1. Create and Connect Your Community

Social media isn’t a campaign or a tool to be rolled out a week or two before a big show. It is a commitment of time and resources undertaken so your company can connect not just with customers and potential customers at an event, but also with your industry’s larger community: a community of other suppliers, associations, media representatives, thought leaders, potential employees, mentors, and mentees. But why should you make an ongoing commitment for a three-day event? Being an active member of a community builds your company’s reputation as a trusted solution provider and its employees as thought leaders in your industry. People in your community will get to know your company as more than just a brand. Buyers will start seeking you out and listening to what you have to say. Your company will be put on people’s “must-see vendor” list for the upcoming show.

I know this because I am one of those buyers at shows. I produce independent, for-profit conferences and trade shows. As a buyer of show services and booker of venues, I attend at least four meetings, industry conferences, or trade shows each year. Like any buyer, I am there to network, find out what’s new, and get answers to my specific questions from vendors. I also attend and speak at Exhibitor Media Group’s EXHIBITOR as an influencer to learn the current issues of my customers.

Up until 2010, these shows were very lonely events. I would meet other attendees from year to year but never really had the time or the ability to stay in touch. The only vendors I really knew were the ones I had used in the past. I would do my research before the trade show and make a list of vendors I wanted to see on the show floor. There was my A list of must-see vendors, and then a B list of those who looked interesting and might have something to benefit me. If I had time left over, I would wander around and perhaps stumble on something interesting.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I would receive hundreds of postcards and emails. Most were promoting exhibitors’ give aways, so I really didn’t connect with what they were actually selling or what solutions they were providing. But more importantly, they were not connecting with me as an individual. I was receiving the same solicitation thousands of other attendees were receiving. What was lacking was a rich, personalized experience.

Upon arrival, I would check into my hotel and get ready for the opening reception. Because I do not have an easily recognizable Fortune 500 logo on my business card, I don’t have vendors flocking to me. I am exactly like many of the potential customers at your shows who fly below the radar. We are customers who have healthy budgets but who do not appear on exhibitors’ wish lists because they may not have heard of our companies. I would arrive at the opening reception and navigate the sea of strangers, desperately hoping that the next person I introduced myself to would be somewhat interesting. After about half an hour, I would head back to my room bored.

The next day, when the show floor opened, I would make my rounds with list in hand. It was very methodical and all business. I would attend a few educational sessions, go to the dinners, pack up, and go home. And then I would forget about it until the next year rolled around. Yes, I may have discovered some interesting products or venues, but there was no personal connection made. Nothing to entice me to purchase from any one exhibitor over another, other than a comparison of features and benefits. Even in a business-to-business transaction, people still buy from people—and you cannot build a relationship in a 5- or 10-minute booth visit.

Late in 2009, I discovered Twitter. I was skeptical at first because it seemed like a waste of time. I, like many others, wondered what business benefit was to be gained by people tweeting about what they had for lunch. But friends encouraged me to give it a go, so I did. I stumbled on a small group of event planners who showed me how I could meet and follow along with other event professionals through weekly chats. This group used Twitter to exchange relevant information among the larger community.

This turned out to be a very active community with members who are passionate about events and event innovation. It is made up of event and meeting planners as well as vendors who supply products and services to the industry and members of the media. When a community member comes across an interesting article online, he tweets a link out to the group under the #eventprofs hashtag. Those who have their own blogs tweet links to their most recent posts. Other members retweet (Twitter’s way of allowing users to share information they see with their followers) the links, giving the original article a much wider audience. After I joined, I learned more in that first month than I had learned in the past year by reading all the information that was being shared.

This particular group also holds bi-weekly tweet chats for members of the community to discuss a particular topic for about an hour. Topics range from selecting a venue, event design, trade show best practices, and brain-friendly learning to creating a thorough risk plan. Mixed in with the abundance of great advice being given is plenty of friendly banter. In no time, I felt like I was getting to know this group of strangers.

I was meeting not only other event planners like myself, but also a lot of vendors. I have been exposed to vendors through this channel I would never have taken notice of otherwise. I was noticing them because of the valuable information they provided, either created by them or forwarded from other sources. They were proving how much they really knew about the industry they served. I could ask a question and within hours I’d have 10–20 members of my community either offering an answer or pointing me to someone who could help.

Many of the vendors in the community, as you can imagine, are competitors. The smart ones embrace one another as part of the community, and it’s not unusual to see them joking with one another online. It does not go unnoticed how they conduct themselves. It provides a lot of insight as to what it would be like to work with them as vendors.

But there are those who don’t get it. All they do is constantly push information about their company onto the community. They interrupt the conversations taking place with self-promotion. Self-promotion is not bad in itself—it’s expected that people are there to promote themselves. It’s just good to follow the 80/20 rule. Talk about others 80 percent of the time and talk about yourself 20 percent of the time. Those who do not add value to the conversation but only talk about themselves earn a bad reputation.

Eventually these conversations I was having on Twitter spawned phone and email conversations with people I particularly connected with. As relationships grew with some of the vendors, I began to recommend them to others or hire them myself. I trusted their opinions from what I learned about them through all these conversations. I felt very comfortable making referrals on behalf of these community members.

But What About Face-to-Face Connections?

Soon just talking online was not enough for this group, and a conference was spawned called EventCamp. People wanted a forum to meet in person and expand on some of the new and innovative ideas we were talking about online. What is important to point out here is that the community goes by the name eventprofs. There is no delineation between suppliers and planners. Every member is valued because of what he brings to the table. You are not an eventprof planner or an eventprof supplier. You are an eventprof.

The feeling I had when I arrived at this first EventCamp was amazing. I checked in to the hotel, dropped my bags in my room, and rushed down to the bar where everyone was gathering that night. People had arrived the day before just so they could spend more time together. I met people for the first time, but it felt like they were old friends. I actually looked forward to meeting many of the vendors in person and learning more about their products and services. I was not alone in this transformation. Everyone who had gathered there credited their involvement in social media with this sense of community.

The conversations taking place on social media for months prior to the event had already broken the ice. Now attendees were free to spend their time building stronger business relationships. Vendors didn’t have to rely on a quick sales pitch. They already had the attention of their potential customers and those customers were ready and willing to listen.

But What About Trade Shows?

Now when I attend my annual industry conferences, my first stops on the trade show floor are the vendors who are part of my Twitter community. They are the first vendors I consider doing business with. I also want to help them spread the word about what they are doing in their booths. I share any promotions or demonstrations they are doing in their booths with my network, and I promote to my community any sessions they are leading. I also bring my peers to their booths and sessions and introduce them to each other.

I used to get ready for a show by using the exhibitor directory to create my agenda, with no personal interaction before the show. Now I am online reaching out to attendees and vendors three to four months in advance to find out if they are going to be attending and exhibiting this year. I am already planning my schedule and want to make sure I have set aside time to meet with these people. It’s easy to do because I know where I can find them via social media. I am talking to them almost every week anyway.

Being part of a community can lead to new opportunities. I am often asked to host roundtable discussions and participate on panels. I almost never fill out a speaker proposal to get on the education agenda. I am asked by members of my community who are on the event education committee to participate. I suggest to them vendors who would make great participants in panel discussions or who could lead a discussion on a particular topic.

By being part of a community, you will suddenly find yourself with the wonderful dilemma of not having enough time in a three-day event to connect one-on-one with other members. Social media provides the solution by allowing you to quickly create impromptu gatherings and easily spread the word.

Recently at a trade show, I sent out word to the community via Twitter that we would be meeting in the bar at the hotel an hour before the opening reception. Word passed all through the community, and about 40 people showed up. Personal introductions were made for those who had not met. Some people were invited specifically so they could meet another member of the community we thought they should know. After that we swarmed into the opening reception and dispersed, only to regroup here and there to make more introductions.

Do you want to be the exhibitor who is just sending out postcards and emails hoping attendees will be interested enough to come see you? Or do you want armies of loyal community members bringing people to your booth because they believe in your company and want their peers to know about you?

When I walk on the trade show floor these days, I have very little time to wander around and stumble across someone’s booth. Most of my appointments have been set up ahead of time. I still go through the exhibitor list, but now I reach out to my community and ask, “What do you know about this company? Should I visit with them? Is there someone else I should look at?” In my free time, I stop by the booths of those I now consider my friends to say hello—and I bring people with me. I ask them whom I should be visiting with. Often they walk me to the booth and make an introduction. This is not only a much more productive use of my time as a buyer, but it is also more productive for the exhibitor because I am not in her booth just to kick the tires.

How many of your customers are doing this? How many people (who are not your customers) are going out of their way to find people who would be a good fit for your product or service and making the introduction? Are you doing this for your customers? By incorporating social media into your exhibit strategy, you can be sure the answer to these questions are yes. Your booth staff will be spending more time with qualified customers building relationships and less time with the tire kickers.

My story takes place on Twitter. But there are a hundred other stories just like this that are taking place on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pathable, and many other platforms. Wikipedia has a list of more than 300 of the most active networking sites available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites. The point is that you need to find out where your customers’ communities are and start interacting.

Failure to Plan Is a Plan for Failure

Anyone can have a similar experience when you participate in a community related to your industry. Companies who incorporate social media into their trade show strategy and are actively involved in their communities can see bigger returns on their exhibit program investments. Social media is not free; there is a cost involved. Sure, you don’t have to pay to be on Facebook or LinkedIn, but they do require an investment of someone’s time—and that does cost a company money. Although your customers can easily get a benefit just by being part of the community without having a plan in place, you, as an exhibitor, cannot afford this approach. When you decide to invest time in social media, like anything else, you need to have a plan. You need to set definitive measurable goals and objectives. You need to check in often to see whether you are meeting those goals. Where are you exceeding your objectives, and where are you falling short? As an exhibitor, you cannot afford to wing it.

Let’s take a look at some possible goals and objectives an exhibitor might have for his social media investment. This exhibitor is a software vendor who has a product used by corporate HR departments and will be attending the annual human resources convention in six months:

• Really bad goal—Use Twitter.

• Bad goal—Get 100 Twitter followers in one month.

• Good goal step 1—Create company Twitter account and find and follow 25 HR directors. Listen to their conversation for two weeks.

• Good goal step 2—Get 15 HR directors to follow the company account and connect at least weekly with them by the end of two months.

• Good goal step 3—Find appropriate chat for HR directors and participate weekly. At the end of one month of chats, measure the increase in HR directors who follow us.

The first example is a bad goal because there is nothing to measure. The second goal, although it is measurable, is bad because it does not define a specific audience. Getting 100 followers serves no purpose if they are not influencers or purchasers of your product. The last three goals are good because they are specific and measurable.

If you really work this plan and at the end of two months you know only three HR directors, this might not be the best investment of your time. But without setting goals and checking in regularly, you’ll never know whether it’s working. Trust me, you can be very busy on social media without ever accomplishing anything. You can build up quite a following and suddenly realize that the only people who follow you are people who want to sell you something. That is not what you are trying to accomplish.

There also has to be an end game in sight. I see so many exhibitors creating a Facebook page a month before their show. They encourage people to friend them, and then come by the booth for a prize. In the booth they spend all their time focused on getting more Facebook friends. They forget they are supposed to be selling something. Then, when the show is over they enthusiastically post some show photos on their page to show all their new friends. Within weeks that enthusiasm wanes, and soon it’s weeks or months between posts. All their Facebook friends have forgotten about them and their page. When next year rolls around and they consider what booth activity they are going to do, they ditch Facebook because “that didn’t work.”

That’s not a social media strategy. That’s a gimmick much like using booth babes, contests, or dunk tanks in your booth. To avoid the trap of social media gimmicks, figure out first what you want to get out of using social media. Defining your goals will help you figure out what your social media strategy should be.

Summary

Social media makes it easy to create and find an active community in your industry. Participating in a community is a wonderful way for customers and exhibitors to get to know each other year round, not just at a three-day event. As an exhibitor, when you are an active member in that community, you reap the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing and loyalty. You also expand your customer base beyond those who are attending the show in person. Now let’s get you the support you’re going to need.