Looking for some tips to promote your meeting? Check out these ideas from The Forum Effect. I would emphasize writer Susan Nowicky’s fifth tip: “Market your meeting aggressively with regular targeted messages to your key attendee segments.”

But I mean really target. Tell each segment (students, senior-level people, every niche your industry serves) specifically what they’ll get out of it, which sessions are there just for them, people in their segment who will be speaking, special networking events just for them, etc.

And triple-check your database sort to make sure the right message goes out to the right person. There’s nothing worse than getting a message that’s beautifully targeted…to someone who’s not remotely like you.

Is this not the best logo ever (it’s for the Internet Identity Workshop 2009)? I actually did laugh out loud when I saw it over on BoingBoing.

Don’t settle for boring, even when it comes to a conference logo. It all counts. (Sorry, I just realized the image isn’t displaying for some weird reason. If you click on the jpg, it does come up. Have to figure out what’s going on with that!)

Alli reminds us why design and presentation matter when it comes to events (and oatmeal). Content is king, but design is what gets people to the court to begin with. Especially important to think about these days when so many are having problems getting people to show up at their events. As she says:

If the content at a conference doesn’t live up to the hopes of the audience, people will tell you. But nobody will tell you that the reason they didn’t go to your conference (no matter how great the content) was that you packaged it wrong.

Good tips on how to avoid problems when marketing your meeting via the Web. Lots of good, basic advice that should keep you out of legal trouble, at the very least.

How did an event use Facebook to get 15,000 people to attend the Singapore Tattoo Show? Read all about a cool case study on using social media to market an event, brought to you by the Podcast Guys. Lots to learn from here.

Here’s a Wordle I just made of recent posts here on face2face (click on the image for enlarged view). Inspired by this Wordl created from Twitter posts about ASAE’s Great Ideas conference, I love this idea! Wouldn’t it be a great thing to put on the cover of your next conference brochure?

I got a press release this morning from the BlueCotton t-shirt company about a survey they did this month about t-shirts (natch). Specifically, the type of t-shirt people hold onto forever. Turns out that, while the top response was t-shirts people got while on vacation (48 percent), the next highest response (30 percent ) went to t-shirts they got from a business or employer–and I’d wager most of those are related to events or conferences.

I know some of my all-time favorites have come from conferences I’ve attended. One I got from a Religious Conference Management Association conference I went to a while back I wore until it shredded and my husband made me throw it out. One of my new faves is one I got at last year’s ASAE and The Center conference, a screaming yellow number with “my editor thinks I’m on assignment” on the back. It seldom fails to be a conversation starter, and I just loved that someone thought to do that just for us press people. Though I do still hang onto a Grateful Dead t I picked up back in the day, even though it’s way too small for me nowadays (concert t’s came in third on the survey).

So, while they may not be a new idea, I’d say that t-shirt giveaways, particularly if they’re clever/cool/specifically made for your audience, will have long shelf lives (or is that off-the-shelf lives?) for your participants. We may chuck out the conference bags, but the t-shirts will stay with us forever.

Another interesting session I went to last week at IAEE’s Expo! Expo! was on social networking. Now, I’ve been going to these sessions for a few years at this point, and how much more is there to say? But it was packed, as were other related sessions held earlier in the week (or so I heard). Obviously, this is still something people want to know more about; even the basics on blogging still has an audience, much to my surprise.

Anyway, in addition to talking about things like how to use RSS feeds to broadcast show announcements and getting speakers to blog about their sessions, the presenters (Rick Calvert, CEM, CEO and co-founder of BlogWorld and New Media Expo; Jim Turner, chief managing partner of One By One Media; and Chris Brogan, president, New Marketing Labs) got into how trade show organizers can use photo-sharing application Flickr, “micro-blogging” tool Twitter, and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., etc. They also went into BlogTalkRadio, which allows anyone with a phone to host their own radio show for free (yes, I’ve been meaning to play with this for quite awhile now. Anyone want to volunteer to be my first guest??).

Some tips:
To get people using YouTube for your event, they had this great idea: Offer a sponsor the opportunity to buy up a bunch of cheap flip phones to hand out from their booth or wherever, let people record the show and upload their home movies to YouTube. “Costs less than a lanyard sponsor would. Just saying…” said Chris Brogan.

(Aside: All three of the presenters were really, really good. They kept it very conversational and fun, and the vibe in the room was energized. Not bad for just before lunch!)

As for Twitter, they advised that you stick with it for a little while, because it will seem totally moronic at first (I’m still in that phase, myself, but can sort of see the benefit if you have a lot of time to devote to it). It’s mostly useful for building relationships and listening in on conversations your audience is having. Especially useful is search.twitter.com, which you can use to find out more about what people you care about are talking about.

Another tip was to use ping.fm to update all your various social media sites in one fell swoop, though they added that they’d use it sparingly, because each social media site and group should be addressed as the unique and special folks they are, not just broadcast to.

For those who are starting to get a lot of bloggers asking for press credentials to attend your show (especially those wanting free press passes), some ways to tell who’s legit and who’s not are to look them up on Technorati, do a Google blog search, or check them out on compete.com.

While of course it all depends on what industry you serve–some are actually reporting increased attendance and interest in their meetings as the economic woes deepen–most meetings professionals on the association side are showing a little concern about getting those seats filled at their upcoming meetings. And that means marketing.

In fact, according to the results of our survey so far (it’s not too late–click here to participate in this ultra-fast seven-question poll), 70 percent of respondents are anticipating decreased attendance in 2009, and 41 percent are seeing attrition loom for next year’s meeting. Almost three-quarters are looking to marketing to eliminate the shortfall.

I just read this article in Chief Marketer, and wanted to share the link with you all because I think it’s good advice about marketing a meeting in a down economy, though it is more explicitly about marketing products. The gist of it is: “The knee-jerk response to shrinking sales is to focus on growth through customer acquisition. But experience has taught us that concentrating on understanding and keeping the customers you’ve got is the strongest strategy in battling churn.”

How can you enhance your appeal to your regulars? To those who were first-timers last year? Increasing your base is always good, but be sure to shore up the existing core of attendees first, is what the article suggests.

Typing that just made me flash on an article I just read about the presidential campaigns, and how one side very successfully did expand its base toward the middle, even though the candidate had a decidedly core record. The other had a record that should have appealed to those outside the base, but somehow missed in coalescing a new, broader market for his ideas. I can’t remember where I read about all this…if I find it again, I’ll link to it. I’m sure there are lessons we can all learn from the campaigns, even if what we are marketing is a meeting, not a president.

Not since the days of National Airlines’ “fly me” commercials have I heard of such blatantly sleazy airline promos as I read about this morning in this editorial on E-Turbo News. From the article:

Subject lines like “We’re having a threesome,” “We’re proud of our DDs,” “Don’t go south without protection,” “Need some strange?” or “Barely legal fares - from only 18¢” are totally inappropriate for an airline that markets family vacation destinations.

I haven’t seen any of these ads myself, but if they’re really sending this around, the airline has really hit a new low:

Stop it. Just stop it.