A big education day at Eventworld today and we learned quite a bit!

After the morning session we attended the Brand and Service session by Jennifer Trethewey. One exercise focused on looking at your own business cards and relating how it embodies the traits of your business – is it a good reflection of how you want to present your brand?  If it’s not, you should do something about it.  This was also emphasized later in a presentation by Gian Blundo. Trethewey also emphasized how important having many touchpoints for your brand is essential for brand recognition and for people to remember your business.

Blundo, as mentioned, presented on Marketing Your Business from the Inside Out! This Seth Godin quote was presented and is something as event professionals we should always remember.  He also emphasized the importance of relationships as the foundation of business success.  Related to this, it’s important to play nice in the sandbox with your similar businesses because you never know when you may be in a pinch and need the help of others.  Another focal point of his presentation was the need to adapt to grow your business.  Just like Darwinism, but more from a business perspective.  In today’s technologically focused world, you have to stay on top of things and adapt as the world adapts to succeed.  Another gem was that “a geek is your best friend” which relates to the previous point.  With websites being so important and SEO (search engine optimization) being critical to your sites’ success, you can’t neglect these disciplines.

The last educational session we were in was about digital marketing and was presented by Rhonda Couchigian. As a PR professional she had great tips on how to get published including using Two Bright Lights for wedding professionals. She also reviewed how best to use Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The key is to do your homework, and to use them appropriately.  For example when you do a blog post about an event recap, make sure to then post on twitter about the blog post and mention the businesses who participated as @mentions.  On Facebook photos work great so leverage photography and make sure to include text about what the photos are so there is context.  Hashgram is also a great tool to share images on instagram (here’s the #eventworld hashgram)