Conference "To Do" Lists for Brands

I am both excited & honoured to be heading to the very first Food Bloggers of Canada conference this weekend to speak on an panel of brand and blogger experts. With 80 bloggers and another 20+ brand representatives, I will have captive audience to share my knowledge and experience with.

If you're a brand attending any conference you should be prepared. Know what actions have to be taken before, during and after the conference. Rarely will you get a chance like this to make a personal face-to-face connection with your bloggers, so take full advantage of it. To get you started, I put together a Conference "To-Do" List for Brands....

To-Do Before the Conference:
Announce Your Attendance // Before the event, announce your attendance and/or sponsorship at the conference. Tell your audience what the conference is about, and what you will be doing there.
Interact with the Attendees Online // As soon as the attendee list is available, you should start following all attendees. Adding them to a Twitter list can help you keep track. Engage with them around the conference. Ask who is going, what they are looking forward to, and let them know you will be there.
Prepare Your Business Cards & Offers //  Depending on the conference rules, you may be able to hand out coupons for you product with you business cards. Make sure you have enough on hand to give out to bloggers who really take a keen interest in your product. This can help build a strong personal connection and keep your product top of mind.
Know Your Bloggers // Chances are a few of the blogger you have worked with will be attending. Make sure you know who they are, what they look like, and even what their past week has involved (read their blog). These should be the bloggers you search out first, connect with them, reinforce that relationship.

To-Do At the Conference:
Make Use of the Hashtag // Use the show hashtag to promote yourself as much as possible (without overdoing it). Most conferences have a designated tag, and when they see that being used, they will re-tweet you, giving you more reach. Make sure your spread your tweets 20-30 minutes apart, so you don't flood your followers' streams.
Share It It Real-time // Share your photos/videos on your social networks in real-time. Facebook is a great platform for sharing photos in real-time. Take at least 10-15 photos & 1-2 videos and post them to your wall throughout the event. Encourage blogger attendees to post to your wall as well, or tag themselves in your photos.
Network // Get to know the attendees well, make a lasting impression on them - you may find yourself working with them in the future.
Write It Down // Take notes during the sessions, this can be an educational experience for you as well. Use those notes to write informative blog posts which will allow you to capitalize on search traffic.

To-Do After the Conference:
Close Up + Follow Up // Take out that stack of business cards and follow every single blogger on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. Visit their blog and comment on their conference post. Tell them it was great to finally meet them in person, and you look forward to working with them in the future. Solidify your relationship. In the following weeks monitor the conference attendees blogs and Twitter stream for any mention of them using your product. If they mention you, comment on their blog post and engage with them on Twitter.
Blog About It // Do a wrap-up post on your immediately after the conference describing your experience  The timeliness will help you capitalize on the conference generated buzz. Mention the bloggers you met. What you learned at the session. Include lots of "pinnable" pictures. If you have more than 10 great pictures from the event, consider creating a Facebook album. Encourage the conference attendees to tag themselves in your pictures!

Remember, this is just to get you started. There are so many uses for social media when it comes to covering an event. It's a great tool to create buzz around you and your products, and hopefully make you the busiest brand rep at the conference!

How do you use social media to promote yourself at an event, consumer/trade show, or conference?

Are you a blogger attending the upcoming FBC Conference? Then check out my Conference Attendee "To Do" Lists on my Personal blog.

{photo via Alt Summit}

Learn How Social Media Can Grow Your Brand

It feels as though I have several speaking gigs over the next few weeks. Last week I was in San Francisco at the PBH Conference talking about bloggers and brands, today I will be giving a webinar to the meat industry, tomorrow I am giving a free webinar on social media for the PMA Foundation, and lastly (and most exciting) I will be speaking on an expert panel at the upcoming Food Bloggers of Canada Conference!

An exhausting month, but I am so happy I am able to share my knowledge and help people who are just starting out in the social space.

Young Professional Webinar Series
Get One-on-One with Industry Experts

LEARN HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN GROW YOUR BRAND - FREE WEBINAR
When: Thursday, March 21, 2013, Noon EDT
Host: Brittany Stager, GroupTalk

How do I get started with social media? How do I use social media to grow my brand? These are two very common questions asked by today’s professionals. In this one hour Social Media webinar we will examine the online social ecosystem. I will show you how to leverage and integrate social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn into your everyday marketing. You will leave this webinar prepared to grow your professional brand.

Register For the Webinar

Hope to see you there!

photos via Richards Clothing
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TweetStock High Teaches Students to Be Awesome

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to attend TweetStock, an event designed to educate businesses about social media and teach them how to grow their brand. The theme was a fun one - Social Media High, and it drew in lots of attendees with varying skill levels, as well as knowledgeable speakers with lots to say.

My schedule for the day was a full one - an opening assembly with Un-Principal Scott Stratten, sessions ranging from Twitter & Facebook 101 to Social SEO and How to Be the Voice of a Brand, lunch in the TweetStock High cafeteria, and of course a graduation address by John Morgan. There was certainly a lot to learn... and a lot to take in.

If I had to pick one major "takeaway" after listening to several talented speakers it would be to be awesome.

This was a topic that was heavily stressed during the opening address by Scott Stratten, throughout the day in several of the sessions, and in John Morgan's closing remarks. Being awesome shouldn't be a task for your company, awesomeness should be worked into your company at every level - from HR to the community manager. Being awesome also applies to your marketing strategies - stop trying the same old marketing tactics that consumers have come to hate - pushy ads, cold-calls, flyers - and start listening & responding to what your customers want.

Here are just some of the awesome tips Scott Stratten mentioned:

• Life Tip from Scott Stratten: "Don't eat everything you see in Istanbul."
• If you're only awesome to influencers, you are not awesome...
• Do great things and you will be talked about in social media.
• Passion + Knowledge = Awesome
• You can't automate awesome! It's the people that make it awesome!
• Hire people who are passionate & have great interpersonal skills. Good employees add value... and awesomeness.
• Use QR codes wisely (if at all). They do not work on bill boards, emails, underground, if moving, or if site is not mobile.
• Social media fixes nothing, it just amplifies.
• Twitter is not dictation, it's conversation.
• I would rather have 1,000 email subscribers than 10,000 followers on Twitter - the shelf life of social is very short.
• Branding is what you do... it's your actions. Social influence is your brand, it's always changing.

I was also pretty excited to receive a copy of Scott's new book "The Book of Business Awesome"... can't wait to start reading it! (and if you hurry over to amazon.com you can snag a copy for only $3.98!)

Did you attend the event? I'd love to check out your posts to hear what you thought... just leave me a comment with your link below or send me a quick tweet @Group_Talk.

Social Media 101: Adding Meta Data in Blogger

Blogger. It's the platform that is most widely recognized the blogging world. And rightly so, it's easy to set-up & customize, the interface is user-friendly, and composing posts is as simple as it gets in - what you see is what you get. However, one thing Blogger was always lacking was the ability to easily add additional meta data to your blog and individual posts.

Now I know what you're thinking, "slow your roll, what the heck is meta data?" Well, in short, meta data is the probably the single most important snippet of information you can optimize your blog posts with. Basically it is a keyword-rich description of what your post is about. It is important to include this data so search engines, like Google, can easily find your content and display it in relevant search results.

So how do you go about adding this data to your Blogger blog? Well, lucky for you when Blogger relaunched it's new interface it added this little feature - all you have to do is go turn it on.
This can be accomplished in 3 easy steps....

Head on over to my personal blog to read the rest of this post. ...

Behind the Scenes: Ottawa Food & Wine Festival

Last weekend I staffed the Mushrooms Canada booth at the Ottawa Food & Wine Festival. This was my first time at this show (both personally and as an exhibitor), and I was impressed with the large crowd it drew, however, not so impressed with how the large crowds were treated (being forced to wait in line for 2 hours - even though they pre-purchased tickets - because the building was at capacity...?).

Besides the capacity issue, the show was filled with quality exhibitors - really, there was lots to eat and drink!

You can find all the behind the scenes footage on Facebook, as well as My Top 7 post on my personal blog.
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Twitter, Faster Than Earthquakes

This demonstrates perfectly how fast news can spread via Twitter. Good or bad, you know the instant something is happening.

How has Twitter impacted how quickly you communicate?

Social Tip: Optimize Your Comments with a Picture

Last week I tweeted a tip that received a lot of feedback and questions... "When commenting on blogs, always make sure your profile is optimized with a picture - that way you will stand out in the crowd."

So, just how do you go about optimizing your profiles to get the most out of your comments? The first step is to understand there are 3 main commenting platforms that run on 90% of blogs: Wordpress, Blogger & Disqus. Each one of these platforms requires you to set up an account. Although the process may be time consuming, you will benefit from "brand" recognition and higher click-throughs if you partake in commenting regularly.

How to Set-Up Each Account

Wordpress

Wordpress uses a universal avatar platform called Gravatar. The benefit of this platform is you can use it to manage your profile even if you don't have a Wordpress blog. If you have a Wordpress blog, it is very easy to link the two.

When commenting on a Wordpress blog that supports Gravatar (and most do). make sure to enter the email address you used to register your Gravatar account - you will then see the comment contact section auto-populate with your information as well as your photo.


Blogger

Blogger allows you to comment using several different kinds of accounts, but this is only at the will of the blogger. Most often you will be required to have at least a Google account. Similar to Wordpress, you do not have to have a Blogger hosted blog in order to comment, a simple Google account will work, but the best way to optimize this is to enhance your Google Plus profile.

When commenting on a Blogger blog, make sure you enter the email associated with your Google account. You should see your profile picture and the link to your full profile once you are complete your post.


Disqus

Disqus is relatively new to the commenting platform market, but it's versatility, functionality, and integration make it a clear winner. Signing up for a Disqus commenter account is simple, you can either sign-up with an email or integrate it with your Twitter or Facebook profile. 

When commenting on a blog that uses Disqus, simply sign in using the credentials you entered upon account creation or use the Twitter/Facebook option.

Photo Tips:

• If you are representing a personal brand, use your own picture.
• If you are representing a company, use your company logo.
• Keep it simple!

Now get out there and optimize!