THE BOOZE BIN

By Pia Mara Finkell (@piamara)

One perk of the booze industry is attending trade events with hundreds of wines, new spirits and food pairings. But let’s face it; once you’ve been to one walk-around trade show, you have been to them all. Especially in the wine industry, when you are often working with traditional clients and industries, how do you make your trade show stand out in a sea of similar events while still making them functional for all involved?

There are million and one articles on how to incorporate a social media plan into event planning, when the event is open to the public. For example, you can check out good posts on Mashable here, here or here, or read this free white paper from Constant Contact. For consumer events, crowd sourcing is half the battle and going social is a great solution. But how can you use social media to simplify and enhance your event when it’s not open to the public or you need to target a specific trade audience?

B2B event planners are all too familiar with the many challenges involved in planning and executing a successful trade show. How do I promote the event to my target audience? How do I create buzz around the event? How do I continue to engage speakers, exhibitors and attendees afterwards to maximize ROI for my client? Event planning is expensive and, bottom line, you have to maximize your budget whenever possible.

Social media is the one tool in your toolbox that brings all of these pieces together, offering effective solutions at an unbeatable price: free. Here are 5 tips on how to use social media to plan your next trade show or event:

1. Think Long Term

If you are thinking of simply slapping a hashtag on your event, asking people to tweet during the one or multi-day event, you are wasting an opportunity. Incorporate the promotion of your event into your overall social media strategy and plan to engage your audience throughout the year. Think of the event as just one of the ways to build and maintain long-term relationships with your target audience. According to Jordan Schwartz of Seattle-based event social network Pathable in an interview by Michael J. Shapiro of Meeting & Conventions magazine, Schwartz points out “the best value that an exhibitor can get from a trade show is a long-term relationship with a customer. You can try to start a long-term relationship with a five-minute visit in a booth, but it’s really going to be most valuable when trust and understanding and background knowledge are built over time.”

2. Get the Word Out

Historically, we would use advertising, trade lists and call centers to help promote our events. While these might still be good methods, social media has expanded our options well-beyond the save the date. Since the event is now part of your overall social media plan, you can capitalize on your other social platforms to help promote your brand, including Facebook and Twitter to facilitate conversations before and after the event; LinkedIn and Foursquare to help connect attendees during the event; and Flickr and YouTube to keep the conversation going afterwards. For more detailed advice on each of these platforms, read some more good advice on “Working the Platforms” from M&C magazine.

3. The Social Lubricant

Now that you’ve gathered all of these like-minded people in one room, be it wine aficionados or techie gurus, how do you help them create connections to make your event the talk of the industry? First of all, make sure there is high-speed wireless available to allow social engagement  during the event. Second, if you’re hosting your event in New York, help people in Miami or Seattle participate in the event through a live video stream of seminars or interviews with participating influentials using sites like LiveStream or Ustream. Create and promote a unique hashtag, so attendees can engage in a discussion on Twitter during the event. Display tweets using this hashtag on screens throughout the event to encourage others to engage and give your team an opportunity to listen to feedback. Social Media B2B recommends using Facebook’s new SMS feature to automatically become your brand’s Facebook fan during your event by sending a simple text from their mobile phones.

4. Help Participants Drive Sales

All event planners know it is important to keep exhibitors happy during your event. The best way to keep smiles on their face is to focus on their bottom line and help create sales opportunities. One interesting way to do this is through QR Codes. Not only should you create incorporate a QR code into all of your pre-event promotion and advertising to help promote your event, but also encourage participants of your trade show to create their own QR codes (or do it for them and print it on their table sign) leading to their websites or a sales form. Happy participants with increased sales means good buzz after the event and increased participation next year.

5. Keep the Party Going

After months of planning and the final frenzied days of controlled chaos, the exhausted event planner’s natural instinct following an event is to collapse and take a vacation. Resist the urge to completely go into hibernation. Keep the dialogue going via all of your social media platforms by posting and encouraging participants to post videos (remember that live stream?), photos and discussion following the event. Use this opportunity to say thank you to attendees and remind them of the following year’s event (and dates, if you have gotten that far).

Photos Courtesy of Displays and Designs and Finance and Business Group.