Having fun with social media

I’m more a Letterman fan, so while I  have a lot of admiration for Conan O’Brien I haven’t personally been following his activities on social media.  Which apparently have been extensive and effective.

I found this out on the VPO-Zone blog from Virtual Press Office: Bring a Little Humor into Your Social Media.

Conan  is using social media to add personality to his product, which in this case is his show. His use of social media is foreshadowing the type of show his viewers should expect to see. Even though Conan may not be directly selling his show to viewers, he is taking the approach of proving to you that he can make you laugh, which in turn will benefit his show ratings.

Not only is Conan using the social media to demonstrate his humor and what you can expect on his show, he has a a poll going to let viewers determine who his first guest should be.

The key to me is not so much the use of humor…unless thats your brand.  But to instill whatever your brand IS into your social media activity, and yes, do have fun with it.  Plus any activity that involves people, like a poll, or a contest, or a discussion, will pull them into your community.

 

Perceived peer pressure works to drive attendance

Be sure to check out this article from the October 31, 2010 issue of the New York Times Magazine:  Nudge the Vote.

There is a LOT of overlap between techniques to get people to vote and to get people to register for your event.  Behavioral science helps us understand how people respond to different appeals for action to help us be more effective in getting them to act.

The politically inclined behavior scientists have been hard at work over the past few years testing various concepts on what actually causes people to vote, or to change their mind about who to vote for.  Telemarketing/robo calls?  Not so much.  Direct mail?  Much more so.

And the most effective idea has to be handled very carefully:

Before the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial primary, three political scientists isolated a group of voters and mailed them copies of their voting histories, listing the elections in which they participated and those they missed. Included were their neighbors’ voting histories, too, along with a warning: after the polls closed, everyone would get an updated set.

After the primary, the academics examined the voter rolls and were startled by the potency of peer pressure as a motivational tool. The mailer was 10 times better at turning nonvoters into voters than the typical piece of pre-election mail whose effectiveness has ever been measured.

You wouldn’t actually go this far.  But you don’t have to.  Any discussion of how your peers are behaving will drive your behavior to an extent.  The implication that we know whether you are attending or attended last year is also effective.  And both can be handled appropriately for an event.

I blogged about a very similar concept in June of 2009, Put herd mentality to work for you, referencing a study indicating that you’re more likely to reduce your use of electricity when you know how your use compares with your neighbors.

 

Smart Phone Apps for Events

I’m seeing the majority of our clients now using some type of smart phone app for their event, usually an event guide with the conference agenda and floor plan/exhibitor directory.  There are a lot of choices in vendors!  (I count 2 dozens.  That I’ve found.  So far.)

I’ll have more to say on the topic in future posts, but this post will emphasize two points:

1. It is almost impossible to get to the web using a smart phone in the bowels of Moscone.  Or most convention centers.  So the products that require the web connection (mobile web apps), are not nearly as attractive as “native apps”…those that you download to your phone.

While these will update the latest session changes whenever they do get a connection, all the info is stored on the phone and readily accessible without going to a brower.

2. Most people don’t have an iPhone.  Those who do find this hard to believe.  🙂  But I assure you its true.  In fact, here are the market share numbers for September 2010:

Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	9/10/10
RIM	37%
Apple	24%
Google	21%
Microsoft	10%
Palm	4%

Since then, Google (Android) has actually passed Apple (iPhone) in market share.

Lesson:  Many mobile event applications are created to run native on all the main platforms.  So don’t limit your initiatives to only a quarter of your attendees!

 

 

Research says: Just apologize

There is an inkling of a beginning of a trend among doctors and hospitals to apologize for medical mistakes.  It is too  frightening  in our litigious culture for most doctors to try, but the results are very clear that for the hospitals doing it, apologies dramatically reduce lawsuits.

How does this apply to marketing?  A study by Abeler, J. et al., “The Power of Apology,” soon to be published in Economics Letters but quoted in today’s Boston Globe says, when a company makes a mistake people want an apology more than money.

Customers who gave a company neutral or negative evaluations [on eBay] were randomly offered either an apology, a small amount of money, or a larger amount of money to rescind their evaluation.  Even though the apology was nothing more than a self-serving corporate message, customers were twice as likely to rescind their evaluation if offered the apology than in offered money.

I saw this once at a conference I ran.  A surprisingly high number of attendees registered for this expensive conference on-site…so we misjudged the amount of lunches to provide.  We tried to bring in more, but hotels only make sandwiches as fast as they can, so quite a few went across the street to a deli or went hungry.  I made an apology to the plenary session immediately following the lunch break, and offered my email address to anyone wanting a credit for the value of lunch.  While many commented that they appreciated the thought, no one took me up on it.

 

Twitter users trend older than you think

The New York Times has an article all marketers need to read:  “Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity?  Not Teens”.

Did you think that Twitter was primarily a tool for young people to stay in touch?

Actually, only 11% of the Twitter user base is 11 – 17.  Young people don’t need it.  They got hooked on MySpace and FaceBook before Twitter was invented and see no use for it.  They want to stay in touch with friends, not the masses of anonymity in the Twitterverse.

There are two interesting ideas in this.  The first is that it turns the accepted notion that technology trends always start in the young on its head.

The notion that children are essential to a new technology’s success has proved to be largely a myth.

Second, that we marketers need to be more analytical in our thinking about new media.  How many event producers are missing out on key technology trends because they think they are only for the young, and aren’t being used by their demographic?  The worst error in marketing is to project from ourselves.

Though Twitter’s founders originally conceived of the site as a way to stay in touch with acquaintances, it turns out that it is better for broadcasting ideas or questions and answers to the outside world or for marketing a product. It is also useful for marketing the person doing the tweeting, a need few teenagers are attuned to. “Many people use it for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news,” said Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive. “Because it’s a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.”

Forget what you thought about Twitter.  The fact is that its main purpose is to connect like-minded groups of people to discuss areas they have in common.  Hm.  Sounds a lot like an event.  But year-long.