Watch out, storm ahead!

Photo by vgm8383

Social Media such as blogs, social networks such as Linkedin or Facebook, social networking tools such as twitter, user generated events such as Meetups or BarCamps are rapidly changing the way events are planned and executed.

The big misunderstanding

Now what you need to realize is that this is not an option. This is not something you can choose. When you are having your next planning meeting you cannot say: “Oh, what do you think of having a blog for the event? Should we put this up to votes?”.

This is not something you may evaluate. All of the above are requirements.

But you are not talking corporate events, right?

You know I started a group on Linkedin for event professionals. We recently passed the 4,000 members mark, making us the largest, free, inclusive and spam free online events community. I almost had a stroke when I read messages of people saying: “… but this is not for corporate clients. My clients would freak out if I talked twitter or Facebook”

My answer to above is that you may obviously encounter that resistance now. As the marketing expenditure moves from traditional media to new media, in few months clients will be asking you about the above as requirements. They will laugh at you if you don’t have it in your bouquet of services and go to the next one. The Web is viral, traditional media are not. It takes 1/1000 of the time for a new idea/technology to become viral.

The result of viral is you either are in or out. No hybrids, no in between. You either are on Linkedin or you are out. You either are on twitter or you are out.

Using Web 2.0 tools is not enough

If you started recently, well done.

But don’t celebrate too much.

You need to know how these tools work. Blogs, twitter and social networks have their own lingo, tone and manner, rules, best practices.

Your next objective should be to demonstrate with case studies how you used Web 2.0 tools effectively.

You need to fill in the gaps quickly or you’ll be left out in no time.

Your Action Plan

It’s already there, I wrote it and put it in images for you!

Don’t come whining afterwords, you were warned.