by Ashwin | Jul 15, 2016 | event management, Marketing
Event Management by Live Blogging
Event management is a tough cookie! The commencement to the conclusion involves a lot of things. The road from planning the event to successfully executing it is long. The beginning point for a successful marketing campaign would be through content marketing. Since blogging has been a traditional way to introduce your content to consumers, it is understandable that a rich, entertaining and unique content is the need of the hour to catch the attention and retain attendees. Usually, content for an event is often developed during 2 scenarios,
- Before the commencement of the event to create hype or publicity thereby earning more attendees
- After the event is hosted or concluded so that the attendees can relate their experience with the content.
What if, an attempt is made to significantly keep attendees glued to your event from the beginning to the end? This can be done by introducing live blogging. Live blogging is similar to live radio or live television, which provides a rolling textual coverage of an ongoing event. Constantly giving updates about the event ensures that attendees don’t miss out on anything crucial.
We are aware of Cricbuzz, ESPN CricInfo, etc. They provide live updates of cricket match scores at every ball in an over. ESPN’s espnfc.com provides quick updates on football events. Live blogging can be done similarly to keep the attendees informed about the happenings at the event.
What should be conveyed about the event while live blogging?
A most common way to keep attendees engaged is to put up a post that also serves as a trivia. A ‘did you know’ post that covers different undiscovered parts of your event will tempt the attendees to read further. These posts could create an everlasting impact on the attendees as they will be having a thorough knowledge of all aspects of your event.
When speakers come up to deliver their thoughts, a quick introduction and some facts about the speaker and his achievements or experience will attempt to create a feeling of trust in the attendees. Attendees would feel comfortable if they listen to someone who they know better.
This might be the “most read part” of your blog updates. Even a brief introduction to the variety of dishes that you are providing can be delectable. It is advisable to list the food being served at your event in an ordered fashion, as in a menu card. It can be made more interesting by giving ‘Food for thought’ quotes.
- Offers and discounts from sponsors
Sponsors are the events’ backbone. They act as economic pillars to make your event successful. As a token of respect, introduce your sponsors’ products, and their offers to the attendees while live blogging. This can prove to be an ideal way to build a lasting relationship with the sponsor while gaining viewers interest; which is not only restricted to the event but also about the products for sale.
- Integration with social media
While you post your blogs on your website, simultaneously update it on different social media platforms to capture the attention of a wider range of audience. Likes, shares/ retweets, etc., can help your posts reach more audience.
After you publish your posts on social media, as well as on the blog, make sure to keep track of the comments section. Reply to all the comments as quickly as possible so that you don’t miss out to keep any of your attendees engaged. This adds more liveliness to the blog and will convince the audience that “their thoughts matter.”
by Ashwin | Jul 13, 2016 | Blog, event management
In an era of digitalization, many mobile apps are on the rise! Though it might sound dubious, email marketing campaigns can fetch more than double the Return on Investment (ROI) compared to any other form of marketing. This stands true provided the email marketing campaign is done right.
- What are the probable reasons why some marketing emails end up right into the spam folders?
- How do you get the attention of your event attendees through your email?
- How would you persuade them to open the email and read the content?
- How do you make your content intriguing enough to hold your attendees on to their seats?
Here are some tips which would help ameliorate your email crafting skills and eventually lead to a successful email marketing campaign.
1. Services to use while sending emails
To get your emails effectively into the inbox of your targets/prospects, a renowned Email Service Provider (ESP) is required. The ESP will ensure that your Emails do not end up in the Spam folders and make it to the inbox after circumventing the spam filters that automatically identify a marketing email. Mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail etc. can quickly identify a promotional mail and filter it out from the inbox. ESP help you to overcome these barriers and enable your marketing emails to be noticed by the users.
2. Keep your name clear
The readers of your mail should know who you are. They need to identify the sender so as to go forward and read the mail. Promotional emails that you send out needs to be from an email address or domain that denotes your event’s/ organization’s name. Once your prospects read the recipient’s name, they will be able to relate easily and recollect the purpose of subscription or go ahead and open the mail.
3. The subject line is the entry point
The subject line acts as the gateway to your email content. After having created amazing content inside your email, it becomes incredibly doleful if the reader does not open the mail due to an unattractive subject line. The term “attractive” does not only signify catchy lines or slogans but also implies that the reader should be able to understand and predict the content of the mail so that he can distinguish or identify your email and find value in it. Subject lines are usually not more than 50 characters, and it conveys the point or purpose of the email.
4. Personalize your email
An email addressed to no one but has great content regarding your event, will directly end up in the spam folder. Most of the ESPs have the option to use a merge tag that allows the mail creator to use the recipient’s name inside the mail content. If you are sending a mail to abc@xyz.com, the ESPs will automatically include the word Abc in the email (for example, you may begin with ‘Hi ABC’). This allows the users to relate themselves to the email being sent to them thereby making it more interactive. This form of personalization takes you one step ahead and motivates the user to read further.
5. Check your spelling and grammar
Avoid spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Spam filters also have the ability to identify spam emails through such meager mistakes. Grammatical errors inside the mail may escape the filters, but it might end up annoying the reader.
6. Do not use Pompous Words and $ymbols*!!!!
Most spam filters can easily identify spam emails if you use words like ‘OFFER,’ ‘FREE,’ ‘YOU HAVE WON,’ ‘WIN,’ ‘PRIZE’,’BUY’ etc. Also, the repetitive use of certain symbols such as exclamation mark, the dollar symbol, asterisk, etc., must be avoided to evade spam filters. Avoid sudden usage of Upper Case letters, bold letters or italics. Serendipitously, if such emails somehow manage to enter the inbox, the users will immediately neglect and delete it or eventually throw it to the spam folder.
7. Uniformity and Professionalism
Maintain a consistent layout for your emails. Within one email make sure your content uses the same font size; color etc. so that it has a solid look and feel. These little efforts have a significant impact on the user’s mind it gives a professional appeal to the content.
8. Visual Treat
Try to place images at strategic positions in your email to keep your readers entertained. Some promotional emails have the entire content in one picture. While this might seem unique, it poses a problem to the user due to browser configurations, resolution of the screen and the type of device he or she uses (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.).
Images that are relevant to the topic and content of the email is generally advisable to be used. Most of the email clients limit the use of visuals to images. They don’t allow the usage of videos, gifs or flash, although you may cleverly use thumbnail images or text as hyperlinks to your videos present on your website or in global platforms like YouTube, etc.
9. Elaborate in the links
Through the content of your email, you are trying to consume few minutes of your attendees precious time. While you want to convey all the points in your email, it is highly recommended that you make it short and crisp so that the reader does not have to read huge passages. Attendees should be able to understand and know the highlights of the information that you are trying to convey, and for more details they can choose to read further, i.e., you can give them the option to click on a link at major points in the content.
For, e.g., if you have only provided the names of the speakers, and the attendee wishes to know more about any particular speaker, they can have the choice to click on the speaker’s name so that it navigates to another window (which might be your website), where they can get more details.
10. Don’t explode your attendee’s inbox
Yes, you do want to keep your attendees engaged and informed about your event, but bombarding your participant’s inbox is highly discouraged. Understanding the difference between regular communication and frequent communication is really pertinent for email marketing. While you limit the number of emails that you send to your prospects, it is important that they must always be in touch with your email communication at regular intervals.
by Ashwin | May 11, 2016 | Blog, event management, Marketing
Content marketing may be defined as creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into attendees, and attendees into repeat or loyal attendees. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell and how you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. The quality of content that you share must revolve around the theme of your events so that it acts as the selling point.
The theme of all the content uploaded should emphasize on the fact that events are a vital part for any business and should provide the various options for event planning, event marketing, the risks involved, the means to overcome them, techniques to propagate events and so on. While the topics for the content that you share will be plenty, the content must convey the importance of your event.
Content Management Systems
A good content management system will comprehensively support the creation and modification of digital content using a common user interface and hence will generally support multiple users working in a collaborative environment. It will take care of SEO friendly URLs. It will give a full template support, for unlimited looks without changing a line of content with minimal server requirements.
Some of the best CMS software are:-
Joomla
Drupal
Sitecore
What are the platforms available for content writing?
Multiple online platforms for content writing are available for creating and promoting your content.
Several blogging platforms provide the opportunity to create content on their site with a spectacular user-friendly interface. Options like drag-and-drop, choose your theme, etc., transforms content creation by making it extremely expedient for the common man.
Some of the renowned blogs are:-
WordPress
Blogger
Medium
Tumblr
There is a clear distinction between blog hosting and website hosting. The website builder platforms provide a comprehensive solution to a larger business model that can have innumerable editable features and customization techniques. https://thedentallounge.com/ It is not only limited to basic users or the beginners but also apt for professional coders with sufficient programming knowledge in languages like HTML, JavaScript etc.
Some of the most popular websites builder platform for content creation are:-
Wix
Weebly
Yola
Jimdo
How can content help spread the word about your event?
A quality content that has adequate and insightful information pertaining to the concept of your events can set fire in the event industry and take sharp rising curve in terms of the headcount of the number event attendees for your event once the buzz about your event begins through your blogs or articles or user-friendly websites. With the help of Search Engine Optimization techniques people all over the globe will be able to see the content that you publish and be enlightened with the knowledge that you impart about your event and the information that you want the world to know.
With attractive images, intriguing word play and insightful matter your content and in turn your event is bound to reach a wide range of audience.
Event related content creation is the corner stone to the success of your event.
