My favourite way of getting around is by train.  I’m on my way to London as I write this and I’m enjoying the peace and quiet (almost) away from the constant buzz of technology.  It’s a great way to take time to think about what I’m working on and how the business is progressing without feeling the need to respond to phones/emails and other distractions.

I have to confess that I do have all my technology with me - I’m still not quite ready to let it all go through my iPad so I do have my laptop with me.  As I can touch type I just can’t get to grips with a non-sensory keyboard.  I can do the odd email or message but I just can’t get as fluent and it ends up frustrating me too much.  My laptop is quite a weight to carry around town but as it contains nearly all the business information I could ever need in a meeting I’m loathe to leave it behind.  That’s one of the problems of technology - once you have it, it’s a real mind shift to live without it.  As I’m also an information hoarder I like the comfort blanket of my laptop - even if I end up with back ache from carrying it around in an inappropriate bag.

I used to use a backpack all the time and would try really hard to put on both straps.  Unfortunately I feel a bit like a schoolgirl wearing it so now only tend to use it onsite and not for other meetings. So, I have my laptop, my phone and my iPad with me.  Why the iPad?  Well, today it’s doubling up as baby security blanket and entertainment console with books and some great brain challenging games on there (as well as the inane games that I just can’t put down).  Tomorrow though I’m going to leave my laptop at home and venture out with the iPad and phone.  Do I really need the iPad?  Probably not - my meetings are onsite and not based on information I already have but if I do get a spare moment it’ll come in handy.

For today, I’m on the train with great space to write some blogs whilst looking at the world whizzing by.  The trolley is coming by so maybe I’ll splash out and have a cuppa.  So much more relaxing and stimulating than driving!

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 so fast nowadays it's interesting to see how it impacts on the way you deal with your trade show leads. You do deal with your trades how leads don't you? A few companies I've known simply put them in a drawer or leave them as a single excel spreadsheet with NO actions.  OK, so leads may not be your primary objective for attending but surely you recognise that they could still be a gold mine.  Add these to your CRM system and you begin to build a better a picture of your clients from interest to purchase, and you are able to contact them with suitable offers in the future.

Bar Code Scanners

So do you invest in a bar code scanner at the trade show?  On the positive side, they allow you to do a quick scan to get key data which can be beneficial when you're overloaded with visitors or when you simply want to log everyone in and out of a theatre or demo session.  On the downside they're not cheap, and you’re reliant on the visitor entering correct data. How many times have you opened up the database to find a batch of half filled information and a tick in the box saying - do not contact.? 

Most standard exhibition lead scanning systems aren’t tailored to your needs.  Some will allow a simple adjustment to log answers to a few questions but they're not ideal.  How many times have you been to a tradeshow where you have to wait whilst the staff repeatedly try to scan and edit your data?  It’s not the best way to build a rapport with your visitors.

So could you develop your own system?  I've worked with companies who have had proprietary systems developed - these allowed immediate synchronization with their own CRM system and of course, personalised and specific questions.  A great solution but it’s not a cheap option for everyone.  With so many CRM systems in the Cloud  nowadays I’m sure there are solutions out there to allow you to use your iPad or iPhone to import directly.  Any system has to be quick and allow good sales staff to hone in on the key data they need and record this seamlessly.  I’m not sure we’re there yet.  Pen and Paper/Business Cards still have their role.

Quality vs Quantity

You do also have to think about how much time you want your sales staff entering leads.  Are you after quality leads or just a quantity of new contacts to deal with later?  Tradeshows are a big investment so it’s up to you to plan your objectives and analyse whether or not your team can divide and conquer - having a couple of people filtering visitors and passing on promising ones to other sales people. 

An alternative is to get bar code scanner data sent back to base each night for review and adding on to the CRM system.  Good office staff can refer back and make sure that immediate follow up is sent out.

Inbound Marketing

A more promising solution for new leads/contacts is to get them to log onto your website and enter their own data.  You may have to develop your Social Media systems around this but with a dedicated landing page on your website with an unrepeatable offer you could have a QR code on your stand literature or even the stand itself.  This way you’re starting a relationship and not just gathering data.

There are many solutions but as long as you have a plan which you follow through, exhibitions are a goldmine of contacts.

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.

You’ve probably been organising events for years and can do it standing on your head but has that led to you becoming complacent about the manuals and forms?  I know they’re often boring and hard to navigate.  The online versions can be much better but they can also mean that you head straight to the form you require and ignore all the blurb.  I urge you to read the blurb and just check the regulations.  After all, if something has changed year on year, you don’t want to turn up on site and into a battlefield, just because you hadn’t seen the clause on flame retardant materials in Bulgaria (a made up example!).

It is becoming more and more important to read the exhibition manual as legalities change, year on year and country to country.  For example, in the UK a recent change in legislation caused my bill for electrics to increase by over 50%.  I’m sure that the safety aspects of this change are very sound but the affect on budgets is ridiculous with the electrics being 1/5th of the cost of the stand design and so a major consideration.

Unfortunately it seems that there is nothing that you can do about it but if you don’t read the manual and accommodate this early on you could find your budgets being blown.From my understanding you can now no longer install 4-way distribution blocks of anything but a 1kw connection.  So if you require lots of low energy items you have to increase the number of connections you order.  If you order a larger supply, say 2kw you can only connect one item from it.  Hence fitting down-lights above countertops or individual items becomes a major budget consideration.

Personally, I’m looking for alternatives to lighting now.  I hate being held to financial ransom by any legislation, however well-intended its creation.  Suddenly a long string of LED lights seems like a great idea but I’d love to hear of ways that other stand designers get around this issue.

So a word of a advice from a seasoned exhibitionist - do read the manual for every event you attend and make sure you don’t have any nasty surprises.

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.

Any events manager will tell you that being onsite at a large event is great fun and often full of challenges that need solving immediately.  

I love the immoveable deadline of an event - you have to plan from A to B. Even more challenging is the fact that B doesn’t move - you have to be ready. So you have to make sure that you’ve gone into all the possible outcomes and put a strategy in place to make it all go smoothly. Having said that, experienced Event Managers will all be able to tell you of the time they arrived onsite and had to deal with the unexpected.  We can’t always plan for every item but we can always make sure that any issue is dealt with promptly, effectively and with lots of good humour!

We were managing a client’s technical tradeshow presence in Lyon, France and their technician realised he hadn’t packed his specialised screwdriver which was essential to setup.  The show opened on Monday and it was Saturday evening.  Unfortunately, Saturday and Sunday’s were not  good shopping days in France and the screwdriver was not your typical B&Q purchase so buying one wasn’t an option. After a quick review of the exhibition layouts we took a tour of the halls and visited all our partners and competitors to beg and borrow.  Thankfully the exhibition community supported us - we knew many of the people onsite and one of them could loan us the screwdriver.  So with a little bit of logical thinking and some cheek we found the solution  - an event manager should never be afraid of asking for help!

On another large, VIP and Press launch we were in the office for a few hours before travelling up to the event when the venue called and said that they’d realised they couldn’t find the Emergency Exit signs they’d promised.  As a key part of the risk assessment and Health and Safety process we couldn’t compromise - we had to have them. As this event was an evening reception the signs needed to glow or be illuminated.  Much web-searching ensued and we found some at an online stationery store - wonderful!  As were were heading to London we could get a same day delivery.  We requested delivery to the venue and continued on our way.  As we approached London we decided to make sure that they were on their way and called the company.  They had no record of our order!  Mobile phones pulled out the whole team started to look for more suppliers in the area.  Thankfully we found a Travis Perkins who had some in stock so after a short detour we’d solved that problem.  They weren’t the best solution or the most design orientated but they worked and another crisis was averted.  Of course, to top it all - the original supplier did deliver the signs to our client that day so we ended up with twice as many as we needed!

Events always require some tangential thinking - they’re not always straight forward but they are great fun and really get your brain working!

It occurred to me recently that being a traveller and an event manager requires a certain amount of detective work.  It's a part of the job that I love - finding solutions to difficult or complex questions. From arriving at a strange airport and trying to work out how to buy a train ticket to finding a specific screwdriver in France on a Sunday - travelling and events give you lots of opportunity to play the detective.

Travelling abroad is something many of us do regularly and yet to get the most out of it I think you need to go beyond the standard Hilton Hotels and the oh, so easy taxi rank.  To use both of these is just to point and press but not to experience.  I urge you to try public transport and look about you as you travel.  It may take more time (but often takes less) but it will not only challenge you in many ways but also give you a new view of a different city.

I'm just back from Photokina in Cologne, Germany and once again I went for the public transport option.  First of all I have to work out what the very trendy but slightly obscure signs mean to find the right direction for the trains.  Then I do have rather a long walk to the end of my terminal and a 3 floor descent to the train station (but don't let any of that put you off!)

I then get to the ticket machine - the deserted ticket machine in an empty hall.  Now unlike many English ticket machines (indeed most English machines) these ones do have a wide range of languages available so providing I can find out how to select English I have an advantage over travellers in the UK.  I use my pigeon German to start the process but am immediately stumped by a system that asks me if I want VRS or DB.  The DB selection asks me if I want to go to Dusseldorf or some other city but doesn't give me the chance to put in the station I need.  OK, back track, let's try VRS.  Hurrah, I can do a station search here and I've selected my ticket. I even get to help another English person select their ticket without the long-winded route I took.  So I'm on the train and getting my next insight into Cologne.  The trains run on time, they're clean and I get some peaceful time to contemplate the job ahead whilst taking in the countryside and the people in the train with me.

Maybe it's something common to event managers or maybe just me but I love a challenge.  Simple as this was I was able to use logic, reasoning and communication to find solutions and give myself a treat at the same time.  So get out of your taxi bubble and come and see the real world.