Social Media, it sure must be important to meetings and events because I sure talk about it a lot. I yack about it with you, my clients, and my colleagues. I hop on soapboxes the world over to tell everyone that social media is important before an event for marketing and connecting with attendees and everyday it grows more and more vital to the successful “day of” execution and later follow through of said events, conferences, and tradeshows. A good social media plan is mission critical to the health of your event. You need a good team in place.
Reality check kiddies, not everyone has the resources to have a social media team.
Emphatic wants to be your team.
Emphatic is a start-up social media shop based in San Francisco that acts as your social media crew. The company was founded by Jeniece Primus and Travis Choma and already they are getting some pretty high marks from the folks that are using the service to create social media posts for those crazy interwebs.
How it Works.
You sign up for an account and a person they call an on-demand assistant does some research on your company (or event, or tradeshow, or conference) and then they create custom content about your event, association, or company for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (other sites coming). Now don’t fret there Sparkles… You get to double-check the content, approve it, and then hit the button that sends it out at the speed of light, blazing across the world like a meteor hopped up on steroids.
Where do they get the content you ask? They get it from you silly rabbit… and your niche. The content is pulled from your event or conference blog, your website, and industry-related news sources. That last part is nice. Content from other sources is important so you are not the guy at the party who only talks about himself. You don’t want to be that guy. People hate that guy.
I Tried it Out
I tried Emphatic’s service to see how it works and a gotta tell you, I was shocked in a good way. I created an account, gave some info, and within hours I had 3 Facebook posts and 3 LinkedIn posts created and waiting for my sign off to send. Seriously, planning a meeting should be this easy. Oh, wait. No, it shouldn’t. If planning a meeting was this easy, I would be out of a job.
Here is a look at the Emphatic Dashboard:
Pretty simple. I can read them, approve them, and even edit them if I wish.
So, we know that Emphatic is doing good stuff that might really be a benefit to our industry, but what does it cost? How many gold coins is this little service gonna set you back? Are you going to have to fire good ol dependable Becky in accounting to make this work on your measly marketing budget? Surprisingly, no. It really isn’t that bad and is actually less than I thought it would be.
Let’s break down the plans:
- $99/mo gets you 50 social media updates per month.
- $199/mo gets you 100 social media updates per month.
- $299/mo gets you 165 social media updates per month.
- $399/mo gets you 225 social media updates per month.
For most meetings and events that are ramping up a non-existent or stagnant social media program, I think that one of the first two packages would be plenty. There is always the option to upgrade your plan as you go.
The Pros
- Really. We should send Cindy a quarter so she can buy a ticket for the clue train. The biggest pro is that you now have a person that will handcraft your social media updates.
- You are in control. You get to approve the messages before they go out. That is a win for control freaks everywhere, although this shouldn’t be an issue for our industry because there aren’t too many Type-A Meeting Professionals in the world. Am I right?
- The posts were actually really good for a first go round. I was quite pleased and since feedback can be given, they can learn.
- The cost. Will someone please tell Bob that if he is complaining about the cost, he is not ready and does not fully understand the value of this type of service, so he should go away? He can come back when he is crying because his event has not updated Facebook in a month, LinkedIn in a week, and Twitter… does Bob even know what Twitter is? And all because he is on back to back to back programs and doesn’t even know what city he is in… When this happens, he might see the value in 99 bucks a month.
- You can still use other services like Buffer, TweetDeck, and HootSuite when you want or need too.
- No contract. Huge.
The Cons
- There were a couple of things that I could nit-pick but they are actually just points on a learning curve, nothing that I am going to have a conniption over.
A note on cons… and no, not the prison kind. Stop binge watching Orange is the New Black. Where others might see cons, I was pleased to see that Emphatic listens and welcomed my feedback. Five of the Six posts that they created for me were spot on, one missed the mark. I would never, ever, go after the leisure market and they created a post that included some talk about people on vacation… Instead of me having a hissy and coming here to report to you that they suck, I just sent them a message through my Emphatic dashboard and they fixed the post. In fact, after I had sent a note requesting a revision, I realized that I could have changed the post myself but now they know that I am not wanting to target that market. A win for both sides.
Learn they do, be happy you can
Give Emphatic a try, the first 6 posts are free so what do you have to lose… I will tell you what you can lose. You can lose that nagging feeling that your social media marketing efforts are going to crap. You can lose the feeling that you are too busy to get any meaningful social stuff done. You can lose that feeling that you have no control over your event’s social media program… Now you can have control and all for the cost of your morning coffee.
Disclosure – I am not part of Emphatic. I did not know them before I talked to Jeniece and got the scoop on what they do. I willingly tried the free option on their website that is open to everyone. Although I do enjoy shiny little trinkets, I am not getting any cash, bling, boats, autos, vacations, houses, or hot air balloons for writing this post…I really love blimps.. nope, didn’t get a blimp either… I would have really jazzed up the post for a Blimp.
Go on now, Do good event stuff.
