This is going to be fun as many of you, including myself, have so many questions about driving Registrations, interest and buzz around your Events.

As a baseline for this post, I am asked so many times, how do we do this? I hear things like “I can’t get anyone to register for my Event” or “I can’t seem to get people interested in our Events”. I get it, and hopefully this may help you to generate buzz, awareness and registrations for your Events.I assume you have some experience of the tools I am mentioning here, and if not, let me know and I can guide you on who can help.

I have also provided this as sections, with some explanation as to why you would want to do this.

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Reason: Pre-Event Plan

Influencers typically talk about a few subjects passionately. They have also built a very tight community that want to hear about the topic they speak on. They also listen to these Influencers as an expert, and what they say is taken as credible most of the time, because they have built themselves up as a trusted source.

1. Finding the Influencer

- Find the Influencers who talk about your keywords, products or services as well as Competitors.
- If you don’t know your keywords, use your Brand or Competitors names into Google’s Keyword Tool
- Look on Listorious, type in the keyword and see who comes up as a prominent person who discusses this topic
- Look at their Twitter Profile, go to their website they have in their Bio, click and look to see what type of Community they have built. Is there engagement? Are people commenting about the topic or keywords? If so, put them on the list of Influencers.
- Repeat this process by “Followers” on Listorious to see who may have the reach of an audience that follow them that may be close to your topic

2. Connecting with the Influencers

- Look at the Communities they have conversations, such as LinkedIn Groups, Twitter and Facebook Like Pages
- Connect with them in these Communities
- Mention to them in these communities that you are now connected, with something of interest around the topic or keyword
- Become a RSS Subscriber or Email List Subscriber to show the love
- Retweet their content around your topic or keyword that your audience will find useful
- Share information you find helpful that they may share with their audience, such as White Papers, articles or Blog posts you have written

3. Motivating the Influencers

- Once the Influencer has some idea of who you are, and because you followed the steps above, consider sending the Influencer a trial or a product with no expectation of getting anything in return or requesting it either
- If your product is good and adds value, they may just write about it to their Community
- If you are really lucky, they may push this to their Social Networks and get you even more buzz

4. Building Buzz and Interest

- Take advantage of the content that you, your company, or the Speakers have written to generate buzz and allow the audience to understand more as they decide whether they should spend their dough with your Event or someone else’s.
- Make a Outreach Plan that outlines what content you or others have that would be of interest to highlight the Event
- Ask questions, like on LinkedIn Groups, within the Groups that are on topic around the Event about what they want to know about the topic
- Post the links to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and LinkedIn Groups
- Create a LinkedIn Event and send to your connections asking them to send to theirs
- Look for anyone who has ReTweeted your links, possible Influencers here
- Create 1-3 minute Infomercials around the topics or speakers that will be at the event to give the audience a preview of the speaker, their style and quality of their work and upload to YouTube and SlideShare
- Mention Influencers on Twitter with a link to special “VIP” only pre-Event stuff so they can talk about it with their Community
- Create Hashtags for the Event and place on any posts, updates that are related to the Event
- Setup a Listening Channel on your favorite tool, such as Seesmic, HootSuite that are focused around the topics and engage with the audience to share some of this content with them-they may share with their audience
- Create a list that you can easily refer to with links, Twitter Profiles of the Speakers for easy reference
- Create Teaser Videos, and Slideshare presentations of the Speakers so the audience has a chance to get to know them
- So many more ways to build buzz

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Reason: During the Event

During the Event there are great ways to drive traffic to your site, hashtags and build awareness. By leveraging the Social Tools available, and a few creative ways to get the content, you may just get to #1 position on search engines if you do it right. The point here is to discover the many ways you can think about how to generate links, mentions, friends and new connections.

5. Kodak moments

- Setup Photo slots during your event with some of the speakers for the attendees. Many are too shy to just go up and ask, so create the environment that makes it easy. Think about this one for a moment… they take a picture, share it with their friends-awareness.
- Take your cameras and phones with you at all times, never know when a good moment is to take a picture with one of the Influencers you reached out to shows up at the event
- Post these pictures to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, PhotoBucket, and your website or blogs with mentions of who is in the pictures. Don’t just take a picture, ask them whats going on now in their world, what’s new in their business and write it down for your future post, tweet or articles
- Tag these pictures in Facebook
- Post them to TwitPic if you use an iPhone
- Make sure you keep them in some way so that you can easily reference these when you get back to the office and use these to reference on blog posts, tweets, articles, etc…

6. Flip Camera Crazy

- I will assume you have prepared some questions for the Speakers and attendees prior to the Event, so you are ready when the time comes
- Videos are a great way to drive content that your audience likes.
- Interview the Speakers for some insights about the Event, what they like and their excitement about the event
- Ask attendees to give testimonials about the speaker, the event and what they loved about it
- Write Blog Posts about the Speaking Event, highlights of the Event and then add in these testimonials from the attendees-people love testimonials and the search engines love video content
- Add the videos to your Event or Company Channel on YouTube for reference about future events. Remember that people use these as Ratings and Reviews of buying decisions.

7. Tweet and be Tweeted

- Send the attendees a Guide prior to the Event that shares the hashtags you will be using, the place where you will post updates and a place where they can share their comments or opinions about the Event
- Use the hashtag during the Event
- Mention the Influencers during the Event around their topic with interesting tidbits they may like to share with their audience
- Mention the Speakers

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Reason: Post Event

In order to maximize the entire budget that you spent to have this Event, you want to get the most bang for your buck. Keep the buzz going by engaging the audience and people who wanted to attend but couldn’t with these ideas:

8. Emails-yeah they still work

- Be sure to send follow up emails to all attendees with a Wrap-Up collection of presentations in case they were in the bathroom and missed some great tips
- Have the Speakers send emails with Post Event follow up homework, if appropriate, that keeps the learning experience going – the audience will love you for this and see value
- Ask them to join you on Social Networks and be sure to include this in all the emails to drive followers and friends to the brand
- Encourage the attendees to take part in feedback survey’s wherever possible in case you missed anyone with the Flip Camera. This will help you understand how to build a better experience next time
- Ask them what they want or missed and see if you can deliver this to them-true Word of Mouth marketing here as they share this with their network of influence

9. Survey Says

- Encourage the attendees to take part in feedback survey’s wherever possible in case you missed anyone with the Flip Camera. This will help you understand how to build a better experience next time
- See who is willing to share their thoughts on possible Research, many of the attendees have vast expertise in the field you invited them to hear about-ask and you shall receive

10. Measure and Refine

- If you truly did all the steps above, you should have an incredible amount of information to use for the next Event-listen to the audience’s feedback
- Create an ROI to show the Boss, that includes metrics like a) ReTweets by Influencers b) Unsolicited mentions of the Brand or Event c) Reposts by Influenecrs, Speakers or attendees x their RSS Subscribers or Traffic
- Look at what went right and what went wrong and how you can address these issues for an even better Event next time
- Thank all of the people who had anything to do with the success of the Event
- Get the senior leadership team to send an email or a post or mention on a Social Network about how thankful they were to get the feedback and experience from the attendees and speakers-this tactic will show that it’s not just the marketing group that does Events, but Management is involved as well

I now this was a long one, but today alone I had 3 people ask and 1 that I offered help on pushing an Event. Do you need help in getting ROI out of your limited budgets-I can help.

Did I hit the mark here, did you learn anything new? Please comment below and let me know your thoughts.

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So your organization has tasked you with driving leads to generate sales. I know…same old story, no leads from Marketing, no leads from your VP of Sales and the Sales Training was a bunch of Brochures, a website that lacks anything with Lead Magnets (that’s eBooks, Buyers Guides, Research based PDF’s) and a few conversations with the folks who have been doing this for a long time.

Good luck, go get ‘em is the phrase you keep hearing and the clock starts ticking now-you have 3 months to make something happen before you start getting the evil eye from your Sales Manager.

Here are a few tips to help you, if you find yourself in this situation:

1. Join LinkedIn
If you arent already a member of LinkedIn, you must be, if you are in Sales. Download my LinkedIn Profile Setup Document here first, then go do that. LinkedIn’s search features are very strong, allowing you to listen to conversations going on within Groups, and understand what may be trending within your customers, industry and competition.
Be sure to look at LinkedIn’s Training area and understand more about how you can drive leads and referrals using LinkedIn. (More to come on how to use LinkedIn)

2. Join Twitter
Yes, I know you have heard everyone is one Twitter talking about this and that, but that’s not the point here. The point is that you should use the Search function in Twitter to see if there is anything of value here that you can use, within your Products keywords (you know what you sell), Your Brand’s name and your Competitors mentions as well.

3. Search Social Mention
Social Mention allows you to look at conversations, comments and discussions in and around your keywords, brand and competition, that will give you an idea of what customers are really talking about. This helps you to take your typically “Company-centric” Value Proposition and tweak it to the current environment for effective talking points when you merge what’s being discussed and what you offer.

Start with these, and look to ramp up your interest in your company and you much faster than dialing the phone cold. I have been in Business Development for 19 years and have used these same methods to help me sell over $72 million during my career as a Pitch Guy.

If you want to learn more on how to use LinkedIn, Twitter or Social Strategies to drive leads for your sales organization, feel free to reach out.

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There’s a new ART to the understanding of Crowd Behavior and it’s not just getting people to follow, connect or read your blog posts.

In today’s fast-paced 140 Character, highly-limited bandwidth of your audience, you must know your audience and how to alter their behaviors with the vast tools available to your Marketing Strategy. Just being there (Online) isn’t nearly enough. When Senior Leaders at your organization begin to see how your Online Strategy is affecting your overall Marketing efforts, only then can true adoption by the organization take place.

This is not easy. Make no mistake – this (again) is not easy. It takes a solid 6 months of planning, mapping, and research to begin to put this into action. Marketing leaders must know their audience first, by segment and persona’s, to fully know who and more importantly why, you will be talking to them – or you lose their attention faster than ever. Let’s start with Analysis of your audience:

If your salesforce is out there calling on whomever they want, you are already in trouble… This not only leads to problems for Revenue, Sales Cycle and Margin creep but over time, leads to RISK within your customer base (let me know if you need help on this one). dean@deanholmes.me Every organization has a core group of customers that make up 80% of their profits, however, the risk you will face in focusing on this segment only could be big. Let’s say that you are focused on four key industries, and the future “PEG” or Price to Earnings Growth for these industries are below 5%, you may face risk in revenue, profit and pricing pressures due to the cost-cutting measures the customer is forced to implement due to long-term growth. Another issue you will face is market share. By looking at industries that are outside the comfort zone for marketing and sales, you could be missing out on potential growth opportunities that working with industries that are growing over the long term.

Bottom line here: If you are not segmenting out your customers, and know who they are and more importantly, that you know them – get to this quickly. I have seen this with many organizations both in sales and marketing, that developed a strategy around problem audiences from the beginning only to ask themselves “why did we do that again”?

First Step: Perform Analytics of your current customers
Second Step: Profile the Risks within your customers industries
Third Step: Know where your best customers are on and off-line
Fourth Step: Talk to them, engage with them, in the manner they want, not what you think – but what you now “Know”

Take a look at Chris Brogan’s article here , or Jason Burby here and Tom Now here – and of course download the many help documents here. Also have a look at a good friend and colleague’s awesome tool to help you visualize where your customers are here – this tool works for sales and marketers for easy to use analytics.

Do you know who your customers really are? What issues do you face?

Talk to me by leaving comments or reaching out for help in knowing your audience.

ViTO (Very Important Top Officer)

I wanted to write and thank Beth Allen and Tony Parinello for having me on as a Featured Guest on Friday’s Quota Busters Show broadcast in 29 Countries (I believe – it may be more).

What an honor to be on this show, and if you know, read or have heard of the “ViTO Man”, Author of so many Best Selling Books it’s too many to list here (Blow are just a few Great Ones):

Tony has helped my business grow by using the strategies and methodologies he has taught for 20+ years to sell over $70 million in Products and Services within the Direct Marketing space. If you have not yet listened to Tony, read his books, or had the pleasure of a Quota Buster Show, you are missing out. Tony has a “Guarantee” that if you don’t beat your Quota, he will give you a Money Back Offer (barring you actually do the work he asks you to do).

Can’t say enough how Tony has changed the way I go to market, talking with CEO’s and Senior Level Management at companies today – he really does teach you how to get in front of, have a meaningful conversation with and be seated in a meeting with C Level people quickly. In the past 4 weeks, I have been in front of 3 CEO’s, at high level meetings that could result in 10′s of millions for our organization.

Thanks Tony, Beth and everyone else at http://www.sellingtovito.com for all the years of guidance.

For more information, click here for Tony’s website: ViTO (This is NOT an affiliate Link) and use Dean in the Code – just so he knows I sent you – again, not an affiliate code or pay for any promotion to Tony…

What are your thoughts?