Inbound marketing
is the rage; every marketer these days seems to be working on ways to
become a lead magnet and not just a bullhorn marketer. One of the many
ways that inbound marketers attempt to grow leads is with webinars,
events, conferences, etc.and yet all too often they fail to align these
efforts with their SEO strategy. With proper planning, there are several
ways to make events more successful and engaging and toleverage themto
build links and boost SEO rankings.
Any time you hold a major event or conference you not only want to have a successful event but you also would like to build links and win in the rankings. Here are some steps to take before and after your event to maximize your reach and impact by reaching out to the people in your circle with the most social muscle.
Before the Event:
If you haven't named your conference yet, go for a broader title that can attract a more diverse group of attendees and is one that leaves you room to grow. Don't paint yourself into a corner where you might not be able to hold the conference in a few years because of the ever changing tech landscape. The creator of the "What Myspace Means" conference is going to have trouble drawing anyone to his event, which means all his branding and event recognition goes right down the drain.
Use the free search tool at FollowerWonk.com to see the location of journalists and bloggers you can invite to your conference. Reach out to them ahead of time and make sure to give them reason to attend. Here is astep-by-step way to do this:
1 - Go to followerwonk.com.
In the search bar, enter “tech journalist” (http://followerwonk.com/bio/?q=technology%20journalist) or “HR blogger” (http://followerwonk.com/bio/?q=hr%20blogger) or “NYC interior designer” (http://followerwonk.com/bio/?q=nyc%20interior%20designer), for example,to narrow your search.
2 – Now you have a list of people who fit your criteria. What do you do with it?
BE YOURSELF. Reach out, let them know about your conference and explain why they should use their time to attend.Simply stating "Our conference is awesome!" won’t work. You had also better have some media passes for them.
3 –Target existing followers.
Keep in mind that some of the people on your target listmay already be following you on social networks such as Twitter. Using Followerwonk, you can see who is following your company account and also the accounts of your company’s thought leaders. From this list of followers, you can identify those who might be interested in attending.
Also, be sure to encourage event previews with links to your site and post the schedule on Twitter to build buzz.
During/After the Event:
Encourage activities that will build throughout and after the event.First, you must have an eventhashtag. That being said, unless your conference targets a tech savvy audience, you may need to condition the use of the hashtag by your attendees.
To incentivize use of a Twitter hashtag, offer giveaways linked to its use. This will encourage attendees to use the hashtagwhen sharing tips and insights from the conference. To use this to build links, take this one step further by encouragingattendees to post a blog entry about what they learned and to subsequently post the link on Twitter using the designated hashtag to alert the organizers to it.These bloggers, in turn, should be entered into a higher-levelsweepstakes to reward them for writing up a review of the conference. Gifts, depending on your audience and budget, can include an iPad, the Adobe Creative Suite, a Spafinder gift card or free web hosting for a year. You want it to be enough of anincentive that they will actually go home and write up a review.
When your conference is over, that's the time to hustle!You have a small window of time when everyone will still be buzzing from the conference and you have to take advantage of it.
PubCon, a conference that I attended in 2011, had 724 hashtag tweets even days after the event. This is exactly the kind of exposure you want as a conference organizer.Tracking who is using your designated hashtag will allow you to analyze the data and identify whomto go after for more link building.
The first thing that you want to do is research who is using the hashtag and reach out to those with the best blog rankings, most Twitter followers, etc. to let them know about the contest. A sample tweet might be “I noticed you’ve been using our hashtag #xyz. Did you know if you do a writeup of the event, you can win XYZ – link?”
This should fit in 140 characters! Go make it happen.
You can accomplish this by searching for the hashtag in Twitter to see who is using it and how many followers they have. There are also a number of online tools that you can use. Rowfeeder (https://rowfeeder.com/) lets you search for any keyword (in this case, a hashtag) and pull up people metrics for users that mention the hashtag. This helps you determine who the influencers are. Hashtracking.com (http://www.hashtracking.com) is another resource that offers a similar, although less robust, service.
The formula to remember is: Kind of a big deal + blog = quality links.
Make it easy for them! Bloggers are notoriously short on time, so it is best to provide them with content that they can readily use.Upload testimonials, video, images, presentations, and the other assets from your conferenceas soon as possible. This will allow you to reach out to your audience with the high quality assets they might want to include and link to in their blog posts.
If someone has an influential industry publication, industry blog, forum, etc. but they are simply too busy to do a write up, you have one last option: offer todo a writeup for them as a guest post in exchange forentering them into the contest. Keeping in mind that you can only recap an event in a few different ways, reserve this only for the very top sites in your space.
Let's recap:
• If you want to maximize link building then you need to be reaching out before, during and after your event.
• Using a designated Twitter hashtag makes it much easier to pool data and find out who is "kind of a big deal" and who is not.
• Your window to keep the buzz going after your event is small so use every tool in your (link building) arsenal to take advantage of it.
About The Author:
Wil Reynolds (@wilreynolds) is the founder of SEER Interactive, a
Philadelphia-based Internet marketing company that specializes in Search
Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web
analytics. For details, visit SEER online at www.SEERInteractive.com. www.visibilitymagazine.com
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