 |
|
| SEMA's Alan Dicker (left) and BlogWorld's Rick Calvert (right) instruct Exhibitor Summit attendees on how to use social media to benefit their businesses. |
The SEMA Show Exhibitor Summit took place in May and offered participants valuable information, techniques and skills designed to guarantee a profitable and successful SEMA Show experience. The Summit featured key staff and trade show industry experts leading a series of programs created to ensure exhibitors get the most out of the industry’s annual trade event. Weren’t able to attend the Summit? Not a problem. The valuable educational seminars were recorded and will be presented here in eNews.
This week’s SEMA Exhibitor Summit installment is based on the Social Media seminar led by Rick Calvert, president of BlogWorld and Alan Dicker, SEMA’s social media director.
Click here to watch the video presentation in its entirety.
A different seminar will be highlighted each week in the SEMA eNews. To see other Summit videos click here.
Google Yourself
To start, Google your company name and the products you make to find out what people are saying about you in their blogs and on their social networking sites. Blogs are still the center of the social media universe because bloggers constantly are creating new content. The more frequently you post new, relevant content, the better chances you will be found by a search engine. For instance, the website www.search.twitter.com is similar to Google. When posting a blog, photo or video, add relevant tag words so that search engines can find you.
A Twitter list can be a useful tool to sort people in groups, for example, by customers, competitors, prospects, etc., and these lists can be made public or private. Listening tools, such as Techrigy, Buzzgain and Visible Technologies, are used for social media monitoring through the use of keywords.
Connect with Like-Minded People
Social media doesn’t work the way traditional marketing works by sending out mass press releases. Instead, social media helps people to connect on a much more personal level. Talk to people and develop real relationships with them. Nobody likes receiving direct mail that isn’t relevant to their business or constantly being marketed to. However, they do enjoy when people talk to them about the things they love; in this case, the specialty parts industry, so be passionate about what you do and help them by adding value, but don’t try to sell to them; that will come on its own.
Use Facebook to promote your SEMA participation. Join groups that pertain to your industry, such as automotive aftermarket or racing, and interact with members. Also, create a fan page for your business and cater your social media presence to your buyers. Add events to your calendar, invite your friends to come and eventually bring the people you connect with back to your company’s homepage or blog.
In LinkedIn, create a group to your targeted contacts about the things you’re doing with SEMA. This adds value to your products, which should help bring more business.
Promote Yourself at the Show
To promote the 2010 SEMA Show, SEMA has developed an official event page on Facebook and groups for exhibitors and contacts on LinkedIn. SEMA’s main goals are to attract buyers to exhibitors and highlight new products and industry trends. This year, SEMA will shoot video of all the new products and load them to the various social media sites. To promote your products from the Show, try blogging from your booth or record product demonstrations and onsite testimonials and post them to YouTube for added authenticity.
Click here to watch the video presentation in its entirety.