I’m very lucky to have a good friend who’s a designer - someone who knows me and my company well.  This saved me the tiresome task of finding and briefing a new designer.  Having been through that process in the past I would say it’s crucial to find a company that really understands your brand and what it means to you.  You don’t want to choose someone who will try to impose their ideas on you or just go for the latest fashion.  Brands should be enduring and not changed without considerable reason - something that is in fashion now may look dated very quickly.  

Before I met up with my designer I wrote down a list of reasons for changing the brand along side a list of feelings that I wanted the brand to convey.  I also sat down and itemised all the marketing areas that would need changing. It’s amazing how far reaching your logo is - it’s not just your website, letterhead and business card.  Updating your brand is a bit like redecorating - once you start, it snowballs and soon you find that you’ve painted the whole house.  Hence, changing the brand means I need to redesign business cards, website, social media sites, banner stands, promotional material etc etc. Hence you can take the chance to update all your branding and remove any annoying, inflexible or ineffective areas.  

It is important to uncover who your brand is aimed at, what feelings you want them to have about your brand, how you want to use your logo (ie colour or black and white, embroidery, print, pdf) and how you want to engage with your audience.  There is much that you won’t be able to get across in an initial brief so work closely with your designer and make sure you’ve budgeted for time to make amendments.  Don’t be embarrassed to update your brief or to say that what you’ve been given doesn’t fit your needs.  This is something you have to live with - the designer can walk away and just pat themselves on the back for creating a stunning image but you’ll be working with it for many years to come.

I’ve been reviewing my marketing plan recently and realise that nearly all my marketing tactics involve social media.  It really did surprise me as I hadn’t realise that I’d become so involved in it.  I also took stock of the fact that there is so much I have to learn.  I’m a big fan of continued learning - I love listening to podcasts and audio books.  Even the most insignificant podcast on marketing can give you one nugget to work on and develop your business.

However, I now have a backlog of social media to learn.  I’m looking forward to it but am not sure how to balance my time.  After all, this is for the long haul - for the future and has to be done but equally it’s not bringing me immediate reward so how do I justify the time it takes?  One colleague suggested allocating one day a week to immerse myself in each topic and get on top of it.  Another suggests breaking down each working day and spending an hour a day on the topic.  I’ll try both over the next few weeks and see which works best for me.

In the meantime, my list of topics is growing and I’m looking online for webinars, You Tube clips, support documents and general discussions.  By giving myself a variety of information formats I’m sure I’ll pick up enough tips to get going and develop a good Social Media strategy.  So, if you’ve got any good sites/info on the following do let me know.  My primary subjects, for now are:

Google+: everyone is saying you have to be there and the segmentation is really useful but I’ve not seen any evidence of it’s growth and impact.

Pinterest: I’ve got my account and can see how this can be useful to event discussions but I need to spend some time working in and around it to really get going.

Hootsuite: As above, I’ve got my account and done the basic set up but I really need to set up a Twitter feed schedule and learn how to make the most of this great looking tool.

Mailchimp:  the time for Newsletters has come, I have the database I have some interesting content but I need to get them merged with Mailchimp. 

Wordpress:  I’m fascinated by this.  I use it for my personal and business blogs but would like to become more of a power user so I can make the sites more personalised.

Lots to learn about - I’m looking forward to it. Now where is that Time-turner...

Technology is moving on fast nowadays.  After all we can now talk to our phones and ask them to find a suitable meeting time, then email or text the people to invite them.  The only trouble is, we now seem happy to talk to a phone but not to actually contact the person and talk to them about the meeting.  OK, that’s taking it to extremes but I’ve had a few instances recently where I’ve been invited to meetings and yet not one person has tried to speak to me.  Hence - I haven’t gone along.

As a person I want to be engaged, encouraged and spoken to - emails just don’t always fit the bill.  So here’s 3 circumstances that may just make people think about how they invite people to events and meetings.

Case 1: I was invited to meet up with a new employee at a supplier.  I don’t use the supplier regularly but am willing to stay in touch.  However, I have now been sent 3 group emails inviting myself and other clients to contact them to set up a meeting.  This seems so lazy to me and as I’m not valuable enough to the supplier to warrant a phone call I’m just not going to use them any more.  

Case 2: A venue finding client wanted to host a small seminar in London and they had met a collection of potential attendees.  This seminar did incur a small cost but the Return on Investment on attending was huge - so it should have been an easy sell.  However, the client refused to call the interested parties and get them to sign up.  They were trying to be more subtle and didn’t want to appear to pressurise people. Emails are great but they can be ignored (see Case 1!).  If you really want to get people to sign up you need to do more than just blast them with social media.  Try the old-fashioned picking up of the phone - especially for a small event where you have already got agreement of interest.  It may take more time but I am sure it will get you the sign ups you need.

Case 3: I was invited to visit a local venue recently - the emailed flyer was once again sent to a large group of recipients. Emails such as these are almost junk to me - with so many arriving they have to stand out to get my attention.  So I didn’t pick up on the first email but was surprised to receive another mail, marked urgent, which asked why I hadn’t responded and was I attending.  Again, it’s not a venue that was essential to my business so I put the email to one side to consider and a few days received another mail, once again demanding I let them know if I was attending.  I can’t believe that this small venue had invited more than 100 people so wouldn’t it have been so much more impressive to call me and invite me personally.  I’m not someone who goes to the opening of an envelope but I am someone who has serious business clients who might use the venue.  Group emails may get you some numbers but do they actually get you the quality atttendees that you need?So this may all seem like a rant but hopefully  you can all see that each scenario would have been so much better by the organiser knowing their mailing list, what motivates and engages them and then making sure that they use a variety of communication, especially a phone call to encourage attendance.  Please PICK UP THE PHONE!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’ve changed my Safari home page away from BBC news, and turned off BBC Radio 4 in the mornings.  It’s so refreshing! 

I really thought I’d miss the Today programme - it’s so interesting and education but it was also negative and I just didn’t want to start the day worrying about Greece and it’s impact on the Eurozone.  You may call it burying my head in the sand but I find it’s so much more fun to allow my mind to run free listening to classical music (plus my parent’s will be so proud!).

The home page was more of a challenge - news is addictive and I always like to know what is going on around me but once again the media was just bombarding me with negative stories.  I tried having my homepage of one of the blogs I follow but that was too preachy - I like to dip into those when I’m in the mood.  Somehow I found StumbleUpon (ignore the joke in there!).  Now I don’t profess to being an expert and I’m sure I’m only using it in an amateur way but it’s fantastic.  It has opened up the web to me.  By choosing my interests it goes out and finds websites that fit that category that i might like  -  most of the time it gets it right but I can help it learn by ensuring that I say whether or not I like or dislike each of the sites it offers.

In the past week I’ve seen some stunning photographs, read some inspirational stories and laughed out loud at some jokes.  So in your break, why not have a look at StumbleUpon and come back to work refreshed and inspired?

I keep confessing to you all and I really have to stop this but then what value would a blog be if it didn’t reveal a little more about me and my thoughts each time?  That’s just my view though - I don’t feel I can write a regular blog without outlining my thoughts and values.  Many other people do write very plain, business like blogs and have enormous success with them.  I’m not aiming for a huge blog following but am still happy that it’s growing gradually.  So why do I do this?

Writing a blog each week can be a challenge - how to come up with ideas and how to allocate the time to post and promote it?  However, I’ve been surprised at the range of people who read it.  These range from local business people that I network with, to old clients who I’ve worked with for years and not forgetting the people I just don’t know but have found me via Twitter or SEO. So given that range of readers how do I make sure that I keep you all entertained, even if just for a 5 minute read?

I wonder how many people really have a good blog strategy and how many just write week after week?  My strategy - to keep my clients and prospects informed of my activity, my thoughts and my business values.  It’s the personal touch to my website that is hopefully, the inviting and more intimate element of my company.  But now I have these other followers should I focus solely on running a small business or go for hard core events tips? That’s my challenge -  to keep evolving the blog and keep you all interested - do let me know what you’d like to read.

So many companies outsource their social marketing to a specialist.  I’m sure this works really well to ensure it gets done and that it’s promoted effectively but is it really the right strategy for your company?  As a small business owner I’m very protective (over-protective?) of my brand and even when I employed staff I still had to oversee the use of the brand.  As such I just can’t see how anyone else could encapsulate and extoll the heart of Nutmeg.  For those that outsource I would really recommend that you use the agency as an alarm and a formatter but come up with the text, the message yourself.  Only the brand owner (be it company director or marketing manager) can really speak of the values of the brand so don’t give that away lightly.

I’ve written before about attendance at events - the good news when some exhibitions are showing great increases in visitor numbers but also those companies that assume people will turn up without putting in any effort.  It’s the difference between the two that interests me - is it the topic that draws the audience or is it the marketing programme surrounding it?

Good topics inevitably draw people to look at an event but they won’t always get people to attend, especially if there is no call to action.  Why should they attend? What are they going to get out of attendance?  What’s in it for me needs to be very clear.

With most people inundated with information nowadays, we need to make sure that we get our events in front of the potential visitors as much as we can.  Repeating the same event invite is frustrating and will turn off your audience so it’s time to think outside the box.  How can you build a relationship with your audience and give them some information or benefit for free?  

Social media is a great help with this but it is not the panacea that some think.  Not everyone is up to date on Twitter or has the the time to read your fabulous blogs.  So you need to spread your marketing over a range of activities.  

Make sure that you have a good list to start with - don’t use the 5 year old company database that you used last time.  If it’s 5 years old probably best to tear it up and start again.  The time it would take to clear out the deadwood means it would be cheaper to buy in a specific lead database targeted at your customers.  Can you work with other media, affiliate companies and publishers to do joint promotions? But do make sure that any agreement on sharing data allows you to continue to promote the event after the initial contact.  

Once you’ve got a good database work out why this group should attend your event.  Is it chargeable?  In which case, you have to make the registration and payment process as easy as possible so you don’t loose people on the way - once a person is turned off, it’s very hard to get them back on your side.

Think about building a relationship.  Think about how you’re going to tease and encourage more interaction from your potential audience.  What do they need and how is your event going to provide that?  If it’s a small tight-knit community you’re after - can you afford to send some direct mail with a unique angle?  I’m not talking about the calendar with your brand on it but something relevant and useful to the audience that will open their eyes to your event.  If you’re after sheer numbers - as exhibition organisers often are then it’s about getting the message out as far and wide and making sure you have enough avenues for each type of visitor to engage with you.

Lastly, don’t forget it doesn’t all end once they’ve signed up - you then need to get them to the door.  Work especially hard at reminders and making their visit as easy and comfortable as possible.  Give your visitors no excuse not to turn up!

I’ve recently been focussing more of my time on LinkedIn - working to get my profile accurate, interesting and building up my contacts.  I’m also looking for business partners so I joined several groups and started a discussion.  I’ve been amazed by the responses I’ve had and it shows how you can really make some far reaching connections just by asking a question.

For those of you who don’t know LinkedIn, it is the professional Facebook. It allows you to connect with your business  colleagues, stay in touch with clients, search for prospects, build a community amongst your partners and maintain your professional profile online.

I’ve been a member for a few years and have gradually connected to people I used to work with. However, I haven’t really used it to find new people to connect to.  Hence it with a little trepidation that I posted a discussion on several groups.  I was impressed that each one has given me at least one contact that I hadn’t known before hand.  Not only is it great to get support from your local community and get their feedback on who I could work with but I’ve also had a bunch of replies from events businesses in the US, Italy and UAE.  As I work with US companies this has been valuable to my future business but even better, I heard from a lady in New York State who seemed to be having very similar thoughts to mine.  We chatted by phone for over half an hour and talked through our businesses, how we were planning to move them forward and if we could do any joint promotions.  It was fantastic to find new friends and some objective opinions just by asking one simple question.

I’m sure I’ll take some of the contacts further and explore ways of working together.  At the very least it’s given me a different perspective on the future of my business and enabled me to look afresh at my business plan.

LinkedIn is a fantastic tool which every business person should explore but make sure you are active and use it to promote your successes, find new opportunities and don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions - the community will answer and probably tell you that they were wondering about the exact same thing but were too nervous to post it.

Earlier this year I visited a tradeshow in London and found it quite a sad experience.  The organisers had obviously struggled to sell the space and had brought in some companies that had paid the money but obviously didn’t really care or understand the tradeshow.  Many exhibitors seem to be questioning whether they’ll attend next year but whose responsibility is it to get the audience?

Over the years I’ve heard many exhibitors complain about the cost of exhibiting and how the show organisers are just not delivering the right quality of visitor but are they right in doing so?

I would always dispute that exhibitions are expensive. They can be but it’s all about working out why you want to be there and what you want to get out of it - then matching your expectations to your budget.  But that’s a whole new blog.  

For now I want to look at the role of show organisers to bring in the visitors.  Yes, show organisers have a marketing budget. Yes, they have some responsibility to get visitor numbers – they certainly have the incentive but do you really think that once you sign on the dotted line you just need to get the stand and staff there?  

Even if a show organiser has done a tremendous job of getting visitors to the exhibition, you as an exhibitor need to make sure that your clients and prospects know where you are within the show and have a reason to visit you.

I would always encourage clients to have a pre-show campaign – it can be a simple banner or link on your website or a signature on your emails.  Hey, why not do that anyway and then think of more targeted elements? What are you showing at the exhibition?  Is it new and exciting?  Why should people come visit you?  Create a call to action then add it to your newsletter or make a specific email campaign.  

Again it all comes back to why you’re there – if it’s a branding and PR exercise with existing clients and prospects then get your sales people to call their contacts and make appointments to show them the latest and greatest offerings.  If you’re exhibiting to meet new prospects then work with your whole team to decide how you’re going to handle passers-by.  Who’s good at walking up to strangers and engaging them?  Who’s best at evaluating whether the person is a worthwhile lead?  How do you deal with time-wasters?  If you have a strategy and use it effectively then you will make the most of your investment and really get the quality leads you need.

Lastly, why not work with the organisers on joint marketing campaigns?  Like you they’re interested in making the most of their investment and want to engage with new visitors.  What can you do together to target new and existing audiences?  Can you encourage them to use social media to extend their reach?  If they’re already using Twitter, what stories can you feed them?  Can you work together to come up with new ways to engage the visitors on the show floor?

So take a step back and look at the exhibition objectively – work out what you want to get out of the event and then get your sales and marketing teams working on how to pull those visitors in.

It's been an interesting week - one that has questioned my assumptions and led me to question the role of an events professional.

This week, I had my first Linkedin originated meeting ie I didn’t know the person before we met on Linkedin. I met up with another person heavily involved in the events industry and inevitably our talk turned to the future and how events would fare in the new Social Media world.  I've always been keen to promote the benefits of events to companies large and small and compared the ascendancy of our services to that of PR agencies.  My position being that many, if not all, companies now recognise the need for someone to help them write and manage PR - it is seen as a profession.  Events, unfortunately are still considered a “nice to have”, an expense and not a must have.  My vision was for Events to evolve and become the third essential hand to marketing managers.

Hence I was interested to hear at this meeting that he felt that PR was a dying industry!  If they were dying where did events now stand?  It was a fascinating conversation, more so as it was the third time in 7 days that I’d heard this.

No, I don’t think PR is dying, I think it just needs to evolve and evolve quickly.  Do PR consultancies merge with Social Media agencies or do they just switch focus from printed releases to including a plan for social media?  Printed PR has it’s place, particularly in specialist industry magazines but surely PR consultancies now need to prove that they can manage a social media campaign effectively and that they can use their skills to best use on this media.  In this new world many companies will think that their staff can manage the Twitter feed but wouldn’t it be so much better to use a professional who can write effective, focused copy?

I do believe the same can be said for events.  Anyone can organize events but a professional can really focus on the essentials and get you further quicker and with less stress.  However we also need to evolve and whilst events will not be replaced by online meetings and virtual exhibitions we need to work out how they can be combined effectively into the promotional plan for the event.

I firmly believe that we'll be much worse off if we don't meet face to face, if we don't explore new products with all senses and not just eyes and ears.

So maybe PR is evolving and so are Events - we just need to keep focused on our clients and what their clients need.