...It's All Online, September 2010



This is the monthly eNewsletter I send to our marketing and production teams which gives them updates on online communications. Usually I have action points for each producer or marketer, but sometimes I like to share or educate them. Read on....

Welcome to ‘It’s all Online’
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Social media can’t be left to one person….

Jason Romain, Global Head of Marketing, explored the concept of ‘Social Network Fatigue’ in his latest Marketing Newsletter. SNF refers to the sheer burnout experienced by the vast number (and increasing) of social networking and sharing sites available online today.

I’m stealing his material in this edition, because I want to highlight that in light of SNF….social media can’t be left to one person…

Social Media can't be left to one person. It's the whole organisations responsibility, producers, customer service, sales and marketing must all leverage social media. Obviously we can't (nor should we) ignore this powerful channel, but we also can't let it distract us from effective marketing. Marketing is about communicating a story, a story that resonates with our audience, regardless of the tools. Effective marketing is about measurement, some of these new tools also have great new metrics but we shouldn't forget it's about driving revenue or attendance at our events. Integrated direct marketing is about wrapping it all together, measurement, channel and message. Aligning them is where success lies.

… More importantly we must find influencers in the social media space and engage them in our events. It's not always about the latest or greatest tools, it's about telling a story (and measuring success).

So continue to spend time on social networks to engage with influencers who can promote and advocate for our events.
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THE POWER HOUR:

Daily in marketing we have commenced ‘Power Hour’ which is a dedicated time between 9-10am for us to engage with social media channels.

What we do:

• Join groups on LinkedIn
• Start discussions centred around themes of the conference (ask questions etc)
• Connect with speakers and influencers within the groups
• Search for relevant blogs and engage with the author (eventually we’d like to share content on the blog)
• Tweet our content on our mining and construction portals
• Try to build our LinkedIn groups through mass invites
• Trial new social media portals to see how we can use them to leverage our content
• Use promotions to connect the event with our group (by offering linkedin offers etc)
• Ask people who join our groups to ‘Introduce themselves to the group and make mention of their interest in X topic’
• Use our speakers are leverage, an area we must get better at. People are more likely to engage with our speakers, not us!!

 What we don’t do: 

• Start a discussion on Linked In and say ‘Come to this conference because…’
• Start new groups of stage one launches without a clear and defined growth strategy as to how this will grow post-event
• Email group members directly spouting that they attend
• SELL our conference on social media – we share content and knowledge aligned to our conferences.

So, I challenge you to commit some time to social media of your own – after all, you hold much more knowledge, you have stronger relationships with the speakers and you can interact and respond to them online. GO TEAM!!