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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.

Anjanet Mort, our June employee spotlight, is not only the phenomenal (multi-tasking, early-rising) Client Services Manager here at Zerista, she’s also a perfect representative for our June Life Sciences theme.

Anjanet was born in California but then grew up in Colorado. She went to school at Purdue, where she earned a BA in writing and a minor in computer technology. Her jobs have spanned from being a release manager for Integware, a software provider for the Life Science Industry (our June theme!) to being a technical writer at Vidiom, a division of Time Warner. Today Anjanet is happily married to her husband Chris (who happens to work for a medical device company – Life Sciences Industry strike 2!) with whom she has an adorable 4 1/2 year old daughter named Gwena Viere.

She’s currently recovering from a full, cringe-worthy, Achilles rupture. In her spare time, she loves to read (a lot) and is organizing her book club to host a charity garage sale whose profits will go towards the Learning Source for Adults and Families.

When she isn’t reading, hurting herself, or saving the world one garage sale at a time, Anjanet loves to garden. She has gads of heirloom flowers from her grandmother back in Pennsylvania, along with rhubarb that is older than…well..dirt. “My garden obsession is keeping my husband’s hops out of my garden; my garage obsession is keeping his brewing equipment contained.” Towards the end of the season, the garden gets totally ignored as Anjanet turns her attention to college football; watching the boilermakers.

Besides gardening, she loves biking to the farmers market with her family, complete with Gwena on her training wheels, and petting her pup Lily.

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

The Zerista Manifesto (more humbly and appropriately titled “Vision and Purpose = Events Matter” on our About Us page) has been tangible as ever in the midst of our world’s recent events.

“Events punctuate life.”

Internationally, the world has been pulsing with celebration. Through the dark haze of a troubled economy, record-setting unemployment and environmental disasters, we’ve found some solace in the fairy tale wedding of the beautiful and graceful Kate Middleton to Prince William. Now, in a far less anticipated moment of good news – today we awaken to the news that Osama bin Ladin has finally been stopped in his tracks.

From the long-awaited royal wedding, to the even longer-awaited capture of Osama bin Ladin, voices worldwide are echoing the Zeristian belief that, to quote ourselves, “events produce the social content that people care about.”

These events mark beautiful new beginnings, and, as the Roman philosopher Seneca (and more recently the American philosophers Semisonic, in their hit song Closing Time) bittersweetly once said, “every new beginning comes from another beginning’s end.”

This week’s events have marked beautiful new beginnings – a handsome prince and his beautiful princess; while they simultaneously remind us of endings – the tragic death of William’s mother Diana, whose own beautiful beginning took some sad turns. We watched Diana’s beginning lead to divorce and, eventually, culminate to a car crash in Paris in 2007. That brutal end, that terrible event, punctuated our lives in a way most of us will never forget.

When looking back, it’s often easiest to remember something from an event-based standpoint – because those are the moments worth sharing and remembering. In psychology this is a phenomenon referred to as a “flashbulb memory” – “a vivid and detailed memory for an event that is typically charged with emotion (either positive or negative). The most common example given (at least to individuals of a certain age) is ‘Where were you when you heard of the assassination of President Kennedy?’ to which very many individuals can give graphic answers describing a place and the events occurring in it.” Today, most of us can remember exactly where we were sitting or what we were doing when we heard the news about Diana, and someday we’ll remember where we were last night or this morning when we first heard about Obama’s death.

Truly, “events echo and live before & after the date.”

For weeks before the royal wedding, everything from Kate Middleton’s hats to remembrances of Princess Diana were covered and dissected on news stations, blogs, and magazines worldwide. Today, as we attempt to emotionally and psychologically come to terms with this new reality – a world where Osama Bin Ladin is gone – we’re reminded of an old event, the events of 9/11, that stung the world and scarred our hearts in a way few things ever will.

Events, like their memory, are but a snapshot in the rhythms of our daily lives – but that is only a fragment of their impact. From the stress & excitement of planning an event, to the skip in our step when we feel like we have “something to look forward to,” events begin long before the date itself, and often their impact is felt for months and years afterwards.

“Events are mobile, social, and happen in real-time.”

The royal wedding was celebrated around the world, just as we shared in their loss of Princess Diana – through the television. Now we can blog and tweet about it, becoming real voices in an international conversation.

Today, as we remember the attacks of 9/11 and celebrate the end of one man’s terrible chapter in world history, let’s be grateful that technology has given us the tools to celebrate and remember these events together.

Do you remember where you were when Princess Diana died? How do you think social technology is changing the way we celebrate and remember events? Please – comment below and let us know your thoughts!

Comscore has some great market info for us.  Google’s Android platform made the big jump in market share last year coming at the expense of Blackberry.  It looks to be more of a two horse race and our guess is that both will end up winning the lion’s share of the market.  The good news for ZeristaPRO customers is that not only do we support iPhone and Android native platforms with downloadable apps, but also support every other browser capable phone on the planet.  So, whether you love downloadable apps (32.3% of you did last year) or love to use your phone’s browser (34.5% of you do), ZeristaPRO has you covered.

Smartphone Platform Market Share

Mobile Content Usage

Sam sees Zerista as a “game changer for small events.”  He goes on to say that he sees Zerista as “more than a mobile social network” but also “a mobile communication system for small groups.”

In his words:

Did you hear that Zerista launched a new mobile community for events last week? It could be a game changer for small events – giving them access to event technology that was previously too expensive.

Sam’s bottom line is that “the Zerista mobile community is more of a communication platform than a private social network. It allows you to form ‘disposable communities’ and help them communicate, collaborate and share – while they are on the go.” We look forward to seeing how our platform is being used at events and sharing new things we learn.

To read the entire article visit Interactive Meeting Tech Blog.