It is one of the new catch phrases of the year, “How Do I Make My Business Hyper-Local?”  It is often asked and rarely understood.  Businesses everywhere are going global with their reach as they branch out to areas only now offered as a result of the Internet and Social Media.  They are finding new ways to reach the masses and finding ways to cats a wider net to garner more customers.  This is a great new phenomena that is taking hold and will be a new way of doing business for years to come.  Is this a good thing?  I think it is a great thing, but not at the cost of dealing with the customers in your own backyard.  Are you losing the customers in your backyard?

So many times we are seeing that conventions are growing at leaps and bounds as a result of their newly found reach using tactics that allow them to market to a whole new audience.  They love to talk about getting attendees now from other places in the world and from across the globe, but what they are failing to understand is that they are also forgetting the people right there in their own backyard.  The Internet not only allows you to have a greater reach, it also allows you to drill down within the local communities to find those attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and others right in your own backyard.  Take some time to research not only that customer on the other side of the world that you can now communicate with, but find that customer right on your own street that has been there the whole time.  You will increase your reach even farther just but seeing what is right in front of you.

I talked about it becoming convention season in the last post and that means it is back to setting up and tearing down your exhibit booth space.  If you are a small business it means probably getting the most bang for your buck in the area of a display that is easy to set up can be done with only one person and can be checked in as luggage when you travel.  I have been looking around recently at some of the display companies because I too will be needing to get a display booth that is for people on the move.

I spend about one week a month in the first six month of the season going to a couple of large shows and then a few small events and then a final large one before going in to work mode.  I am always looking for ease of use.  There are many companies out there that offer a portable display that is easy to set up and can make your company look professional and certainly won’t break the bank.  In today’s economy, the latter part of that equation is a must.  You can’t spend a whole bank account of your marketing budget only to not be able to recover that cost on the road.  I am actually in the market for a portable display that will fit nicely and look professional in the 10 x 10 booth space or in the corner of a small event.  Portable displays are a great asset and if you find a company that provide this service let me know I would love to speak to them.

Let’s face it giving out shot glasses with your logo on it is a cool giveaway item perhaps unless you are an exhibit booth at the alcoholics are us convention.  You have to make sure the promotional item is an item that is memorable to the audience you are giving it to and it need to make some common sense to the people that take it home.  I am about to gear up for a large convention for people in the social media world.  I like to get something in their hands that can make an impact and something that they may also have a good use for and not something that ends up chewed up by the family dog and never identified with again. Yes, that is a true story actually, the person told me later something to the idea that, “my dog ate it.”  That was not my idea of a good promotional item.

My promotional items are business cards to the next time they think of me. If it is something they will use later, they will remember where they picked it up and hopefully it will have my name or company name associated with it.  I still remember an ice cream scoop my parents used for years that had a company logo on it.  I can never scoop ice cream without thinking about that corner store.  This year I am thinking of giving out lip balm with my logo on the side.  The convention is in Las Vegas and whenever I go to a show there, I always need lip balm due to the desert location of the event.  I need to match the product with the user and they in turn will hopefully look back and remember me!  Does anyone know where I might find a good promotion item company to use?  Next up a trade show display booth I must shop for!

One of the things I do quite a bit is speak at conferences around the country.  I use speaking as a way to help promote my business because I am seen as an expert or a thought leader by presenting on topics within my industry. I try to help promote my speaking at events by sending out a number of messages on Twitter and letting my community on Facebook know where I will be speaking, and I generally try to get people to know where I will be and where they can find me.  It is good business to promote yourself through speaking.

What I don’t see often enough is speakers that promote the shows that they are asked to speak at on a large scale.  It is a win win situation when asked to speak at a conference.  You get the chance to be seen as the expert and the conference gets your content to provide to their attendees.  The latter part of that statement is the most important, the attendees to the event.  You can help the conference by getting people in the seats.  Many would argue that is is a responsibility to help the show organizer to get people to come to the show if you will be there speaking.  If you are not selling yourself and the conference you are not promoting well.

If you have a website advertise the upcoming show on space that tells your community about the conference.  When commenting on blogs about your topic, tell people where they can go to register for the event. Have a Slideshare account?  Make sure you upload your power point presentation.  All of this can help your presentation and help the event where you are speaking.  Bottom line is if you are asked to speak, do your part to help promote the conference to make it a success.  If the show is seen as a success and you helped make it work, you will be asked back for future conferences to be seen as the expert in your field.  It is good business.

Photo via Daveness_98

I was having a discussion with a colleague the other day about using email marketing as a way to get the word out and help get information to a customer.  I am still a child of email myself and I check that usually before I get my coffee in the morning.  A recent study reported by Mashable indicates that the next generation may be checking Facebook before they have their coffee, but I for one stick with the basics and go through email.

I continue to receive email updates from conferences and trade shows I have attended but for the most part, they smaller shows only send out a few updates a year and those are usually centered around events such as a call for speakers, or a sale of early bird tickets or other bigger announcements.  I think that is a poor use of email and newsletters.  Email is a great way to get up to speed year round and keep things fresh in the minds of your attendees, exhibitors and sponsors.  It is a great tool for helping you garner more sponsors in fact if they think you will be promoting them all year.

There are many email services out there and none of them are head and shoulders about their competitors.  I like to see a company that provides good analytics and one that allows you to customize your emails easily.  I know that some of the companies out there even have the ability to integrate with your blog and other social networks which is a nice touch.  Are you using email as a way to market your event?  How many emails is too many versus how many are too little.  I like to think that once a month I should be seeing your event show up on my radar and as we get close to your event you should get out as many as one per week.  What has worked for you in the past?

It seems these days that everyone is trying to help the planet and benefits are being planned all over to help the victims in Haiti, to help save the planet from the BP oil spill in the gulf. Last night was no different as I spent the evening at the Fox Theater in Boulder, Colorado, listening to music at a planned benefit to help the people in the Gulf area at an event called The Gulf Coast Benefit.  The event is to help the those hurt by the oil spill in the gulf.  The organizers tell us their goal:

The organizers have created an ambitious goal: Gather music venues around the country to donate ticket sales on July 1st and create an online giving platform that encourages donations to the relief efforts. The fundraising goal is set to $100,000, which will be directed to our nonprofit partner the Gulf Restoration Network, (http://www.healthygulf.org), which provides assistance to the people, wildlife and wetlands affected as well as advocacy work throughout the Gulf Coast.

This is a drop in the bucket for the amounts needed to help that we will hear about for the area.  Many people are traveling to the gulf coast now to see the problems there and to see how they can help.  I suggest you give to the people at the Gulf Coast Benefit to help those victims of the terrible accident.

If you are planning on your own benefit, here are some quick tips to help your event be a success.

1. Community: Get your community of friends involved.  We all, have a larger community these days with our friends on Facebook and our followers on Twitter.  Get them to help you with your event.
2. Businesses: Many businesses are themselves seeking some help in this economy but they do have ways of helping you with services or products they sale and they can provide you with what they can.  Look to local businesses that might want to ass some “cause marketing” to their efforts.
3. Venues: Many venues are looking for ways to get their message out and to get people to notice them.  Many of them will donate their facility to get the exposure and to make a difference.  Find a facility that might want to partner with your benefit.
4. Advertise: If nobody knows of your event you need to get the word out.  Many businesses will help you with this and in addition leverage your community as I mentioned above.  Get the word out and your event will raise money and be a success.
5. Fun: This is an opportunity for you to have some fun doing what you do well, planning events.  Take this opportunity to have some fun and to show everyone how well you can plan.  This might be out of your normal planning process so try some things you wouldn’t normally try on your own or for a client.

There is a non-profit organization out there that wants and needs help.  Many of them have no way that they can plan events on their own and need the help of meeting planners and event planners.  Help an organization today!

This is a question every conference, trade show, meeting and convention planner needs to ask themselves when getting ready to make that pitch to a prospective sponsor.  Why do they want to give you money to be a part of your show?  If the answer is not obvious, perhaps you need to be prepared to make it more obvious.

Many companies out there are hurting right now in this economy so they are beginning to tighten the belts of the budgets in the marketing and sales area and your convention may be the first place they want to cut.  Are they making a mistake? Probably, if they have the opportunity to make a sale or two by being a sponsor of your event.  You need to provide them with the information about quality leads, about why their brand needs to be aligned with your event and the return on their sponsorship investment.  If you can provide a good reason why they should be sponsoring your event then it should be an easy enough sale.

When going to the sales call, map out why each particular sponsor should be a part of your event.  Make it easy for them to understand and make sure you provide all the information they need to sell it on their end.  If you can make it easy for them to sell, your sale will be much easier.  I have found a number of sponsors for events just because I have made it easy for them to get approval to spend the money.  If you make it an easy job for all, then we all want the easy job to be on our plate.

If you would like to be a sponsor here on our blog or on the Conventions.net site I can provide many reasons for you to want to be a part of our sites.  Contact me.

[photo via fifa4fans.de]

If the answer to this is no, you are missing out on a great opportunity to promote, publicize or market your event, trade show or convention. Flickr makes it possible to store your photographs online and they allow you to actually share those photos with the people that matter to you.  You can share your photos on your blog, or even on the Facebook page that seems not to get enough attention from you.  Flickr is also a database that can be searched for people that are perhaps looking for information related to your event.

Flickr allows you to upload photos that can then be tagged and labeled.  If you have an annual event and want people to see photographs from other years or if you want to make those photographs part of your sales pitch or sales brochure, it makes it easy to store them for future use.

In addition to being able to share your own photos, you can actually have other account holders’ photos fed via RSS directly onto your site as they tag those photos with your hashtag.  Hashtags are more than just a way for people to follow your event online, they are a way to identify your event in social networking sites like Flickr.  If you have not yet signed up for an account on Flickr I suggest you gt one and in addition to signing up for a free account today, I would also recommend that you sign up for a Pro account.  This will give you a little more flexibility in your use of the system.

I am considered as a techno-geek or a geeky person that loves technology.  I tend to get my hands on a number or applications or get asked to help many companies test their latest in offerings for social networks or beta test their latest software.  I love to see how things are changing and the trends of the future as it relates to how we use technology.  This is why when I talk about the title of this post I tend to be really passionate.  The world of mobile is a game changer for all of us.  It doesn’t matter what industry you are in and it doesn’t matter what demographic you come from, smart phones are changing the way we do business.

This is why we are Conventions.net are staying ahead of the curve and changing with the technology.  We are now offering a way for all of the trade show and convention industry people to stay on top of the latest mobile trends and the latest in game changing technology.  Is your company staying on top of the latest in mobile apps or are they lacking in that department?  You can find out by pouring through the applications for iPhones on Conventions.net.  I’ll recap the site information about the applications here:

Conventions.net has compiled a comprehensive list of Trade Show Industry iPhone Apps, Meetings Industry iphone Apps, and Event Industry iphone Apps on the web. You no longer need to scour the web or Apple’s iTunes store to find the best Applications for your next Trade Show, Conference, Meeting or Event. For additional information, or to download one of the Apps below just click its icon.

I recognize a number of the applications mentioned on the site by logo alone and I can assure you that the iPhone is not the only place you can find some of these technologies.  I know that applications are also available on the Blackberry and other smart phones so take a look not only on your iPhone if you are one of those users, but also make sure to see if the application is compatible with your brand of phone.  Chances are it is available or will be available shortly on all the other makes and models.

If you are a company that develops iPhone applications and/or a company that has developed an iPhone application and would like to see your application added to the Conventions.net page, please contact us so we can add it to the list of applications.  If you are a power user and do not see an application that we should be including please let us know.  We aim to be the go to guide for all things iPhone and the mobile market in the Trade Show, Conventions and Meetings industry!

Press releases, you are either a big fan of them or you hate them.  I have somewhat of a love hate relationship with the press release.  I am actually a fan now of the new social media release that makes it easy to distribute your news, but those have not yet hit the mainstream.  I get hundreds of press releases a week and some are related to my industry in social media, some are related to businesses I have helped in the past or some are just general interest to me.  I know that press releases are necessary and a great asset to companies.

I also know that press releases are a difficult thing to distribute to those that are interested specifically in your business or in our specific industry.  You send out a blanket release that may or may not be seen by the people that care.  How do we help you with this?  At Conventions.net we have a free press release distribution system that you can use to reach your specific audience.  We know this because we talk to these industry leaders and those in the convention, trade show and meetings industry every day!

If you want to go to our press release distribution system and give it a try you can see just how simple it is to reach those you want to reach with the news that matters to them.  Your message is limited to 1500 words, and that should be ample for most press releases.  Some of the other benefits are stated:

• Reach 125,000 unique visitors each month
• Increase traffic to your website
• Optimize your ranking in search engines like Google
• Release remains visible once posted

There are many press release companies out there you can use and many of them have great audiences of hundreds of thousands of people.  What they don’t have is a specific audience to your industry.  It’s like free advertising and public relations all put into a nice package.  Give it a try.