Conference Marketing to Younger Members
A Field Guide to the Millennials.
How do you market a conference to a generation that has been bombarded with advertising their whole life and grown immune to hyped sales pitches? Millennials are a difficult group to reach with traditional marketing techniques. Follow along with Gary as he walks through some effective tips for personalizing and segmenting your conference marketing campaign to get better results.
For some time now Facebook users have been able to tag each other in photos, videos and notes. Well, now they can tag each other in their “What’s on your mind?” status updates.
“Um, so?” may be what’s on your mind right now, but status tagging is a great feature that can help your fans promote your Facebook Fan page. Facebook users update their status to let friends know all sorts of things about how they are doing, what they are doing, and things they like. Now, with status tagging they can reference who or what they are talking about.
For instance, when a Facebook user says they are going to volunteer with their favorite nonprofit, they can use the “@” symbol to reference that nonprofit’s Fan Page. Or, when a Facebook user just registered for an upcoming conference they can reference the association’s page or event. Those updates will show up in the news feeds of all their friends, and on the pages of the organizations they referenced.
Facebook posted instructions on how to tag friends and fan pages in status updates on their blog:
“Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend’s name to something you are posting, just include the “@” symbol beforehand. As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages. Soon, you’ll be able to tag friends from applications as well. The “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you’ve added your tags.”
Start testing the status tagging and see how it can enhance the connections with your friends and fans. It can be a useful tool for referencing other organizations or businesses you want to help promote on Facebook, as well.
Even if your organization does not officially engage in social media, it’s very likely that some of your staff members have profiles on social networking sites like Facebook. Having a social media policy is something every organization should consider. But, what exactly is a social media policy, and what should it say?
Here are some tips to help you create a policy that fits your association.
Six Tips to Help you Get Started
1. Introduce the purpose of social media policy.
Staff members need to know what’s in it for them to get them to read the policy and adopt the guidelines. Let them know that the goal of the social media policy is to empower everyone to engage with social media responsibly. The policy is not simply about protecting the association’s reputation, but also about protecting those who chose to participate. Encourage them to be smart about protecting themselves because what they publish is widely accessible and can be around for a long time.
2. Define what is included in the policy.
Let staff members know that the policy applies to all employees and contractors who contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, or any other kind of social media. List specific examples including Twitter, Facebook, commenting on online media stories, etc.
3. Define the rules of engagement.
Encourage staff members to be authentic and themselves by using their name, company info and title when appropriate. Remind them that they are a valuable asset to the organization, and their involvement with the association’s social media efforts will enhance the experience for everyone. Just as in meetings in the office, everyone is responsible for what content they share and should strive to add value to conversations.
4. Comply with company conduct policies and company culture.
Everyone needs to know that the same policies that apply in the office, apply online. It’s not okay for employees to harass colleagues in the office, and doing so online will not be tolerated. Same goes for sharing of private conversations and confidential information. Using common sense and common courtesy are great rules to follow.
5. Set rules for moderating content.
Let staff members know that the social media sites within the association’s control will be moderated, which is the act of reviewing and approving 3rd party content. To create a safe environment for users, you should let it be known that all offensive, abusive, illegal and irrelevant content is prohibited. As content is added from anonymous users, it should always be reviewed before being approved. This isn’t the case for content being shared by registered users. Also, let staff know how you plan to handle comments that could be considered negative for the organization. If you are going to have an authentic online presence, then you can’t hide all the bad comments. Instead, look at it as an opportunity to show the world how you manage conflict.
6. Where to get more information.
There may be times when staff members get involved in conversations online that turn nasty, and they don’t know what to do. Provide employees with a method of contacting your PR department about issues like this. Also, reminding employees that they can contact the HR department to have questions answered about the policy and on how to protect their privacy online. Of course, this first means you must equip your PR department with the skills necessary to handle potential problems. And, provide resources to the HR department that can be used to teach users how to protect their online reputation (i.e. a class on how to properly set privacy settings on Facebook).
Take a look at policies from companies and organizations that are similar to yours. Use those benchmarks and these tips to guide you in creating a policy that fits the culture of your association.
RCG’s Comprehensive Guide To Measuring Social Media Metrics
A list of tools to help you measure ROI, engagement and help you develop social media strategy.
The essentials:
Calculators:
ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaings from Frog Loop
Social Networking Media ROI Calculator from Dragon Search Marketing
Tools, widgets & more:
Sometrics
Analytics that measure social advertising efforts.
Social Media Metrics Plugin for Google Analytics
Bit.ly
URL shortener that tracks information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur.
Xinu Returns
A great dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media. Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Googe Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.
PostRank
Detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and Friend Feed. Great for blogs with a lot of content
SocialToo
Create social surveys and track social stats. Also, reports on Twitter follows and unfollows.
Tweet Reach
Follow your tweets and retweets to see how far they travel.
Social Meter
Check out your site’s social popularity on sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Google, Technoratic and more.
Statsaholic
Compare rankings and other info on up to three sites at a time.
Site Volume
Compare how often keywords show up on a site.
As Twitter continues to grow in popularity individuals, businesses, associations and nonprofits are still trying to figure out all the ways Twitter can enhance their lives and work. Because of this web-geeks around the world are creating Twitter apps and tools that do all sorts of crazy, fun things. Here’s a list of some of our favorites that will be sure to keep you tweeting all weekend:
Also, be sure to check us out on twitter at http://twitter.com/rottmancreative!
Facebook’s popularity is still growing at exponential rate. Is your nonprofit taking advantage of this gold mine?
Here are three key features that can help your organization get the most out of Facebook:
Key Feature #1: Pages
Facebook has introduced Fan Pages for businesses and organizations, whereas, profiles are meant for individuals. From your Facebook Fan Page you can build community and increase communication with your members by posting updates, sharing pictures, blogging and interacting with your fans. It can also be helpful in recruiting volunteers, raising money and essential networking. It is free to set up a Facebook Fan Page. The only commitment your organization will have to make is one of committing time to create the page and keep it active.
Key Feature #2: Causes
Facebook has a diverse group of users who want to use their Facebook for various reasons. To help users get just what they want out of the social networking site, Facebook has allowed other companies (or web geeks) to create Applications which users can download to their profile. These thousands of applications include games, ways to share music or pictures, quizzes, polls, and lots more. The one that nonprofits need to be aware of is Causes. Instead of us telling you what they do, here’s a snippet from their website:
“Causes offers nonprofit organizations of every budget size, staff capacity, and issue area access to Facebook and MySpace, which between them have over 400 million monthly unique visitors. Facebook, the world’s “stickiest” site, sees over 100 million people log in on a daily basis. Beyond the sheer reach of these social networks, Causes provides nonprofits with specialized tools for spreading awareness, building community, fundraising, circulating petitions, and promoting other actions. Whether you want to reach out to a new supporter demographic, expand your donor base, engage and mobilize existing supporters, or spread the word about your incredible work, Causes is a platform for efficiently and effectively achieving those goals.”
The Causes website has a wealth of information for nonprofits interested in using their platform, including everything you need to know to get started, success stories from other nonprofits, and information on corporate and foundation matching grants.
Key Feature #3: Events
Besides allowing users to manage their contacts and multimedia, Facebook has a feature which allows users to create events and invite guests. You can customize the event, edit its privacy settings, invite members (you can also invite members not on Facebook through email) and add pictures or video. After creating the event, you can send reminder messages to your guests, monitor RSVPs, and interact with guests via a comment section.
In this podcast we are going to attack this lesson by breaking brand marks down into five key elements. As I explain how to make your conference brand mark a successful tool in portraying the overall value of your event, you will notice a reoccurring theme of pushing the value of your event, instead of the location of the conference. So I may start to sound like a broken record, but that just reinforces the potential strength your conference logo can have.
Be sure you subscribe to this monthly podcast!
Here at RCG we love the world of social media and how it is transforming how people communicate with each other, how advertisers/marketers spread their message, and how it can connect us with each other in ways that makes the world seem smaller.
We could go on all day about the ins, outs and benefits of social media. But, today we want to touch on the first step into the world of social media: discovering what conversations are already happening (especially conversations about you – or your organization).
There are two ways to do this. First, you can spend hours each week searching the web for mentions of your organization. You may find a few news sources or blogs that make regular mention of your association, or a topic that is related to services you provide. But, it can be a very time consuming effort that gives you little information. So, we recommend the second option: using Google Alerts, a free tool that is praised by many.
The beauty of Google Alerts is that it searches the web for conversations about whatever topic you are interested in, and it brings those conversations to you – instead of you pulling your hair out while trying to rummage through inactive blogs and old forums.
It’s fairly simple to use and customize to how you prefer to receive information online. You can even set it up to “alert” you about your topic on specific websites, for example, if you are an association providing services related to victims of crime in the DC area, you can set a Google Alert for articles from the Washington Post’s website about “victim’s rights”. Whenever an article with that phrase appears, you will receive an email with a link to the article.
We hope you can see how this might be a useful tool for your organization. Here are some tips on how to get started:
This tool can help you easily target communities that are having conversations relevant to your organization. Without much effort, you have the opportunity to target your message to people who are interested and possibly in need of your services. So, go and hear what is being said about your organization. Then you can start to interact in these conversations and you might become as amazed with social media as we are.
Fairly soon your lives will be enriched with another edition of our newsletter, White Space. This month’s topic is on integrating social media marketing and direct mail – safely and effectively! But, we thought it might be best to have a quick and dirty lesson on social media marketing.
Let’s start with seeing what Wikipedia has to say:
“Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.”
Social media marketing is…
Social media marketing is not…