Although the events still require time to organise, 12 weeks (as proposed by ON24), it can be far less time consuming than organising a physical event. Removing the need to travel (and accommodation) your audiences expenses will be less. They will be ‘fresh’ for your virtual event and ready to utilise the knowledge acquired the instant the event has finished. Sales staff can immediately implement all the latest information about your products.

If you still have the need for a physical event the ability to integrate some virtual aspects into it can be a benefit, creating a hybrid event. The combination of both types opens the event to a world wide audience, one that is not constrained by distance or time.

Success is dependent on good planning and the following blogs give you some tips on how to plan, ideas for content and which is the right event for you and your audience, whether they are customers, employees or for training programmes. Going virtual provides an easily used medium for all of these needs. The collection of genuine customer/audience data (emails,names and locality)properly managed in a CRM, allows you to continue marketing to them and target future events/product launch.

In the next few blogs, I hope that you find a few items that help you decide about virtual events or offer you a few ideas that you hadn’t realised were possible.

Ideas for a virtual event

Trade Shows
To showcase and promote your product, individual products or services can be photographed or filmed, explaining how it works and comprehensive information added to the product
Sales Meetings and Support
Sales staff, wherever they are, can see your latest offering, learn all about it and be back out selling, armed with all the information they need. Use your virtual event to provide your staff with all relevant information throughout the sales cycle so that they have all the knowledge necessary to close deals.
Virtual Marketplace
Let your virtual event be your marketplace where your products and those of fellow exhibitors can be showcased and sold
Customer training
Provide your customers with virtual event training sessions, so they know how to get the best from your service and to keep them informed about any changes.
Community building
Build a virtual event to connect people in different locations with similar interests and build a community
Annual Conferences
Knowledge of you and your business exchanged and always available to review, this will expand your user base.
Partner Events
Share knowledge and best practices with partners and provide a forum for team communication.
Internal training
Easily accessible knowledge base, used to keep staff up-to-date as regards policies and procedures. To ensure everyone in your company receives clear and consistent messages bring them together with a virtual event and develop a good employee relationship.
Committee Meeting
If the timing of general committee meetings is difficult for some could they attend via a virtual connection? The meeting could be recorded making minute taking easy.

If we can help further, please contact us, we are here to help. Telephone 0203 468 8594 and speak to Tamara.

Google Alerts – You can set up Google alerts to find out what people are saying about a company, its products, the industry you are in or your niche. The alert can be edited to find web pages, newspaper articles or blogs. Google checks regularly for results in your chosen fields and sends an email to you daily (or as the news happens if you have elected for that).

Blog directories – Technorati and Alltop are good sources for finding what other bloggers are saying about your niche. Both have comprehensive lists that are categorised supplying you with a wealth of information from the blog world.

Subscribe - Follow and subscribe to other bloggers who are experts in your field. This will keep you informed and in the know. Find out what they are discussing so you can gain inspiration from their writings.

Share – When you link to others don’t remain invisible. Have your say, whether you agree or disagree, and add your perspective to the comments. Adding to the conversation makes you more valuable. The Internet loves a good argument and controversy. Encourage readers to comment and interact with with you.

Poll – There are free web poll generators available for you to build your own poll. Ask your niche to vote on things that are relevant to your niche. Results form the poll can be used as content ideas for future blogs. Polldaddy, 99polls, Vizu and if you have your blog feed into your Facebook account you can place a poll on your fan page.

Blow – Blow your own trumpet about anything you are doing! If you are speaking at a conference, hosting an event, launching new products or services, tell your readers about it and post it to your blog. If you have a press release written and distributed place that on your blog too.

Tips – Share information in the form of information and tip lists about things that will be of interest to your followers. Ask them for their views to provoke comments, to not only spread the word but to start a conversation.

Categories – Make a list of your topics that you are blogging about, and then define into sub- topics. Transfer this listing to your calendar so that on any particular day you can see what you will be blogging about. You won’t need to think up an idea, you’ll already have it on your calendar.

Ask – On Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook you can ask questions and get an immediate answer, giving you another source to build your blog.

Top 10 lists – Place a list of what you consider to be the top 10 blogs in your niche, on your blog. People on the list will like the fact that they’ve made it on to a top 10 list and may write on their blog about it. It’s a good way to get known and build a reader following.

After a short time of blogging you will be receptive to all manner of snippets that will feed your blog writing. Keep a notebook handy, online or a paper one, to note down any happenings that could make good blog posts. You may find that a high percentage you may not use but the list can be a useful source of inspiration when you need it.

]]> http://tjconsulting.co.uk/need-some-inspiration-for-your-blog-10-tips-for-content/feed/ 0 http://tjconsulting.co.uk/social-media-construction/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=social-media-construction http://tjconsulting.co.uk/social-media-construction/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:55:41 +0000 Diane Scott http://tjconsulting.co.uk/?p=1333 With all the social media activity available today, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, your Blog or any of the many others, here are a few tips to keep them all running smoothly.

Construction – a plan

If you know where you want to be, what you are aiming for, your strategy for all your social media marketing can be formulated with this in mind. If you have no idea where you are heading or just what you are trying to achieve, all your efforts may well be in vain. You may well have opened up all the channels but wander around not knowing what to do next when all your work results in no interaction with others.

There are such a vast number of people using social media, it’s an incredible opportunity to reach a worldwide audience, bringing your service or product to them with ease and speed.

Clients and customers

Know who your audience is, when you understand who you are selling to, you can supply exactly what they want and target specifically. Using polls, metrics and reports you can identify your customers, ask them how you can serve them better and refine your products or services accordingly. Check out the social media polls, metrics and reports available within the systems so you can make use of these and learn what drives your customers and clients. Discover what they want, what they need and how they respond to your pages.

Change

Don’t let your content stagnate and update it on a regular basis. With a list made in advance of topic ideas for your content when writing blogs or Facebook, you will never be stuck for an idea. A notebook, in hand or online, to jot things down in as you find them, whether a website or a snippet that will be of interest to research and share with your audience. Have the various channels inter-relating with each other so your content is shared in part, spreading your word amongst your social media. Supply an ever-changing content that your audience will want to return to, to see what news you have posted and what’s new in your world.

Content, ‘you’ and your audience

In the same way that you should have interesting, quality content whether you blog, twitter or Facebook, like-wise you should aim for quality and not quantity in your fans, followers and readers. If you have built a genuine and honest brand that represents your product or service, your interaction with customer or client stand a better chance of beginning and continuing.

Bringing your personality to social media encourages a relationship with your audience because they can see you are human. This doesn’t mean you have to expose your private life to the world but adding a little humour and some snippets that say who you are, this can really help with forming a relationship with customers. Consider what will be of interest to your customers about you, in the context of what you are selling.

Other things that are of interest to your followers or fans, things that you have discovered, new product launch, latest developments in your industry, a clip of a humourous video, will all add interest to your content and keep you from becoming a bore. Your aim is to supply interest in all your social media, keeping your following entertained so that you and your brand are first in their minds when they need your product or service.

They fail to understand the fundamentals of selling!

First of all to clarify, when I say ‘sales people’ I’m also referring to business owners who are responsible for making sales.  If you’re in business, then one of the many hats you must wear is that of a ‘sales person’.

There are 2 key fundamentals that drive ALL sales…  Failing to understand these is why most ‘sales people’ struggle and businesses suffer…

1st FUNDAMENTAL – Why do people really buy?

Do you believe the popular notion that sales are made by matching a client’s needs and wants? If so, this is costing you sales! Believing that sales are made by matching needs and wants is why 95% of business and sales people struggle.

There is actually only one reason why people buy and the biggest myth in sales is that people buy to fit their needs with their wants. The problem is, by focusing on the needs and wants of your customer, you’re only touching surface-level emotions. You know that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.

Get this… needs and wants are logical! People ‘think‘ they know what they’re doing, but in fact, don’t understand what is driving their behaviour… Top sales people get this, and know how to assist their clients’ understanding of what’s really driving their needs and wants.  In doing so the client becomes aware on a completely different level.

The only reason why people buy is because… they have a problem!

People are driven by problems they have. It’s what they lack that drives buying behaviour, not what they want or need. The lack of something in our lives, or problems we face, are connected to deeply rooted emotions.  Understand this, and you’ll start asking the right questions right from the start.

Top sales people ask quality questions that allow the client to expand the size of their problem in their mind. The bigger the problem, the more motivation the client will have to finding a solution, which means more sales. Conversely, by focusing on just their needs and wants is the equivalent of a really small size of problem. For the client this will raise more objections, and for you less sales.

By seeking to understand your client’s problems and not rushing this process you will transform the satisfaction of  your client, and the size of your sales.

2nd FUNDAMENTAL – What are people really buying?

There is only one thing that people actually buy from you…

Think about this for a moment. How often are you served by a sales person where everything is right — right product, right price, right demeanour — and well… you buy don’t you? Conversely, what happens when the sales person lacks faith that their product will solve your problem? Your trust in the solution also goes down the pan. It does for me, that’s for sure. And so, the likelihood of a sale diminishes in direct proportion to the certainty of the sales person, doesn’t it?

… top sales people understand this basic truth. There’s only one thing that people buy from you. Certainty!

Client’s are looking for the certainty that your product will solve their problem. Given that time is limited, and they simply don’t have the bandwidth to review all the options, it’s falls on you, the person with the product, to deliver certainty.  If they sense you’re not certain, their barriers of resistance will increase immediately!

Now, you must have the client’s best interests at heart at all times and that’s why the first fundamental top tip is to understand their problem in the first place.  Once you know what’s fuelling their drive to speak to you, you can give them your rock solid certainty of a solution. That’s what they are looking for from you! To become a top sales or business person, understand the fundamentals of what drives all sales.

Seeking to understand your client’s problems and then giving them your certainty of a solution will massively increase your results. Apply these techniques and watch your prospects turn into clients!

Mike Clark is the CEO of Ripple Effect Sales Training – online membership site where you can get monthly support, training, and advice through exclusive resources and webinars with leadings experts like Joanne Martin and Hannah Macnamara. You can download a free report on the same subject from his website, which explains these fundamentals in much greater detail. This report also covers the 6 steps that all buyers go through before they feel comfortable with purchasing.

The benefits for users are very important: Talking News allows people to stay in touch with what’s going on in their local area. There are talking books and national news to listen to, however it’s nearly impossible for someone blind or partially-sighted to be involved in their local activities and participate in their community without being able to get the information in the format they can access it. That’s the gap that TNI was set to fill.

We provided audio recording and editing services for monthly TNI editions, secretarial and book-keeping services for running the charity, developed a simple website to get a web presence and be found by interested parties and other charitable organisations like RNIB. And yes, that’s one of the partners, James on the picture!

On behalf of myself and all the Volunteers at Talking News Islington, I write to thank you for very much for all the advice and support you gave us in setting up ‘Talking News Islington’, for without your Computer Skills and knowledge we could not have got it off the ground so quickly.
Elizabeth Jones, Chair of TNI

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I run, but not very well, my arms spin like windmills and my feet land with the subtlety of an elephant but, on occasion, I can pull off a marathon; but it’s through running that I’ve learnt a very valuable lesson. ‘You can be your own worst enemy!’ Once the mind starts chattering you can literally turn every pounding footstep into a torturous experience.

But why running, when the title of this blog is ‘No Hope on the Boat’? Well, in 2004 I rowed across the Atlantic for the first time; by 2006 I’d rowed it again becoming the first woman to do so. As I write, I’m just a day away from sailing back across the Atlantic in a 68ft racing yacht.

You’d think with that experience I’d have all the confidence in the world? I’ve been there and done it; the trouble is I am as nervous and anxious now as I was standing on the pontoon for my first rowing attempt. It seems these things never get any easier. My imagination has run away with itself turning my preparations into an exercise of torturous self-doubt!

Perhaps I only have myself to blame? Am I prepared? Well yes . . . and no! I’d never rowed before I set oar in 2004 and I’ve only had 3 weeks sailing training before I spend the next two months at sea! So am I realistic about my chances of success? Absolutely! This is totally achievable; it’s just going to be very hard work.

So why the nagging doubts?

It’s all too easy to run along believing everyone is having a better time than you, a more comfortable run than you are, that they are more prepared then you are. The truth is we all doubt our ability to achieve our goals. It’s human. We are our own worst enemy!

I have come to believe the key to my own success has been to recognise my negative thoughts but to keep bloody going!

I rowed the Atlantic with my Mother and she and I coined the phrase “No Hope on the Boat”. We said it because we’d spent so much of our time hoping for things to change. We whined about the weather and ‘hoped’ it would get better. We moaned about how long it was taking, we ‘hoped’ we’d go faster. As I run I still find myself hoping I’ll make it round the course without stopping or vomiting even on the shortest outings!

The thing is hope is often a passive prayer. It encourages you to do nothing, to believe that something or someone will intervene and make the difficulties go away.

When Mum and I reminded ourselves of our ‘No Hope on the Boat’ mantra it helped us to keep going; to understand that our fate is ultimately in our own hands, even when the mind is telling you how ‘hopeless’ you are.

So when you’re faced by self-doubt or fear, whether in your personal life or at work, remember the ‘No Hope’ rule, it’s very different from ‘Hopeless’. If you reach deep inside, ignore those nagging doubts (because they will always be there), but know that you really have the strength to keep going you’ve just have to believe it.

Sally is taking part in the last leg of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, attempting to raise £20k for The Children’s Trust. To follow the race and read Sally’s onboard diaries please go to Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. To sponsor Sally please visit: www.justgiving.com/sallykettle