One Hour Per Day for Social Media: What Will You Do?

Did you know that 84 percent of B2B marketers use social media in some form? While some companies have a person dedicated to all social media marketing related tasks, others are not in the same position. Instead, they only have a limited amount of time to devote to this area of their marketing plan. Here is a question to answer: if you only have one hour per day for social media, what is the best way to spend your time? In a B2B environment, this may not sound like a lot of time. However, it is more than enough to […]

The Pros & Cons of Influencer Marketing

In a recent Forbes article, influencer marketing is defined as follows: a form of marketing that identifies and targets individuals with influence over potential buyers. Before we get into the pros and cons of influencer marketing – details which will help you determine how, if, and when to move forward – let’s take a look at an interesting formula shared in the same Forbes article: Influence = Audience Reach (# of followers) x Brand Affinity (expertise and credibility) x Strength of Relationship with Followers In other words, you want to find brand influencers with the following: A large, growing audience. […]

Which Social Platform Best Suits Your Business Goals?

So, you want to start a social marketing campaign for your brand, where do you begin? It is important to chose the proper platform to begin with. You don’t have to stick to just a single platform, but it is important to chose wisely with one(s) that are aligned with your goals.  “Overusing one platform and ignoring others is a waste of your opportunities,” says AudienceBloom Founder & CEO Jayson DeMers. “There may be certain platforms that require more time and effort to provide relevant information, but a marketing campaign should never depend on a single platform.” As I noted […]

Getting The Most Out of Your Social Media Budget

According to a Salesforce survey carried out towards the beginning of this year, 70% of marketers planned to increase spending on social media and content marketing. In hindsight, that statistic’s not terribly surprising. Social networks, after all, have become a core element of our daily lives, integral to how we connect and communicate. For those marketers capable of selling to consumers through social platforms, they’re incredibly powerful, too – so much so that it borders on impossible to remain competitive without them. “With the current marketing landscape, it is critical to invest the necessary time and resources for building and […]

How to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Personal Brand

With more than 380 million registered members, spanning more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is the undisputed king of professional networking. While some people create a profile and never think twice about what it can do for them, others realize the potential for using the site to build a stronger personal brand. By using LinkedIn in the appropriate manner, you can strengthen your personal brand in an attempt to become a well known expert in your niche. This will result in more connections, job opportunities, partnership inquiries, and much more. Three Keys to Success At first glance, LinkedIn may appear scary. […]

The Step By Step Guide To A Successful Email Campaign

Email marketing is been put to the back of most people’s marketing plan, marketed as “old school” which newer, shinier things have entered the marketing world. This can be true, but only if done improperly. It can be used to garner more sales or traffic to your blog or company website. “Many marketers have been seduced by social media advertising, perceiving it to be not only “cooler” but also more effective than email,” writes Wordstream’s Dan Shewan. “There’s no denying that social media gets a lot more media attention than email. However, claims that email marketing is no longer effective […]

Ditch Your Old Business Card for One of These

Did you know that sales increase by 2.5 percent for every 2,000 business cards passed out? Although you may have to print and distribute a lot of cards to generate a positive response, any bump in sales is one that should put a smile on your face. Are you looking for a way to achieve greater success with your business cards? Rather than stick with the “same old, same old,” opt for a design that stands out. After all, you aren’t the only professional with a business card. And for this reason, you need to take a unique approach. Unique […]

Several Brands Doing Social Media the Right Way

This one piece of data from the Pew Research Center will tell you a lot about social media: As of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites. For this reason, it is only natural for brands to put a lot of time, money, and resources into connecting with consumers via social sites. While there are a number of extremely popular social media services, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat continue to receive a lot of attention from marketing professionals. Need help figuring out how to do social media for your brand? There is a big difference between creating accounts on these […]

Reddit AMA: What are the Pros and Cons?

Did you know that Reddit has more than 36 million user accounts? How about the fact that it receives nearly 200 million unique visitors per month? Are you aware that Reddit users come from more than 200 countries? You get the point. Reddit, while not often considered one of the top social networking websites, is one of the most powerful online brands you will come across. A lot of this has to do with the entertainment factor. A lot of it has to do with the ability to connect with users located all over the globe. Then there are the […]

The Anatomy Of A Great Live Tweeting Campaign: Everything You Need To Know About Live Tweets At Your Events

Twitter and the events industry were practically made for one another. The readily-accessible microblogging social network is one of the best places to share information and updates with your attendees, and one of the best platforms for the promotion of your events. As you may be aware, it’s also an incredibly powerful tool for engagement. Trouble is, not everyone knows how to tap into that last one. “Twitter is the new social water cooler, but you don’t need to wait until the morning after a big event, show, or game to get the conversation started,” reads an article in Twitter’s […]

Ten Tips For A Successful Twitter Takeover

Today, we’re going to talk about what’s involved in running a takeover on your Twitter account. No, I’m not referring to hacking or hijacking, I’m talking about bringing a third party on-board – like a celebrity, client, or expert – to manage your Twitter presence. Done right, this can be just what you need to increase your following and engagement on Twitter.  We’re here to ensure that you don’t do it wrong. First, Ask Yourself: Why Run A Takeover? At its core, the phrase “twitter takeover” is really just another way of saying you’re hiring a spokesperson to manage your twitter […]

Crisis Management for Brands: Protecting Image During Disasters

Crisis Management for Brands: Navigate challenges effectively with these tips for maintaining a positive image in difficult situations. It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a person by how they behave in times of crisis. The same is true of businesses, believe it or not. It’s why having a good crisis management plan is so important. See, there’s a pretty good chance that no matter what industry you work in, what demographic you target, and what services you provide, you’re eventually going to face a brand crisis of some sort. Skillfully weathering the storm goes a long […]

DIY PR – How You Can Build Your Reputation Without Hiring A Firm

Building up your business takes more than a few clever marketing campaigns. It also requires the constant, careful cultivation of a public image. What do people think about you? What do they say? How do they feel? And does all of that align with the image you want to convey? Seems a little overwhelming at first, but it’s actually not as difficult as you’d think. Provided you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can actually do a pretty masterful job of handling public relations on your own. Today, we’re going to talk about how. Know Your Media […]

Top Tips for Writing the Perfect Press Release

Until you master the art of creating the perfect press release, your public relations strategy will continue to lag behind the competition. But there is good news: this is not nearly as challenging as it sounds. With the right knowledge and approach, you can create a press release that generates positive results. This leads to a very important question: what does a perfect press release look like? If you are new to this form of writing it can be a challenge to get in the right frame of mind. Creating a press release is not the same as a blog post, […]

Everything You Need To Know About Working With Journalists As An Event Planner

As an event management professional, you’re eventually going to have to work with the press. Whether they’re covering your entire conference or simply showing up to report on a particularly poignant keynote, journalists are an important component of every event bar. It’s important that you know precisely how to communicate with them – and how to deal with them. Journalists play an incredibly important role in event management, like it or not. Depending on your relationship with the press, it can either be one of the most powerful publicity tools in your arsenal, or one of the most damaging threats […]

What To Look For In A PR Firm

In the business world, communication is everything – and the value of being able to communicate effectively cannot be understated. There’s a reason public relations is so valued in enterprise, after all. PR professionals are communicators by trade; they know exactly how to establish a rapport with their audience, and precisely how to handle a given situation, whether it’s a crisis or simply an outreach campaign. Of course, they don’t often come cheap. Hiring a PR firm is usually a pretty hefty investment, so it sort of goes without saying that you want to make sure you aren’t just throwing […]

PR: How Much Do You Know?

As we all know, PR is so important for both your event firm as well as for the individual events that you throw. It may seem simple from a distance, but once you really get to the details, it can be quite a tedious task. What it really comes down to is who you know and how well you really know them. We broke down different parts of how to get the perfect PR team or even do it yourself if you are ready to get to work and have the right contacts. We will be covering the following topics: […]

Seven Steps For The Perfect Event Logo

Your logo says a lot about your event. It’s the first thing any of your guests see, and the first thing they engage with. It’s more than just a pretty picture you can slap on to conference bags, brochures, and your website; it’s the visual representation of your event. The better it looks, the better people are going to feel about attending. If you want your logo to look like anything more than clipart, then the design process is going to be long, involved, and demanding. The reward, however, is more than worth it. If you put in the necessary work […]

Tips for Relating To Clients

I’ve said on several occasions that event planners need to be natural storytellers, but there’s a bit more to it than that. An event manager needs to be able to engage their audience on a personal and human level, but at the same time, they need to be able to present themselves as professionals. It can be a difficult balance to maintain, and in unskilled hands, relatability and professionalism tend to be mutually exclusive. In short, simply being able to tell a story isn’t enough – it’s how you tell the story that really counts. It wasn’t always this way: […]

How to Run an Effective Social Media Contest

Are you looking for a creative way to boost event registration numbers? Are you hoping to get your audience excited about an upcoming event? While there are many ways to make this happen, here is one that you may have overlooked: a social media contest. Social media is hot. Just how hot, you wonder? Here is what Social Times has to say: “Did you know that there are more than two billion active social media users worldwide, representing a global penetration rate of 28 percent?” This statistic alone proves that you are missing the boat if you aren’t using social media to […]