Benefiting from exhibitions

I used to run the press office at Europe’s largest exhibition, the MIPIM show, which is a property conference held in Cannes every March and the smaller retailer property exhibition MAPIC, held in September.

MIPIM and MAPIC is held in the Palais Des Festivals, which is the same building the Cannes Film Festival is held in. The famous ‘bunker’, the converted basement car park is where most of the exhibition is held, however, a few years ago the Palais was given a nice shiny extension.

Exhibitions can be a fantastic way of building your business but there is no point just turning up and expecting to find new business. Attendance can be expensive so attendance should be planned an executed carefully.

16,000 people officially attend MIPIM but thousands more visit Cannes without actually buying a ticket for the exhibition in belief that most of the business is done in the bar/restaurants or on the boats that surround the Palais Des Festivals. A lot of them believe that the €1,000 ticket is not good value, however, this is missing the major benefit because as well as providing access to the exhibitions, seminars and launches at MIPIM, the tickets also provides access to the database of attendees prior to the event and this is invaluable.

If you’ve ever tried to grow you’re business you’ll appreciate how hard it is to tie the key people down in the companies and organisations that you’re targeting. However, if you working in the property and development sector all the major figures in your target companies will be at MIPIM. By buying a ticket to MIPIM you can use the database to trawl the companies attending, see who from them is attending and contact them prior to MPIM in order to set up a meeting with in Cannes. This way before you have even attended you have diary of key meetings set up.

Equally all the major national and trade media will be there so you should target your key contacts and arrange to meet them when you are there. They have to give there editors a good fill of stories in order to justify there attendance and there is tough competition for exclusives. If the media aren’t on the main attendees database then contact the press office for the event and get a list of the media who are attending.

Because of the high profile of an event like MIPIM often organisations will hold their news back and make an announcement at MIPIM. A few years ago Boris Johnson, London’s Mayor attended, which was covered by the BBC, when he launch the Olympics masterplan. All the major cities of Europe take stands and launch their development and regeneration plans there, so if you’re into development you can get head start  identifying sites and meeting key public figures.

An event like MIPIM can also help you renew your relationships with existing clients or contacts. Many companies will have an annual event at MIPIM even if they don’t have anything new to launch, although most ensure they do as it’s such a good opportunity. Irish companies will often take have a Guinness and Oyster event and one year we organised a fish and chip party on the beach.

Once you have planned you new business meetings and meeting with media, i.e. the business the next to ensure you have tickets to major parties and launch events, you need to ensure you’re seen at these. The top parties are often in the five star hotels that line Croisette, Cannes famous palm-tree-lined beach side road, such as the Martinez or the Ritz Carlton.

Lastly if you are going to take exhibition stand plan well ahead and ensure you exhibition is design and built down to the finest detail. The exhibition stand says a lot about your company, so it needs to be high quality and stylish in order to attract people. Lots of them can often look like coolest of bars. As well as presenting details of your services, you often want a novel way of attracting people there, so you have to think about what people need at and exhibition. People are often hungover so you could provide coffee and bacon sandwiches every morning, these novel ideas go down well. Providing a toilet is another pull (make sure you have a big toilet sign). Later on in the day you could have cocktail waiter from a local bar teaching people how to mix cocktails. Most of all you want a way to get people to your stand that is NOT hard sell. Getting to know someone over a drink or a much needed bacon sandwich can be infinitely more valuable than trying the traditional new business route.

Here is a great video from Ciaran Adamson on how they design and build and exhibition stand. It shows how much planning and work actually goes into making the right stand. It’s also a great example of using social media to promote your business. I’m sure Ciaran needed a way to reinforce how much time and effort it takes to build a stand and how a good concept comes together – this video captures it perfectly.

In Summary

The success of attendance in an exhibition is all in the planning; before you even get on the plane you should have a full diary of meetings with business contacts and the media, a list of launches and events you are attending, and aims of what you want to achieve at the exhibition. So buy a ticket, even it is expensive as it should more than pay for itself if you plan your time properly and execute your time properly.

Ends

Twitter by numbers – Should I use Twitter to promote my business?

This post is an extended version of the article featured of August’s issue of the Irish personal finance magazine You & Your Money.

Should I use Twitter to promote my business?

Yes, Twitter is a great communication tool and it’s free. But there are a lot of misnomers and misunderstandings about the social media tool. It is very effective at growing your on line network, highlighting your skills and business and, because it is used to share information, it is very good at keeping abreast of the news and developments in business.

Twitter started of as being called a ‘micro-blogging’ site, but since it has migrated into a much more general communication tool with very rich and varied content, albeit with on proviso, that the each ‘Tweet’ you can post is limited to 140 characters.

Here are a few tips:

1. Before you start using Twitter for your business set up a personal account and get used to using it.
2. It’ll be easier and quicker to grow followers to your personal account as people are much more likely to follow you back, so start by getting to know people personally.
3. Use your company account to post links to news on your website, services, or articles on issues in your industry or commentary.
4. In order to promote your business follow potential customers either in your target sector or in the locality of your business.
5. ‘ReTweet’ your company Tweets using your personal account to the higher level of followers.
6. Respond to every Tweet you receive addressed to you.
7. Never ever do hard sell. It simply does not work on Twitter and you’ll lose followers.

Before you start a corporate account use Twitter via a personal account first so that you can get a feel for it and use it properly. The way you grow your follower numbers is by following other people because most people reciprocate and follow you back.

As I am a freelancer I only use one Twitter account because I am currently the only person in business, and I want to be as transparent as possible in how I operate.  But, if you have a large business it is best to keep your business and personal accounts separate, especially if other staff members are going to be using the account.

More people are likely to follow your personal account and less will follow your business account. This is because there is a lot of spamming and hard sell by businesses on Twitter. Therefore, you should concentrate on building follows for both your personal and business accounts, then post any company announcements only to your businesses Twitter account and then ReTweet is via your personal account.

Twitter users are heavily focused around smart phones users because people often Tweet updates on whilst they are on the move. This means Twitter users are skewed to those who are more affluent, so it’s a great way to target a higher demographic.

Twitter is now being used by Google to help assist their Page Rank of websites. This was revealed by Google’s Matt Cutts at a recent presentation in Dublin. He indicated that using Twitter to promote information on a website can help boost how Google views the authority of the website. Google considers each ‘ReTweet’ of a link to that website by other Twitter users is considered a vote of confidence in that site by other Twitter users and also by Google, so it is a great way to boost your website’s search engine optimisation and your Google Page Rank.

If you have multiple members of staff posting to your businesses Twitter account then you need to be careful as the Twitter feed will be considered the official voice of your business. It is best to nominate one member of staff t to post to it and at first get them to approve the Tweets with you.

Ensure all your company details and website etc are in your Twitter accounts Profile details as this will make it easier for Twitter users to find your business. If you staff also use Twitter get them to put your website address in their Profile, but ensure they put a disclaimer that all Tweets are there own and not that of the business.

If you have any questions about Twitter please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Ends

You & Your Money

I have been asked to do the PR column in the ‘Business Bulletin’ section  for Ireland’s leading personal magazine You & Your Money. The focus on the Business Bulletin is to offer free advice to businesses on different corporate issues.

The initial focus on the articles will be to help businesses use digital PR and new media to promote their business. This approach has been taken because a lot of new media is free and can learned fairly easily. Whereas by focusing on traditional media i.e. press and broadcast is a bit harder to teach in 180 chunks and comes more from experience. This is not say I won’t touch on the traditional media in the future.

Here is this month’s column. In it I show how businesses can use blogging software such as WordPress, which this website is built in, in order to add content to their own websites, boost their SEO profile and link to social media.

(Please click the link below for the article).

You&YourMoney(June2010)

60% of technology companies do not check social media profiles of potential employees and 63% do not have corporate blogs.

Some interesting research was released yesterday by global public relations firm Eurocom Worldwide, on  the use of social media and blogging by European technology firms (it can be found here:  http://www.eurocompr.com/prfitem.asp?id=12519 ). It found that:

- 60% of technology firms do not check the social media profiles of potential employees;

- 63% of technology companies do not blog

- almost a third (32%) of technology companies do not see the point of corporate blogging; and

- 39% said that blogging was too time consuming.

- 65% didn’t have a company Facebook page

The survey, which was conducted by Eurcom Worldwide during January and February 2010, only surveyed 286 senior level executives in technology companies, mostly across the European region. Whilst this is a very small sample it still shows either a lack or ignorance or low priority given to social media and on line marketing.

I find these figures astounding. After all I would’ve expect the use and awareness of this technology by technology companies to be much higher.  Of all the sectors that you would expect to embrace social media and blogging you would think it would be the IT sector.  I bet that if a similar survey was undertaken in the world of the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) sector that the results would be a much higher because  this sector is much more forward thinking and cutting edge.

It appears for technology companies there only positive response was that 73% network on LinkedIn.

I’d be interested in a similar study in relation to how much use public relations and traditional media technology companies undertake and perhaps this would’ve been more apt for a PR company like Eurcom to undertake, but still it gives a very interesting insight into how technology companies think and act.

Part of the problem is their lack of knowledge and disinterest in marketing and PR. But it may be more to do with the fact that there is a perceived lack of need to focus on this. With a lot of technology start ups things move very fast and sometimes companies only think about PR and marketing when there is a lull to drum up new business.

Also with technology start ups the focus is on new technology. This is their priority and rightly so. Marketing could be seen as a luxury. In my experience a lot of tech companies do not know a lot about SEO, surprisingly so, and therefore, don’t appreciate the benefit of blogging.

Blogging is one of the single most beneficial ways for a company to boost its Google Ranking. And it is especially easy for companies to do because they have so much going on and so much information that can be put on a blog. Content such as the obvious media releases, but also press coverage, commentary on industry issues, product focuses, photos of events, video, all of which can also be automatically be sent to a corporate Facebook and Twitter feed.

With all my clients I ask them to incorporate a blog into their websites, which I then help them update with all their news,  not just the more traditional blog posts on the issues in their industry. I think this is an essential accompanyment these days to more harder copy / traditional forms of PR, that is still a priority to clients.

If a client is having some news covered in the media it is vital that they have full details on there website for when people look them up after they’ve read the article. If they don’t then they’re missing a major trick. Blogging software allows me to do this for them, without waiting for the client’s IT department to it, because I can log in to the blog element of website, without having to go into the main back end (content management system) of their website, which the IT guys don’t like (and rightly so) as the blogging software is kept in a different sub-directory with a separate login. Importantly clients should not make the mistake of having the blog hosted by the blogger provider, as this would do nothing for the search engine optimisation as it is kept on blogging providers website and not their own company site.

But this does not explain why companies do not use social media to analyse staff. Whilst 73% are in LinkedIn 60% do not check out the LinkedIn profiles of their potential employees. Why not? This is the obvious thing to do. After all many people have a LinkedIn account for that very reason, it is the equivalent of an on line CV. It’s the first place I would look to get background on potential employees.

On the whole there is sometimes a misnomer about the technology industry, whilst the products and services are very cutting edge sometimes the thinking isn’t. It reminds me of the scientific industry. There can often ve a very blinkered approach and people stick to their area  of expertise. The specialists in the industry know how to make their product, but don’t know how to market it and sometimes don’t even appreciate its wider application. That’s where people like me come in to help them get their product to market, get the word out and get them up to speed as to what they need to be doing internally to help them promote themselves.

It’s not hard but sometimes it takes someone from the outside looking in to point this out especially when a company is so immersed in launching it’s new product or service.

Ends