SEO, the Holy Grail of the internet. The one thing that we all want to achieve so that we can be found by the millions of masses that populate this little planet we call home. We all want to be discovered and SEO promises to bring home the bacon. But what if everything you ever read was bubkis. [Read more...]
You drove into work this morning and stumbled onto this post or perhaps you are reading this in the evening after just getting home. Either way, if you live near a metropolitan area, you probably had a long ride that included other cars, a lot of noise and the dreaded traffic jam.
How did you feel about sitting in traffic and the distractions? How did you like not being able to see what was ahead? Did you try to find shortcuts or did you just go with the flow of traffic? I am sure that your reaction was not a positive one.
Time-lapse photography has been around for a long, long time and has that “It” and “WOW” factor but no one ever seems to use it because the perception is that it is labor intensive and expensive. Regardless of how it is viewed, time-lapse is the perfect medium to market to current and prospective attendees because it shows the newbies what it is like to be there and it makes the pros wish they were still at the event or conference.
If you monitor the Analytics of your conference or event website and often wonder why your bounce rate (people coming in and leaving in 10 seconds) is so high, here are 11 items that may be robbing you of attendees. [Read more...]
So Pinterest is here and is making quite a buzz around social media circles. It is a platform that is quite useful for retailers and Etsy stores and I have even been trying it out just to see what all the buzz is about and I will be honest, it is something that is fun and a good diversion from the everyday.
We just finished creating an amazing website for a client’s incentive travel trip.
The website needed to be engaging, beautiful and contain all of the information that the attendees might need including air travel info, activities info and a complete registration system that allows the winners to pick their activities and dine around selections.
I wanted to show the beginning and the end of the project because this one is special. Unlike most web projects, there is no difference between the whiteboard and the finished product. A home run on the first shot.
There was of course lots-o-stuff in the middle, things like wire-frames and text re-writes but it is really fun to see where something started and what ends up as the finished product.
I stand by my statement that all events need websites… even incentive programs. This website will build excitement for this trip in ways that a paper brochure never could. We have videos with each of the activity selections so that the attendees can see what they will be doing, we have put in the menus for all of the restaurants in the dine-around we have even included videos of the destination so that they can get a feel for the resort and the island.
I wrote a post a long time ago about the power of a logo. I think that every event should have one. It is a couple of hundred bucks well spent.
Logos stir the memory, add emotion and help identify.. but what would a 5 year old think of your logo? I ran across this video over the weekend and it is cool to see who nailed it and who didn’t.
Email marketing for events, specifically for conferences and meetings has been around for a long time and there are some marketers out there that do an amazing job. Their emails are first on my read list when they come in and you should strive to be this good.
Your attendees should want to open your emails because they are good, attendees should not get them and cringe.
OK, I am in Minneapolis (yes, I know, I should have brought a jacket) and I was watching some event people putting these QR codes all over the street and sidewalk for some promotion. They are apparently using a paint that will go away because they have the facilities permission but that is not the point of the story….
Anyway, I watch them for about thirty minutes, taping down the stencil, painting and making it all perfect.
Bam, they are done and the dude whips out his phone and tries one… NOTHING. They do not work, the camera cannot get a bead on the code for whatever reason (again reason does not matter)… it just does not work.
So, here is the solution they come up with
They have stuck these nasty looking pieces of paper all over…….
Tell me, is this how you want to run a promotion at your event? Is this how you want people to see your grand spanky plan…..It is no longer cool and hip, it is kinda dumpy and pathetic.
Do yourself a favor, test this shit before you take it to market, save everyone some grief.
Hope everyone had an awesome week!
I was fortunate to speak at the PYMLive event here in Chicago. My topic was “Why meeting and event websites should use WordPress”… something that I am totally passionate about and it was great to see that many planners in the audience agreed and were looking to learn more…
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