Has it really been three months since my last post on A Wider Net? That doesn’t seem possible… It feels like yesterday! Time really flies when you’re on Twitter. Dang… now you know where I’ve been hanging out… Twitter. To be fair, that’s just where I burned the microblog-sized moments that fit neatly in the cracks I could still find between work and life. The real reason I’ve been quiet for the past few months, and why the posts were getting less frequent even before then, is because I’ve changed roles at Cramer in a pretty major way. After two decades of work in the engineering, design, and technology research areas of events, digital marketing, and attractions, I have decided to pack up what I have learned and apply it on the front lines as part of Cramer’s Account Management team. I still keep my eye on emerging technology and services that will benefit the industry, but I am not able to write about them in detail any longer. There simply isn’t time with everything that’s going on in the Digital Marketing and Events world these days. What’s going on? Good question! I’ll explain in a moment.
First, I would like you to know what we’re doing with A Wider Net, because it’s really quite exciting. When we first launched A Wider Net, we intended to feature multiple voices from within the Cramer organization. With all these creative maniacs working in video, print, digital, events, animation, and presentation graphics you can probably imagine that we have many interesting perspectives to share with marketers and communications professionals. For a variety of reasons, we settled into a largely one-person blog. That is changing as of this moment. Moving forward you will hear from a variety of people representing expertise and experience in digital marketing, video and event production, social media, webcasting and virtual events. There will be special guests from other disciplines, and I’m sure the topics will wander into some interesting new directions along the way. Some of these new voices are seasoned bloggers – far more so than I am. Most are active on Twitter. They will introduce themselves as they appear. We will still bring you new ideas, technology, services, and conversation centered around marketing and communications. Insert “A Wider Net”-flavored pun here.
Back to the answer to “what’s going on?” A lot – far more than I can write about in one post. Here’s a few highlights:
Social media has captured a massive amount of attention, of course. Companies are leveraging the power of communities (new and existing) like never before to build relationships, spread information, learn about customers needs, and share ideas. Corporate events are seldom held without some sort of social media component – often the result of attendee-led efforts. Social Media tools that help augment an event experience are cropping up daily – helping attendees communicate, share content, express their opinions, and get more out of their investment in time. Some of my favorite tools allow attendees to use their mobile devices to submit comments, questions, and images to create interactive social experiences.
Virtual Events are taking off (finally) as an alternative or augmentation to face to face events. They’re taking many different forms but typically involve webcasts at the core. The nice part is that more attention is being paid to social networking and social media – that is key to making them engaging, effective, and exciting. Face to face events will scale back this year, and the introduction of virtual events to the mix will be very healthy for companies. Moving forward, we expect to see event marketers and communications professionals use a blend of face to face and virtual events to reach more people and spread the communication lifespan out across the year. The challenge now is to educate event teams on how the content needs to change to better suit an online audience. This is where we have been spending a lot of time lately.
Mobile technologies are getting more and more relevant to events. Increasingly, events can depend on audience members having the ability to send text messages (for polling, Q&A, promo activation, or social interaction), send photos, and access content through a functional web browser. Audience response systems may still be necessary for some shows, but with decreasing frequency. Custom applications for mobile devices that cater to a specific event or brand promotion are providing users considerable added value while grabbing mobile mindshare and mobile desktop space for the brand or event.
That’s enough for now. Thanks for your patience these past few months. Those of you who subscribe to our RSS feed: We appreciate you sticking with us!