Integrating digital with offline events

Live events play a critical role to engage consumers with a brand or product thru out the life of a campaign. The challenge with events is they are usually bound by geography, size of venue and of course cost. Many brands use social media to extend the reach of events with roving reporters who are live tweeting, creating hashtags for people to follow and posting twitpics.

All of these are great ways to extend the event but why not take coverage to the next level with a live broadcast? Creating a live show from an event is a great way to engage consumers and maximize your reach.

Solutions from Livestream and Ustream allow mobile broadcast stations to be set up from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. No Internet access? No problem. The Livepack from Livestream is a turnkey hardware solution for wireless live streaming at HD quality. This makes man on street coverage much easier as you can literally point the camera and go.

Recently we live broadcasted from an event. The concept was a behind the scenes sneak peak of a show with exclusive interviews from campaign spokes people and attendees. Our goal was to create new ways to extend reach of the event, engage with consumers not able to attend and drive action by getting people to tune in.

The results were excellent by comparison. The brand micro-site saw its single largest traffic day since it launched in November of 2009. Visitors tuned in for an average of 10 minutes, which is five times longer than an average day.

Not only did people tune into the broadcast from over 20 countries, 70% of them explored at least three additional pages within the site. The live coverage of the event coupled with active monitoring and engagement on twitter proved to be a great recipe for extending the event experience.

Before plugging your camera in and going live here are some tips for a successful live broadcast.

• Create a “Show” not a stream: Fully develop the story you want to tell with a mixture of live coverage and pre-recorded video. This requires more up front planning, pre recording of videos and more tightly incorporating segways to pre-recorded video.
• Promote across channels to build awareness of the show: Using email, social channels and engaging with online influencers played a huge role in the success of this online event.
• Encourage viewer participation by bringing them into the “show”: Another way to engage viewers in the live broadcast is to in create points of interaction with event goers and online viewers via twitter, Facebook or chat. A simple example of this would be a Q&A with attendees.
• No wifi – No show: In situations where you rely on a wifi connection it is essential to test each physical location the broadcast will air from. This will ensure there are no dead spots. For venues that do no provide wifi/wired capabilities you can also have lines dropped or secure a rental of the LiveStream Livepack.
• Poor lighting and sound can ruin a great effort: Having the right equipment can make or break the experience for your viewers. Plan ahead and be prepared to bring additional lighting especially if you are broadcasting indoors. The use of microphones will also significantly increase the audio quality for those tuning in.

Live broadcast are certainly not for every situation but can be a great way to maximize the investment in offline events.

This was originally posted at http://blog.ogilvypr.com/ .

Influencers are not a broadcast channel

A corner stone to most social marketing programs is an influencer outreach and engagement. Successful programs are built on the premise that you are entering a relationship and as with any relationship it is a two way street. You give a little and you get a little.

Engagement plans hinging on providing exclusive content or a sneak peak with the hopes these people will share within their network is flawed. This might work once or twice but will not create a sustainable program and fatigue will set in. Think about a person you know is always asking for things but never has anything to offer in return.

Building a successful program requires time and a commitment to the long term just like any other relationship. To keep your contacts organized use something as simple as a spreadsheet or more elaborate like a lightweight CRM. This will all depend on how many people are seen as influencers in your market. Whatever solution used for managing these relationships its important to keep track of their attitude towards your brand, what have been the value exchanges and its relative impact on your business goals.

So, as your planning influencer outreach make to sure to listen first, keep the long term in mind and make it collaborative.

Convert check-in's into loyal customers

Last year I wrote a post "Hyper local. Thats where I'm at" which focused on the value of location based social networks to the user. With tools like Foursquare gaining traction the inevitable question is how do brands engage in real time and build loyal customers.

Pepsi used of Foursquare to build awareness to support its Refresh Everything community-giving push. For every point earned in New York, Pepsi donated 4 cents to inner-city youth center Camp Interactive. After one week, New Yorkers on Foursquare earned 225,000 points, and nearly $10,000 for the organization.

Another great example is what Intel did at CES. They created a branded Foursquare page, featuring locations where Intel had activity and tips for Las Vegas visitors. Intel also rewarded check-in’s to key events with branded badges, paired with the chance to win an Intel-powered netbook for all badge recipients.

As these platforms mature and brands have spent more time experimenting the next wave of opportunity is to convert "Check-ins" to loyal customers and create targeted offers based on location.

Converting check-ins into loyal customers can begin with aggregating influencers who check-in to any location into your Social CRM system. Ideally you would be able to leverage the API in order to help automate this process. Once you have the consumer data in system you can then set flags based on frequency of "Check-ins" or sentiment of their shout out.

For example, if you see a person has been designated a "Local" you could reach out via their preferred channel and make a discounted offer or simply thank them. Real time engagement based on location has always been the holy grail for marketers. But it does not come with out challenges.

Assuming there is critical mass on the social network and platforms are extensible, getting data into systems and changing business processes will be an initial barrier.The flip side to this that brands will also have to balance engagement and offers with consumers feeling like they are being spammed.