I don’t profess to be a social media expert myself. Like most everyone else, my knowledge on the subject is the culmination of many many hours of reading, listening and experimenting with social platforms. I do know about the mechanics of the meetings and trade show industry and how to apply social media principles to the marketing and promotion of event industry brands. Here are the “20 Tips in (Less Than) 20 Minutes” that I offered to session attendees last week.

Welcome to the world of the unexpected where restaurants, stores, and classrooms pop up overnight with the spontaneity of a pimple on prom night. While impromptu conference sessions have yet to appear in the traditional conference setting, there are signs that instant gatherings of like-minded people tipped off by the lightning fast transmission of messages over social media channels could be coming to a conference near you.

Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss the use of strategy over tools and some other ideas for you to think about. Although Chris and Julien began responding to a question about the kinds of tools the younger generation is using (since the fastest growing age group on Facebook is 65+), they finished with comments on platforms, communities and social media strategy. The same ideas can be applied to face-to-face events.

In the context of social media and face-to-face events, there is still a lot of uncertainty associated with bringing social networking platforms, technologies and methodologies into the marketing mix. There is fear around privacy, investment of time, costs, negative comments, loss of control, lack of expertise, exposure, difficulty measuring ROI, and the risk of failure in such a transparent environment. After all, not only were we put in the hot seat by the recession, some of us were burned beyond recognition (lost jobs, companies out of business, marketing strategies obsolete).

I had the pleasure (for the first time) of hearing the Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith together on the same stage during the Women Tech Council meeting last week. During the Q&A Session, I captured some video (I’m a writer not a videographer) on their responses to questions from the audience. These are relevant topics for the event industry as well as the business community in general. Here’s what they said about blogging failure and success and some other tidbits for you to think about.

If there was any common thread running through MTO Summit in Chicago last week, it wasn’t the technology innovations or even the focus on execution. The room was full of people talking about new ideas and how to do something different without damaging what (if anything) is still working in the event world. In fact, [...]

I had the pleasure of exchanging emails and/or speaking with three headliners for the upcoming Expo! Expo!, IAEE’s Annual Meeting and Trade Show. The event is being held this year in Atlanta. The resulting article was titled, “If You Tweet It, Will They Come?” and appears in E2: Exhibitions and Events’ November/December 2009 issue. There [...]