the yard – this is Church House.

What’s the nearest Tube ?

Westminster or St James Park ( District, Circle and Jubilee Lines )

I want to meet other people who are going to the event.

There is a Facebook group called Seth Godin – The London Session – There is a Linkein Group – Seth Godin Triiibes.com – There is a Twitter hash code – #Sethldn ( That lot should keep you busy till Tuesday ! )

The Evil Genius Media + Events team didn’t answer my question here.

Then either send us an e mail by clicking on the link below or if it’s too late for that then call the event organiser –  Mark Muggeridge on 07792 66 11 36.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.  PLEASE DON’T CALL FOR TICKETS.