How Live Events Enhance Social Networking and Marketing

November 25, 2013 by
Jeff Korhan and Joe Pulizzi www.jeffkorhan.com


Jeff Korhan and Joe Pulizzi reconnect at the Green Industry Conference shortly after Content Marketing World

In the days before digital, if you wanted to network you had to get out of the office. That’s where we developed relationships and consummated deals.Telephones were only used to supplement those live interactions.

Live events are where you experience firsthand the energy and enthusiasm of other like-minded people who share your interests and business objectives.

A few years ago it was predicted that webinars and other digital forms of online training would eventually replace live events, thereby putting professional speakers like me out of business as we know it.

That is not what is happening, and this trend – the resurgence in live events – is also relevant to your business networking and social media marketing.

The Live Version is Always Better

One of the frustrations with social networking is that you can invest a great deal of time and yield few results. Thus, it becomes increasingly tiresome and is ultimately abandoned in favor of more urgent business matters.

The solution is literally getting out of the office to meet the people that you are connected with online, and make new connections that you can then bring to your social networks. When you integrate the two, you enhance the effectiveness of both.

Make it a habit to periodically attend live events such as expos, conferences, and community benefits. In addition to building more meaningful relationships, you will acquire abundant material for invigorating your content marketing.

Put Serendipity to Work

Your social networks want to hear about your life just as much as your business. So, if it’s not all that exciting you may want to get out of the office to increase the number of planned and serendipitous interactions, what online retailer Zappos refers to as “collisions between employees.”

This is actually an intentional practice that online retailer Zappos uses, and one reason why they moved their offices from suburban Henderson, NV to the old Las Vegas City Hall.

CEO Tony Hsieh has a vision of transforming downtown Las Vegas to create “The most community-focused large city in the world, in the place where you least expect to see it.” In addition to their own facilities, Zappos is funding start-ups to join their intimate community ecosystem.

You can read more about the social business model in Built-In Social. It’s a model that closely resembles the concept of a small town or local community where (almost) everyone knows your name.

How This Works

The reason for the resurgence in live events is somewhat surprising. Now that we are more connected than ever due to social media, people want to meet those connections to further develop their relationships with them.

After meeting people live it adds a richness to your relationships online, while also leading to new alliances, including relationships with new clients.

So, if you are not getting results from your social media marketing, I encourage you to find more ways to make it come alive. The power of targeted events is that you can benefit from the energy of like-minded people that share your interests and business objectives.

I’m still mining ideas that I gained from attending Content Marketing World a couple months ago. Additionally, I developed new relationships and opened up some cool new opportunities, one of which is speaking at the upcoming Social Media Marketing World.

2013 was the first year for this event and it attracted over 1,000 marketers and business owners from around the world. The expectation is there will be will be over 2,000 attendees in San Diego for the 2014 event in March.

Consider joining us in sunny San Diego. I’d like to get to know and your business.

Click on this link or the image above to learn more about this live event. Incidentally, there is a $370 discount available now that expires this Friday.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, helps mainstream small businesses create exceptional customer experiences that accelerate business growth. Get more from Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.

Jeff is also the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley 2013)

Preparing Your Business for Digital Disruption

September 9, 2013 by

Digital Disruption https://www.jeffkorhan.com

In a recent guest post about the intersection of customer service and marketing I realized this:

There are two questions every business should be asking:

#1 – How will digital change or even eliminate proven business practices?

#2 – How soon could that happen – and what then?

The premise of the aforementioned article was that these days customer service is designed to create favorable customer experiences, even before prospective buyers become customers. This makes it a new form of marketing.

Conversely, content marketing that helps customers throughout their entire experience with the business serves a customer service role.

Just studying the intersection of these two disciplines helps one realize how the influence of digital and social media are disrupting nearly every aspect of business. Thus, it would be advantageous to discern that disruption before it happens to be ready for it.

There are probably a number of ways to approach this, but the most reliable is probably starting with a reevaluation of what your customers want, as compared to what your business and the rest of your industry are giving them now.

What Do Your Customers Really Want?

Customer service used to be sitting back and waiting for customers to complain, and then responding to hopefully deliver an amicable resolution. Today customer service is being ahead of the customer, anticipating their needs.

You can ask customers what they want, but they may not be able to tell you without knowing the full extent of your capabilities, or that you would be willing to give it to them.

I’m not sure how Amazon came up with Amazon Prime (charging one flat annual fee to then provide free shipping within 48 hours), but I absolutely love it. Many customers like me hate to shop, and so the easier you can make the experience the more readily you will earn our loyalty.

If you were your customer would you buy from you? How would you like to buy? These are good questions to ask your team, as well as your customer.

What would your customers want if they knew they could get it?

Amazon Prime is just one example. Free shipping by Zappos is another. Words like easier, faster, and risk-free come to mind. Of course, don’t forget cooler, fun, and personal.

If it isn’t being done and it’s a cool idea, you can bet it will disrupt your industry if you can be the first to do it.

Content, Social, and Digital are Disruptive Forces

Who would have known in the early days of blogging that content marketing would become a mainstream force?

Next week I’m off to Content Marketing World to learn more about the state of content marketing for businesses both small and large. One thing is certain; content marketing is now an essential business practice.

Social media continues to impact business by giving consumers a voice for getting what they want. Smart businesses are monitoring those conversations. You may or may not like hashtags, but they are here to stay and amazingly powerful for listening and learning what your customers want, as well as what your competitors are thinking.

More than anything, our increased connectivity, especially via mobile devices, is sure to disrupt nearly every aspect of our business operations.  Connectivity and mobile give easier access to all kinds of information, which surely means there will be an expectation for businesses to better create, organize, and protect it, especially if you are in the information business.

How about if your business is a mainstream, brick n mortar store? With customers being better educated and informed, will that require adapting your selling process to it?

There is no question the lines between sales, marketing, and customer service are blurring, and content, social, and digital media are largely responsible for this. It’s amazing to think of a world where every business is now a media company.

Get ready for a world in which every customer is now his or her own brand. It’s going to be both exciting – and disruptive.

Is your business ready?

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, helps mainstream small businesses create exceptional customer experiences that accelerate business growth. Get more from Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.

Jeff is also the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley 2013)

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