There are three ways things go wrong.  Very wrong.  Usually not the fault of the people in charge but we all know these things happen.  The event that gets cancelled or worse, goes on, due to or despite a natural disaster.  The main attraction that never materializes — traffic, illness, whatever.  A truck crashes into a nearby post and takes out the power and Internet, and everything goes dark.   No one to blame.

The second way that things can go wrong falls into the category of  “possibility could have been avoided if I had access to a crystal ball or other future-telling device.”  These are sometimes things that good professional event planners may be able to help you avoid or things that you spend all night rehashing in your head replaying and asking “What if?”  What if I had asked about their network integrity?  What if I had known that celebrity always runs 2 hours late?  What if I had checked the history of  the club’s liquor violations? (When the venue loses its liquor license.) Could I have known that the competition was also planning something that day? This is usually asked when the biggest competitor launches a new heretofore stealth product and upstages your launch party. Sometimes this category of problem could have been avoided but often, realistically, not.

The third category is the “Yup, it is their fault” problem or mistake.  (I firmly believe that no one wants to cause a problem for their event but sometimes people make mistakes or faulty decisions, or, just run out of time to implement perfectly.)  Some of them are head-slappers: “Let’s serve hamburgers on Friday…” during Lent. (Or worse, when the vegan convention is visiting.)  “Of course our venue that regularly serves 50 people can handle an event with 200.” Or the breakfast server mixes up the orange juice and the clearly labeled pre-mixed screwdrivers (placed side-by-side in the walk-in freezer by the previous night’s bartender.)  Or someone doesn’t order enough food and people are left hungry and no one fixes the problem.

As a transparent (your social media life is a pretty open book) social media person, how do you handle these incidents?  I don’t want to hang people out to dry but I have had several occasions where I have been questioned closely by watchers about events that I suddenly stop tweeting or blogging about because I suddenly have nothing good to say.  (Not to say that every event where I go silent is one with challenges — sometimes I am having too much fun, or get busy and get caught up in the swirl of things. Or maybe I max out on Twitter and it says “No more Tweets for you!”  It happens — some kind of spam filter.)

I know the impact of bad reviews. They hurt.  They hurt the business and the people involved.  Poor comments and bad reviews can be like the locusts descending.  First there is one and then there are many.  And they can eat everything and lay waste to the business. (As a business — you need to actively manage poor reviews.  Of course, try to prevent them from happening in the first place.  If one happens, apologize. Then fix the problem.)

I generally adhere to the “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it” rule.  I give constructive criticism and make suggestions for improving things.  Everything can be improved and I would hope people are as open with me about the events I run.  (And, understand that we sometimes can’t utilize all the suggestions or advice.  I’ve had plenty of conflicting advice over the three years of running Mass Innovation Nights — none of it wrong, just a different approach. )

So, back to my social media influencer friends.  What’s your policy? Do you communicate freely about events with natural disaster type problems — those totally not the organizer’s fault — and remain silent where your words could be an indictment? Do you Tell All?  The Good, the Bad, the Ugly?  Do you fudge or sugar coat? How do you handle disastrous events when you are a guest?

But part of my work is to be the connection to the innovation and entrepreneurial community.  At these events, I meet people and make connections that are useful to my clients and employers.  I also free my brain to come up with new ideas that help our clients meet their goals. I discover new tools and technology we can leverage for clients.  For example, I heard about Pinterest several years ago at a conference much like this one.  If you don’t know Pinterest, it’s a “new” social network, based on images.  (It’s actually not new, been around, what 7-8 years? But its popularity has taken off like a rocket in the last few months.)

What have you done to get out of your cube/office lately?  Is there someone in your organization who has been tasked with getting out and collecting new ideas?  Who’s looking ahead in your organization?  Who’s in charge of the multi-year plan?  Do you even have a multi-year plan?

But back to the conference.  Sharing some notes from the event — grab something that speaks to you or sparks an idea for you:

• According to an executive from Imaginatik — all of us are working across time to develop innovation processes — the most successful companies have a multi-year view.
• According to Deb Mills-Scofield, putting in processes does not mean your company is innovative.  It is hard to “become” innovative. You often need different people and a different mind set.
• Mills-Scofield recommends Switch, the Heath brothers’ book on change. I’ll second that.
• In talking about inciting innovation: focus on the bright spots for the motivational factor, Mills-Scofield talked about “Breaking through the fear factor.  Measure employees on “at bats” — rewarding and recognizing employees for taking a stab at it.  For assembling a team.  If you fail and learn, you haven’t really failed.”
• Love the concept of RCUS. Mills-Scofield shares the term which originated evidently with Saul Kaplan from Rhode Island’s Business Innovation Factory.  A RCUS is a “Random Collision of Unusual Suspects.”

One of the speakers, Brian Whitman, called his talk “Changing Music One Listener at a Time.”  His talk was focused on his work at MIT in teaching computers about music.

One part of his story harkens back to his days as a working musician.  After releasing an album of music he  used to go to record stores (dating himself) and move his music to the front of the bins.  “Maybe,” he thought, “if someone sees my music, they will buy it.”)  He recognizes that this isn’t really a marketing strategy.  Is your marketing strategy the equivalent of moving your music to the front of the bin?

Even though I had doubts about entrepreneurs getting up early on a Saturday morning, we have a full house.

The first presentation, from Tim Orazen of Boston SEO Experts, offered great specific information, starting with a simple three-step process including research on keywords, optimizing your website for the best keywords and building links and content.

According to Orazen, more than half of all clicks are from natural search.  The first link usually garners around 18% of the clicks, the second slot gets 10%, the third gets 7% and the fourth gets 5%. In other words, go for one of those slots on your key words and reap the benefits!

Orazen offered a view of a “perfectly optimized” page for chocolate donuts, including the SEF URL, the page title, the meta description, the image tags and the text but there are other things that impact your SEO success – the amount of time it takes for your pages to load, the amount of traffic, and, of course, the inbound links.

Check out the Boston SEO Experts for more information on SEO best practices you can use.

More later!

It’s later.  A day later — OK, so I got busy — trust me that it was all good stuff.  I do want to share a couple of comments about yesterday’s event.  A few observations:

• Seeing such a huge crowd on a Saturday morning was a feel good moment for the speakers but it also speaks to the value people saw in the event.  At one point during the morning I took a picture of two rows of the audience, all listening intently, with notepads in their laps, taking notes.  (Note note: they were — mostly — writing on pieces of paper, not intent on laptops and doing email.  They were taking notes.)
• Deep useful content is, well, useful.  The next time you are asked to speak somewhere, ask yourself, “What will the people in the audience take away from my talk?  What can they go home and change or implement?”
• With a big, non-differentiated audience, take it down a notch.  Too often I see speakers giving a presentation that only a few people in the audience can truly understand.  If you give a great 101 level presentation, everyone wins.  Even the so-called experts in the audience will learn something.  Trust me on this one.  None of know everything there is to know on a subject.

SnapHop opened up the product presentations with an explanation of their platform which simplifies the creation and delivery of mobile marketing campaigns. This innovative platform leverages location-specific technology, the importance of calls-to-action and promotes user engagement. These are key attributes of a successful mobile social media marketing campaign. SnapHop’s three-step process makes mobile marketing easy. Companies begin by logging in and choosing either a pre-existing template or building their own. The second step involves filling out their information and lastly, the company must choose what channels they would like to utilize. Through channels such as custom QR codes, social media, email campaigns or URL addresses, the company can reach users who can now engage, share the company’s social media, make reservations or fill out online reviews. Analytics on the back-end allow the company to determine effectiveness. SnapHop helps companies reach potential customers by using mobile marketing as a powerful platform.

The second product to present was CampusEmployer, an online platform built to eliminate employer’s frustration with the inefficiencies associated with posting jobs at various universities. Prior to CampusEmployer, when someone wanted to post a job on an institution’s network, they had to approach each institution to approve the job in addition to paying a fee for each institution. CampusEmployer simplifies the job posting process making it much more efficient and cost-effective. It becomes a one-stop-shop for employers allowing them to pay a $25 fee per job posting (compared to $300 fee per job posting on Monster or CareerBuilder) and their posting appears on the network of multiple institutions. The job poster is able to customize their posting by choosing which students can access the posting based on their major and they can target Boston-based universities or all of the participating institutions in Massachusetts. The poster can also choose whether or not to post their position on Facebook and Twitter or they can opt to have the posting emailed to students. Employers don’t need to have a posting in order to be involved, they can pay a monthly fee which allows them search through student profiles. The platform is free for students who are able to create a profile and fill in their job preference and qualifications. When jobs that match their major or preferences are posted, the student receives an email in addition to that job appearing on their newsfeed. CampusEmployer is continuing to expand its network of both institutions and students to optimize the experience for employees and employers.

OfferBeam, the world’s first location-specific deal app, was the next product to present.  This digital couponing app takes all of the work out of the consumer searching for deals. All users have to do is have the app running in the background and as the person gets close to a participating store, a coupon will pop up onto the users phone alerting them to the deal. Users can adjust the radius to as wide as 50 miles, in which case they will get beamed with offers from within that distance. For businesses, OfferBeam has created a highly efficient portal for companies to setup their promotion on. Companies have access to real-time analysis so that they can determine how many people viewed their promotion and redeemed it. Currently, there is an ongoing pilot program in the UK and Canada along with 40 businesses signed up nationwide and plans to localize the service. Package services are available to make the platform affordable for mom and pop shops along with providing them with an on-demand designer, marketing help and email campaign support. As of now, the app is only available on the iPhone, but by the end of the month it will be available for the Android system.

LiveCirrus helps companies create mobile applications quickly and effectively by taking existing desktop applications and making them accessible on mobile devices. Instead of creating apps from scratch, they use existing technology and avoid the overcrowded app market. Both iOS and Android devices can access desktop apps and unrestricted web browsing on the LiveCirrus cloud platform. What sets LiveCirrus apart is that it’s not hosted on your device. Instead, they provide a portal to a flexible, powerful and secure desktop running in the cloud. This serves as a competitive advantage and provides an interface that works well with mobile devices. The LiveCirrus platform is currently serving 100,000 customers on existing services.

The next Mass Innovation Night will be held on March 14 at Space for a Soul in South Boston. Check back in at mass.innovationnights.com to view the ten companies that will be featured and vote for the four products that you would like to see present!

• Crazy fan who does something outrageous
  

  The Superb Owl Sundae Courtesy Nat Hefferman

• The mayoral wager
• The local connection to an ad destined for Superbowl
• The local business with its unique Super Bowl themed gathering
• The local business that manufactured the team’s secret weapon jersey, helmet, pads, football or shoelace
• The local bar with the most TVs, hottest wings, longest hoagie or other Super Munchie claim to fame
• The local fan who will spend far too much on attending the game
• The local fan who spent an unbelievably small amount getting to the game
• The food
• The fashions
• The Super Bowl Hero’s best friend from junior high
• The traditional Memories of Super Bowls Past
• How to buy a big screen TV, nachos, or beer
• Far too many stories about the team’s “chances”
• Will he or won’t he?  Will (insert injured athlete’s name here) play?

Want to have your business included in a story like these?  Here are a few helpful hints:

• Plan ahead — many of these stories will be written months in advance — long before Super Fever hits the general population. Or, the relationship that leads to inclusion in these stories was cemented months in advance.
• Make certain there is a real business reason for getting included.  Sure it is fun to open up the paper and see your business included in a fun story on salsa but unless you work for a tomato farmer, a grocer, or local gourmet snacks company, does it really help your business?  (And, the answer may be “yes” but make sure you ask the question.)
• Stay on brand.  Ask yourself if outrageous fits your brand.  If it does, it’s OK to offer to shave your head and wear a tutu for a week if your team loses.  Probably not OK if you are a CPA, and you’ll be doing a board presentation next week.  It might, just might, impact your credibility.
• Think about where your expertise might be useful.  If you are a doctor, go for the injury story, or maybe the heartburn medication assessment.

Opportunistic PR does have a place in the PR toolkit but it doesn’t necessarily mean unplanned or last minute.

– Start by choosing your keywords or keyword phrase.  Keep it short — 2 to 3 words is best.

– Choose a couple of secondary phrases.  Know these phrases before you start writing.  Keep them in mind.

– Write for people not search engines.  remember who the reader is — a real person.  (Plus the spiders actually look for natural language construction.)

– Your main keyword phrase should be in your headline and in the first 150 characters of the body of the release.  Use it as the anchor test for the first hyperlink.  Use secondary key phrases as hyperlinks too.  (But not too many links — not too crowded.)

– The headline needs to be 65 characters or less

– 2-3% keyword density.  In a 400 word press release, this means use your keyword 8-12 times.

– The hyperlinks should connect to relevant keyword-rich landing pages on your website rather than your homepage.  [A landing page with a Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL containing the keyword is excellent.]

– There is a tool in Marketwire that will give you analysis of your release with SEO in mind — it’s OK to load up drafts and check them out.  Most of the major press release distributors have some kind of analysis tool that will give you guidance.

A media alert is used to notify the assignment desk of an upcoming press conference or other event. It is never more than one page (we used to fax them all and you wanted all your info on a single sheet of paper).  The goal is to give a reporter all the information they need to make a decision on whether or not to attend your event, without giving away the story.

A media alert is often a lead-up to an actual press release.  For example, if you use a media alert to get a reporter to come to a press conference, you would provide them the press release or a press kit at the press conference.

Be aware though, once a press conference has been set, speculation will commence and you are officially what is known as “fair game.”  Decide before you send out your media alert how you want to handle “early birds.”  Just like at yard sales, some people don’t want to wait for the official opening time.  They want to come and pick out the best stuff before anyone else arrives.  They might not be able to make it to your event and are willing to abide by an embargo, to be fair to everyone, or they might just be unwilling to subject themselves to the press conference scrum.  They might have deadlines that make the press conference timing an issue.  You never know but you need to be prepared on what you will and won’t disclose outside the conference.

There are also times when a full-bore press release isn’t necessary and feels like overkill.  All you need to communicate is some basic information.  If that’s the case for you, perhaps a media alert, a short, who-what-when-where announcement, will make things easy for everyone.

Another use for media alerts is as a reminder of a previously sent, very important announcement or invitation.  The media alert can refer back to the previous missive and give a quick outline of the most important information. Another  variation on the media alert  is the “statement”, usually no more than the contact person’s info, headline, introduction and a quote.

I’ve seen several formats for media alerts.  Most common is the media contact person’s details (name, phone, email), a title, a brief introduction (generally the what/why, sometimes with the press release-like dateline and sometimes not), and short sections for the who, where and when.  A link to more information, including a website, etc.  is also appreciated (although this information may be included in your standard letterhead.)  Some people include a scaled down version of their organization’s boilerplate at the end — usually no more than a sentence or two.

Think about things like bullets, indents, use of paragraph blocks, highlighting and bolding.  You want someone to be able to discern the purpose at a glance.

Today’s media alerts may also be used to provide the basis for calendar listings if you are promoting a webinar or a physical event.  Or maybe you are alerting financial analysts about your earnings call.  Keep it short but don’t forget to include all the important details.

What I do enjoy in the New Year is planning out new goals and commitments for the coming 12 months. I look at it as my own personal marketing calendar. When I sit with clients and we craft ways to deliver their message, create new content, and engage new customers, it all comes down to setting expectations and formulating a plan.  Let’s see how my personal marketing calendar compares to a business.

To start, I plan to present a healthier “me” to the world. I’ll take a look at the presentation in the mirror and see how I can tidy it up a bit without resolving to an unrealistic overhaul because I think what is there needs to be fixed. Along those lines, a company never wants to look worn down, washed up or past its prime, be it on or offline. With your business, can you easily update or create a few items that bring you forward to the year 2012 and out of 2000? You don’t need a complete redesign, just some ideas and ways to freshen up.

I plan to slow down and evaluate what I can realistically accomplish – and absorb all the suggestions and feedback available to me. Saying yes to everything is never a good thing – nor is assuming you know it all. Similarly, companies can only run so long on fumes before customer’s take notice. If you promise deliverables that aren’t being met because your message conveys one thing but your frazzled business is doing another, frustration is likely to be followed by a drop in customers. Take time and listen to your customers – marketing gold can be found in their feedback.

Lastly, I plan to meet more people and not be the introverted wallflower in the corner. Embarrassingly, I am horrible at introducing myself to new people and being social if I don’t have a wingman (or wingwoman) close by. Funny how organizations grow and survive because of new introductions, fresh leads and nurturing prospects, yet many of them steer clear of social networking opportunities or engaging in social events (many that are FREE). While it’s easy to sit behind the laptop screen and appear to be social online, face-to-face time and picking up the phone really do play into the lead nurturing equation. Drag me out from the corner of the room if you see me out this year, will you?

Now that I’ve pretended to avoid a “Sierra Resolutions” document with this blog post, I think I’ll go subject myself to some sit-ups, then enjoy a cup of tea while reviewing my to-do list and finally see if I can find an event to attend this week. What do you plan to do in 2012?

Last week I participated in a pitch contest event run by The Capital Network. Like most pitch events, most of the startup entrepreneurs were there for the connections and not really interested in the $100 gift card and bottles of wine prizes.  (Although nice…)

But one entrepreneur took the pitch to a whole different level with a song he composed and sang himself.  Amusing and well done, it didn’t land him in the winning spot but it generated a lot of conversation about the humorous approach.  Big risk, potentially big rewards.

In this case, I thought it went well – the song communicated the value proposition, the target audience, even the competition.  It opened up conversations and was memorable – like most elevator pitches, it didn’t have to stand alone but could be a starter for a longer conversation.  The singer also used it in a forum (a pitch competition) where it was appropriate.  In fact, he mentioned that he didn’t feel it was right to use it in individual conversations.

Another local startup sent out a momentum press release in November that reads like it was written by a rapper – an erudite rapper but it was full of slang and casual conversation you rarely see in a press release.  It was cute and it stood out.

A local marketing agency has made a business out of crafting in-your-face, supposedly break-out messaging.  While some of the campaigns seem to be true genius, others seem to be too heavily peppered with uncomfortable images that could come back to bite the clients later on.  Not every company can pull off this approach.  Not every company needs this approach. And, there are some that don’t strike anyone as funny.

Humor, satire and out-of-the-box thinking are marketing staples.  Quick, think back to some of the all-time classic commercials.  A major portion of them are memorable because they are funny.

Remember the Taco Bell April Fool’s Day campaign?  Buying the Liberty Bell?  Funny but also irked the living daylights out of some people, spurring actual protests before the stunt was revealed.  Positive or negative impact on the business?  Hard to say.

Before you approve that next “breakout” marketing campaign, consider a few things:

• Like the Hippocratic oath, marketers should first pledge to do no harm.  Will this project hurt your business?  Today or in the future.  Will what may be considered OK for a small local business today  be something you need to explain away someday in the future?
• Know your audience — that “momentum” release quoted the company CEO – “We found that small businesses tend to purchase from companies they trust most. “  But do small businesses trust “non-serious” people with the life blood of their business?  Will humor win customers or turn them off? (Of course, the other side of the equation is, without humor, will the customer ever know you exist?)
• Is it really a break-through message or just an amusing project for the marketing team?

What do you think?  Stunt marketing – for or against it?  (Meanwhile, I have this campaign that includes zombies that I keep threatening to pull out.)