Social Media from the Trenches

We are using a lot more social media marketing to promote our Internet Marketing Conference this year on April 19 at NIU Naperville. Social media helped us get the word out last year but this year we have subscribed to Hootsuite and are able to sent the same information out to multiple locations, including all the groups I am a member of in linked in (without posting to each separately and are able to schedule posts in advance).

We have created a fan page in Facebook for our IM program and created an event under that page an also have a Linkedin event and a separate Twitter account for the event. Heather Baker, Contract Recruiter, and my grad assistant Alex Eddy have been helping us out, with guidance from board member Jen Brady, President and CEO of Fred and Associates.

We are also using direct communications and have 23 registered from an initial email sent out from me personally to past attendees and board members, so we are well on our way to our goal of 100 attendees. (Twenty six of our students will attend also as guests of our program to enhance their personal learning).

One person from social media (Linkedin) has said they will register and one firm from Facebook said they were interested in sponsoring. So while for an event like this there is no substitute for a personal, direct appeal I expect a lot of interest from social media. We are expecting that our partners econsultancy.com, PMA, CIMA, the BMA and CADM will also promote on social media.

We are using our own internal social media network, Vivastream, to promote interaction among the conference speakers and attendees.

We are just getting started. I tend to look at social media as a bit more like advertising and PR than direct marketing, so the consequences cannot always be measured. I will keep monitoring and keep you updated.