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Yes it’s true.  With the launch of Zerista’s Exhibitor Marketing Suite, Zerista customers not only have the ability to reduce the cost of the event industry’s best mobile, web attendee networking and personalization suite, they have the opportunity to receive a larger check from Zerista than they are used to paying for web, mobile and social software for their events.

“Event organizers are used to paying multiple vendors so that they can cobble together an iPhone app, a website, throw in some attendee networking tools and then bolt on a map.”  says Zerista CEO Peter Hoskins.  ”Making sense of all of these vendor decisions and trying to get them to work together all cost money, time and are honestly an unnecessary hassle for the organizer.  Zerista’s Event Intelligence Platform not only unifies the attendee experience with the exhibitor experience but gives event organizers unprecedented visibility into their event performance.  This alone makes Zerista an easy choice for event organizers in the know but when Zerista offers to pay its customers to use its software… well, that changes everything.”

Zerista is making this new program available to its current customers and selected few prospective customers.  If you’d like to know if your event qualifies to receive a check from Zerista contact us at info@zerista.com.

1.  Mobile apps are not an island.  Successful mobile apps are part of an integrated attendee experience strategy that includes planning and personalizing before the events starts via a full website and includes a “here’s what I did” event community after the event is over.

2.  Not everyone has an iPhone.  Actually more people have Android and Blackberry devices.  Android usage is growing fast and Blackberry usage is declining even faster.

3.  Even those who do have smartphones don’t always download apps.  Zerista has wildly successful native iPhone, iPad and Android apps that get great usage.  Yet, the device that accesses our mobile web event app via a mobile browser is the iPhone.  Some users prefer to use the Safari instead of downloading an app.  Make sure your mobile strategy includes mobile web as well as downloadable apps.

4.  If you build it they won’t necessarily come.  Promoting the use of your mobile app in ways that are relevant to your attendees is critical.  Clearly knowing why you are providing the app and tying that directly to benefits to your attendees is step 1.  In Zerista’s experience, the tipping point is around 40%.  When 40% of your attendees use the adoption curve jumps and almost everyone starts using.

5.  The mobile experience happens during the event and centers around what is happening now, where am I, where are my friends and what is happening next.  It is not a mirror image version of your event website.

Why the cheesy image? Because viral marketing works. Even when you’re cheesy. See: Rebecca Black

Our goal is to give you every tool possible to maximize your event.

Your goal is to bring attendees to you, or your clients’, events.

Unfortunately, traditional marketing isn’t always effective. The sad fact of the matter is that people aren’t always going to listen to you, and regardless of how amazing your event is, its final amazingness is at the mercy of attendance. We live in a society overly-saturated with a cacophony of media and advertising messages, sounds we have collectively become proficient at tuning out.

Thanks to the internet, though, there’s another route to marketing that’s incredibly powerful: Word of Mouth Marketing. The internet has opened the door for unique or valuable ideas, goods, and, yes, even events to spread virally. For proof of the power of the internet one need look no further than Rebecca Black, whose song “Friday” (often dubbed “the worst song of all time”) was viewed over 160 million times on YouTube.

In order to help you get your event spreading virally, Zerista has created the social invite module for its ZeristaPRO platform. This functionality will empower your attendees to invite their colleagues and friends to events that they themselves are attending. We’re all more likely to trust and attend an event that our peers are attending, and it’s been proven that attendees are far more likely to finish the registration process if a friend invited them. In the end, this means more of a buzz and more awesomeness at your event – no headache necessary.

Features of the ZeristaPRO Social Invite Module:

1.) Send invitation email to contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live address book

2.) Send invitation email to contacts uploaded from a CSV file

3.) Send invitation email to manually specified contacts.

4.) Post public invitation message on Facebook (as a post on wall) and Twitter (post as a status update)

We built our company around the primary goals of the event planner (or, if you prefer, event organizer, event architect, or event director). You want people to register, attend, and get the most out of the experience. You want to create a buzz. At the moment of execution, you want your event to be valuable and enjoyable.

We’ve created the ZeristaPRO platform with these goals in mind.

Research suggests that 64% an event planner’s working time is consumed by mind-numbing busywork. In addition to the fact that time is the currency of your life and it is being used in a manner described as “numbing,” we believe that if you could eliminate this nonsense from your workday you could better allocate that time to far more useful ventures – setting yourself ahead of the other event planners who are spending over half of their day with busywork. So, how do we remove the busyness from your agenda?

ZeristaPRO makes event planning a breeze.

• By using the matchmaking and chatter features attendees are able to connect and start buzzing long before your event takes place. This user-propelled pre-event buzz will virally build a sense of excitement for your events – no monkey-business or busy-work required.

• The schedule builders and agenda features make sure that all times and locations are in sync for all attendees & speakers – no mass notifications and confusion for small changes and adjustments.

• Chatter feed and social media integration allow attendees, speakers, and sponsors to establish a community organically, exchange thoughts and ideas about which sessions to attend, and get the conversation flowing long before anyone boards a plane or checks into a hotel.

• Effectiveness: streamlined registration, great user experience, and mobile event planning dashboard make it so that your event thrives and you aren’t tied to a computer.

Social media has radically shifted the paradigm in which making connections occurs, a change with huge ramifications for the event industry.

According to comscore, the self-touted global source of digital market intelligence, as of February 2011 one out of every eight minutes online was spent on Facebook. Yes, the obsession with social networking partially stems from our curiosity to know whose gotten married/pregnant/incarcerated since high school, but in reality a only a small portion of our time spent on sites like Facebook is consumed by such creeping (“Facebook stalking,” if you will). What it really symbolizes is the fact that people are, at their core, social creatures. We want information, we want to sell our products and services, but, more than anything, we want to connect with one another.

Networking

Pre-social media, one would arrive at an event with a limited amount of time to meet, mingle, spark a conversation, and – hopefully – develop a couple of meaningful connections. Today those are balls that can be rolling in the days, weeks, and months preceding the event itself. With social media technology, attendees and exhibitors are enabled to participate in group discussions, share ideas, spark conversations, and request meetings long before anyone boards a plane or leaves their office. Rather than relying on the serendipitous nature of meet and mingle events, one can search through a database of every attendee, speaker, and event session in order to filter out the most promising networking opportunities available based on their specific interests and event goals.

In the end, not only does social media technology allow individuals to begin making connections way back in the planning stage of an event, but this foresight allows them to plan for the event itself so that, when it arrives, they are able to allocate their time and energy during those few days most effectively (and then continue the conversation in the days, weeks, and months to follow).

Simplicity

Let’s be honest: navigating through an event can be an absolute nightmare.

Schedule changes are inevitable. Keeping track of exhibitor brochures and business cards, along with a 3” thick stacks of session schedules, itineraries, brochures, and maps, can quickly become a discombobulated, confusing, and downright miserable ordeal. Exhibition halls are huge. People are everywhere, business needs to happen, and there is never enough time in the day.

With the help of mobile technology, events become manageable again. When things are manageable, you’re free to get the most out of them, and maybe even (gasp!) enjoy them a bit.

The Moral

A great event is energized, productive, progressive, and dynamic. Without the right tools, however, any event can quickly become an overwhelming, chaotic mess that fails to reach it’s maximum potential.

Companies and individuals that utilize event technology prevent the little administrative inconveniences that unnecessarily complicate an event while simultaneously giving themselves an edge before, during, and after the event itself.

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, recently released it’s regular report on key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry. According to the report, “for the three month average period ending in March, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices.” Of these devices, 72.5 million were smartphones.

“Browsers were used by 38.6 percent of subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points), while downloaded applications were used by 37.3 percent (up 2.9 percentage points),” indicating that people are still using a browser more than downloadable apps.

What does this mean for your event?

First of all, it means that making your event mobile is an increasingly powerful way to improve your event. It also means that, from an accessibility standpoint, if you only use native apps you’re neglecting huge components of the mobile marketplace. comScore reports that Android & iPhone users constitute 60% of the downloadable app market. Assuming that roughly 1/3 of the market are using downloadable apps, these statistics indicate that utilizing purely Android and iPhone apps at your next event will cover only about 20% of the market – and potentially only 20% of your attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and sponsors.

It’s for this reason that Zerista’s mobile platform utilizes both native apps and a mobile browser – so that you, and your attendees, are sure to be covered.

Sources:

comScore press release: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/5/comScore_Reports_March_2011_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share

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Lady Gaga Sharp IS03 two commercials, cell phone, KDDI in Japan will operate, with a bright 960 x 640 3.5-inch screen. http://www.sunrainet.com/lady-gaga-sharp-is03.html

Recently Anjanet (Zerista’s Project Manager extraordinaire), noticed that we almost exclusively use the title “Event Planners” throughout our website and Events Matter Blog, and that – well – there just might be some alternatives. So, in an effort to both spice up our diction and better connect with our event planning compadres, we opened up the conversation to the people who know best: people who plan events! We started the discussion around LinkedIn, Twitter, and amongst colleagues, and, as it turns out, there are a LOT of other things to call event planners! Unfortunately, now we’re confused as ever. So, the question remains (and please, we’re dying to know): What do YOU like to be called?

• Assistant Director of Meetings
• Conference Manager
• Conference Producer
• Corporate Convention/Meeting Planner
• Corporate Meetings Specialist
• Director of Events
• Director of Meetings
• Director of Meetings & Events
• Director of Meetings & Exhibits
• Director of Operations, Events
• Event Administrator
• Event Coordinator
• Event Designer
• Event Director
• Event Engineer
• Event Manager
• Event Organizer
• Event Planner
• Event Producer
• Event Specialist
• Event Strategist
• Events & Meeting Services
• Exhibitions Department Manager
• Manager of Meetings & Incentives
• Manager of Meetings & Travel
• Meeting & Event Planner
• Meeting Consultant
• Meeting Planner
• Meeting Planner, Account Executive
• Meetings Manager
• Meetings Supervisor
• Planner
• PR & Special Events
• Producer
• Project Manager
• Registration & Events Coordinator
• Show Director
• Special Event Producer
• Special Events Manager
• Team Leader – Corp. Events
• Trade Show Organizer
• Tradeshow Manager

How are events using social media?  What levels of adoption should events expect?  What are the common strategies and best practices?

To answer these questions, we recently conducted extensive event industry research.

We gathered data from more than 600 event professionals and hundreds of events – both large and small.  Thanks to all of those who shared their experience and insights!

Here are the top 8 key insights from the research:

1.  Social Media has gone mainstream – 80% of events utilize some form of social media.

2. Social Media is not just for tech geeks.  All types of industries and market segments – from association and medical to communications and industrial machinery events – are figuring out how to best use social media for their events.

3. Social Media Strategy is all over the map – common strategies range from Community Building to Marketing to Experimentation to No Strategy.

4. Facebook and Twitter are the leading public platforms – 54% of events utilize both Facebook and Twitter.  Despite it’s business-orientation, LinkedIn surprisingly trails  the more consumer-focused alternatives.

5. Mobile is key – Event attendees show higher mobile adoption than the general population

6.  It’s easy to get started – Most common posting frequency is 2-3 times per week or weekly for public social media.

7.  Most common content areas – Event, industry and exhibitor/sponsor news as well as registration-related posts.

8. Most significant needs – 70%+ events want better attendee/exhibitor search/browse tools; 50%+ want advance meeting scheduling tools.   If we do say so ourselves, this is where ZeristaPRO comes in.

Additional data and insights are available here:

Click here to download the detailed report on Event Social Media Adoption and Strategies.

Your thoughts?  Are you surprised by any of the findings?  Is there something that you would like to know more about?

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures, modified by Jennifer Gargotto

There are a lot of great event social media blogs on the web – with many new ones seemingly popping up every day.  Lots of really smart people are sharing their ideas and perspectives on how social media is changing the event experience and, in the process, the event industry. Here are some of the event social media blogs we find ourselves reading frequently:

Sytelabs There’s nothing not to love about Jacob Worek’s writing on event planning, services, and ideas. He handles everything from managing event stress to Charlie Sheen with humor and very relevant insight.

Midcourse Corrections – Jeff Hurt seems to pump out great stuff on the role of social media at events on an almost daily basis.

Fork in the road – Social Media and Face-to-Face Meetings – If you’re interested in in-depth explorations at the intersection of social media, virtual events, and meetings, Michelle Bruno’s posts are a great source.

Interactive Meeting Technology – Sam Smith has built up a successful following with his witty deep dives on the latest in event technology, in particular social media tools.

Chris Brogan – General social media blog but often with a focus on event social media.

McCurry’s Corner –  Mike’s posts have a personal touch as they explore the world of event social media.

The tough thing about lists is that you always have to leave somebody off or forget one of your favorites.  Do you read any of these blogs?  Which do you like?  Who did we miss?