Tag: promoting events

 by Caledonia Skytower

Part 5. Building a network

I was reminded recently of the importance, value, and challenges of building a network when trying to conduct any endeavour successfully.  I could drag out the platitudes, “no man is an island” and all that.  The reality is that no one achieves success on solely their own efforts and merits.  No one.  You need connections: internally to support and keep you honest to your intent; externally to extend your reach and maintain a beneficial presence.  Through the relationships you build, your endear establishes its reputation and gains strength.  It becomes a part of the greater community it inhabits, not just a landmark feature of it.

I use the term “build” deliberately.  I know that the term “grow” is more in vogue, and it works to illustrate more organic developments.  Relationships, however, are hard work – constant work – “one bolt at a time” work.  Each one of them is different, and must be handled based on its individual merits. Some are consumers, some are collegial, some are resources.  The list of possibilities continues.

Social media and networking gurus like to use neat images of connected concentric circles, or human-like figurines in one-size-fits-all uniformity with orderly straight lines to illustrate networks.  I believe that human networks look less like a circuitry plot, and more like the work of Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky.

In Kandinsky’s abstract work, slashes, circles and other geometric shapes overlay and intersect in what seems like a chaotic clamour.  What really exists is a delicate balance of  colour and geometry – the like with the unlike – the complementary with the contrasting.  Each intersection is totally unique.  I think that’s what a network of relationships really looks like.

A successful network is a wild mixture of all the connections you need to thrive viably, and/or sustainably – whichever you desire.  You need:

• Black – relationships that are solid and the foundation of your work within, and your presence without.  These are the true believers who “get” what you do, and support you absolutely.
• Blue – relationships that connect you with valuable resources and people of influence in your area of endeavour.  These are people you can learn from, and go to when you need insight and advice.
• Yellow – relationships with people who you just like.  They do great things, and you can’t help but want to be around them, or associated with them because you admire their spirit, creativity, energy, whatever.  They make you feel good.
• Red – relationships that challenge you.  These can be some of the hardest relationships to make and maintain.  None of us does our best unless we are stretched a little.  Establishing a good, respectful working relationships with people whose ideas push us to be more than we might be otherwise are invaluable.

These relationships all look different.  Some will be inscribed boldly, and others will be faint washes across your canvas.  All of these have value, and play a different role in the overall composition of your network.

To move from the esoteric to the concrete we need an example, so I’ll use Seanchai Library. When the library was just a kernel of an idea, nine years ago, founder Derry McMahon did not just jump into terraforming a parcel and designing a logo (which we all tend to do when we get excited about an idea – guilty!).  She took time to visit different libraries around the grid, and get to know the people involved with them.  Her connections in her professional life helped this – the person who introduced her to virtual worlds was a friend and colleague.

She also took the time to observe.  She asked herself key questions about what she observed. She specifically asked herself what would serve residents in a manner that was not already being provided for. A library of the spoken word was a gamble, and some days it still is.  It involved all sorts of different relationships inside the library community, and outside of it.

Today, Shandon Loring and I maintain relationships for Seanchai with a wide variety of people and organizations.  Some are ongoing relationships that are engaged all the time, and some come and go as opportunity and mutual needs dictate.  They vary widely from connections in the literary community, the arts, bloggers and media, land developers, educators.  We need each and every one of them to stay dynamic and viable.

These key questions will help you assess a potential relationship:

1. What do you have in common?
2. What do you have to offer?
3. What would benefit you?
4. What is the risk, if any?

One absolute requirement of these connections, or any relationship for that matter, is that they be 100% genuine and based on mutual respect and benefit. You must have something to offer each other – something to exchange as equals.  Anything less and the connection is one-sided, and ultimately will collapse.

Continue reading ““If you just build it, They might not come: promoting events in Second Life” (5)” →

by Caledonia Skytower

Part 4. Creating Visual Collateral

“Visual Collateral?  What the heck is that?”  The word “collateral” is used here as an adjective, such as “accompanying; auxiliary.” Another possible interpretation would be “additional; confirming.”

Visual collateral refers to anything visual or graphics related, that you need to promote your event or venue.  It may seem like a real fancy way to say “make a poster”, and perhaps it is.  But as your promotional strategy gains sophistication, and your reach extends beyond the immediacy of your friends list, you will find that you need more than just a single image to get the news of your event out effectively.  You need different versions of your image to fit different uses and promotional formats.  You create a core image, and then collateral!

I couldn’t be more grateful that there was a pause between Part 3 and this post. I was struggling with how to share these ideas without pointing fingers at people’s posters and saying “that sucks!”  The break enabled me to go through an exercise in humility that effectively brought me back to what is really important when you are creating this kind of work: what is the purpose of an image? How and where is it being used?

I have been peripherally involved with a long-standing event in SL that has an established visual brand – an easily recognizable style in their promotional graphics that they use over and over again.  I have been critical of their poster work.  Openly critical.  The graphic design work is beautiful, but to me they failed as functional collateral on several levels.

This year I was more directly involved, and I got to experience the event from an inside perspective. It changed my view entirely. I realized that I had completely misread the application of the images – how they are used.  The event itself is immense even by virtual terms. Individual components of it have to be promoted within the extended event area.  THAT is the primary use of these images.  They are not really for outside use, or social media.  They work effectively on the website because the other basics are taken care of by the page text (see post #2 – The Basics – Who? What? Where? When? How?).   The festival event itself is so large that other brand images (really simple ones) get people into the greater event, and these images help them make decisions on sub-sets of activity. How and where you use your images is important.

So everyone’s first sure-fire reaction to planning an event is “we need a poster” and that’s not a bad reaction.  Next time you find yourself thinking that, try adjusting your thinking to “core image” and grab a notepad and pencil. Start writing down all the possible uses for that visual image and ask yourself if one version of your core image will satisfy all those needs.  Be brutal.

A poster that works well in your in-world venue or at information centres may not look so great on a facebook post, in Google+, or on a website.  If you are sending out images with press releases, not all bloggers or media outlets use the same AR (aspect ratio) for their pages and if you don’t provide images that they can use (both portrait and landscape), they are not going to clog up their posts with what you did send.

There are some missteps that happen when you use a single image for everything. I have been guilty of some of these myself, and some become unpleasant habits.  Be conscious that not every poster/image “fits all”:

• Don’t use an image that says “click for info/information” in an application where it is not linked to anything.
• Try not to use a background image so complicated that your basic information is lost against it (Quick test: throw your eyes out of focus – do you still see “what/when/where” easily? effortlessly?)
• Avoid using a 1:1 image aspect ratio in social media or other applications not designed for that. You end up with a BIG, dominating square image and your accompanying text is diminished and ineffective

Why would size matter? On an in-world poster, residents can move their cameras in close to look at your image.  For your average 19″ monitor screen, that can be quite a large image. I did a quick survey of various SL related blog sites and websites, and the largest images averaged 4″ x 6″ on-screen.  Popular social media such as Facebook and Google+ run to comparable limits of 5″.  Those dimensions are based on my smallest screen (19″) and many people’s screens are even smaller. You should consider that when planning your visual campaign – some people may be seeing your image on a notepad or even a phone.   Keep it strong and simple enough that people want to zoom in to it because it looks interesting, not because they can barely read it.

In all these cases, you can usually click on an image to see an enlargement, but that too can be of limited help. Your objective is to make it easy for people to get to your information.  Adding clicking steps is counter to that intent.  Every click you add, loses the interest of more people.  Social media marketing guru Guy Kawasaki suggests that you keep you images at a max 500 pixels for any kind of post. So, consider those relative sizes when deciding what version of a poster you need based on how and where you intend to use it. Do you intend to promote on social media?  You may need a version of your core image specifically for that.

I have recently seen several posters for prominent events (an awards event and an artistic performance) that had a slew of sponsors, presenters, artists and participants on them. It is great to see that many people pulled together for an event, but you have to be able to actually distinguish their names to appreciate it.  Save such details for a Lobby Card at your event, where you can make it as large as you have room for, or on your website.  In both cases I ran into these images on Facebook and was immediately overwhelmed by their visual clutter.  I couldn’t get them large enough to read all the text. A simplification of the image would have been much more effective. Size does matter! I refer you to the very first post in this series:

“Forget the catchy subtitles, or the extensive explanations.  Distil the essential details into quick bites, simple phrases, and make them prominent.  The other information is just that: “other.”  Once someone’s attention is caught, THEN you can dazzle them with your witty descriptive prose and all the cool people who are making things happen.”

It is easier than ever to create attractive poster images, even for those with layman’s graphic skills.  I myself am a good poster artist, though no one will ever mistake my work for those highly accomplished in the graphics industry. If you don’t have that skill set, make friends with someone who does and treat them well.  You have to start with an image for your background that reflects the activity in some way: it’s theme, or some vision of what it will be like participating (i.e. is it a fun dance party? a lyric poetry event? is it wild? is it serious? are there crowds or is this an intimate experience?).

Choose your image carefully.  Images with people active in them are always the best, but if they are low quality snapshots that scream “SL 2010!” you are better off to go for an image that reinforces your theme even if no avatars appear in them. If you are promoting a musician or DJ, have several different high quality core images of the artist to work from so you can adjust them to fit the venue and the set.  If people see the same image over and over, used for multiple gigs at multiple venues, it can become visual white noise.

One of the most effective posters for a musical event that I have seen is a poster which the musician (who happens also to be a graphic designer) uses for one of the venues he performs at weekly.  He is not pictured in this poster, nor is the venue.  The image base is a silhouette over the heads of a crowd of dancing people.  It’s says “dance” and “fun” without those words ever appearing.  He uses different images for different gigs, all of them good, but that is the most successful one I have seen: a simple message, clearly depicted.

So let’s quickly review:

1. Choose a strong image for the core
2. Evaluate where the image will be used and how many different versions you will need to accommodate different uses and formats
3. Cover your basics: Who? What? When? Where?, and as appropriate How?

What’s left?  One final consideration relates to distribution, and I cannot give you clear-cut guidance on this one.  It is something you need to consider as it impacts how and where you intend to distribute your images: are promotional graphics “art” or “marketing”?  It seems like a silly question, yet time and again I receive No Transfer  posters from people (so I cannot push them out to groups I promote to) and No Mod (so if they did not make them the size I have space for, they don’t go up) or otherwise treated as precious.

If you choose to lock down your collateral to No Mod / No Trans, there are some very good reasons why you might.  My personal opinion is that proprietary artwork is counter to the objective of promotion. Yet, while it has been a long time since I heard of anyone abusing someone’s poster or poster art, I can conceive that people have had those experiences and have taken steps to be cautious.  So, I’ll be fair and say the amount of proprietary control you exercise over your collateral pieces is a choice.

If you make the choice to lock-down the work, you need to accept that you will be handing your collateral to one person at a time, and it will go no further than that one person’s immediate sphere of influence.  Sending it out to groups, or getting people to help you promote by enabling them to pass you poster on to other interested persons who might also display it or share its information cannot work locked-down collateral.

The best marketing is always positive word of mouth, or “buzz.”  If you can create buzz without barrier-free distribution, then you can afford to be more proprietary.  Most of venues and events don’t have that luxury. If you have issues around this, especially when working with a volunteer staff, I suggest you include on your list of collateral the need for a “non-precious” version that you can target for wider distribution. Then pass it out like candy.

Sending out images or posters with permission change instructions is not effective either. Once it is out of your hands, you no longer have control over it.  Accept that.  Your time is much better spent focusing on making your event or performance the very best that it can be, not acting as the poster police over use enforcement.

NEXT POST: Building a network.

Catch the Entire Series

If You Just Build It… is a multi-part series. To catch up with everything, follow the links below.

1. Blasting the Myths
2. The Basics: Who? What? Where? When? How?
3. Words matter. So does how you use and share them

by Caledonia Skytower

3. Words matter. So does how you use and share them

Every time you begin considering promoting anything you will need what is loosely referred to in the trade as “collateral.”  Promotional collateral comes in two primary forms: words and images.  You need both to successfully draw people to support your efforts.  You them for a number of reasons, the primary one being that people are different and respond to different informational stimuli. (see post #1 – “Blasting the Myths”).  So you want to attract people’s attention by using both appealing images and impactful words.

Think about the advertising you see everyday:  “the promise”, “be curious”, “experience live…”.  Those are just a few that I saw easily from my computer screen just now.  You need words, phrases, even whole paragraphs that help people understand what you are doing and where they might fit into your scheme of things.  It is important to think of these words as variations on a central theme, and one that you command.  You need to be consistent: use concise phrases for social media posts or group IMs, those same phrases should be reflective in larger communications.  The shorter words are relatively easy. This post is focusing on what people trip up on most: the larger words.

In our respective positions as former columnist and present blogger, Inara and I have discussed many times how people will organise something and expect that (because they know you) somehow you know what their plans are and should cover it.  They genuinely get upset when you don’t dig up all their details and whip up a mighty mess of journalistic prose to fulfil their dreams of effective press coverage. In fact, when I started writing for the SL Enquirer back in 2010 I made it a point of letting anyone I knew in the virtual arts know that I was writing, and asking to send me information about what they were doing.  Crickets – that’s what I got.  The sound of crickets.  In over a year of writing that column, only once did anyone ever contact me about what they were doing.  That person was not even someone I knew!

NEWS BLAST: bloggers, reporters, etc only report on information provide for them.  Otherwise, it is far to time consuming to sift through all the possible “what if’s” for news.  It goes farther than that, you also need to make your news easy and interesting to cover.  You need to make your news newsworthy.

“That’s cheating!” you say, “they are supposed to be the journalists. They are supposed to delve into the truths of our time.”  WRONG!  Release the 1950s television illusion of the hard-boiled investigative reporter.  Most contemporary writers and bloggers are just trying to sift through all the dreck that pretends to be news trying to figure out what is really worth the time and coverage.  That is a full-time job itself.

Several years ago I went to a workshop a colleague was hosting for small theatre companies which included several speakers on a number of subjects.  One of them was a member of the local press – an arts reporter, in fact.  He was the first presenter and he came in wearing a full dog costume (not unlike what I am wearing in the photo, sans spiked heels) and sat himself comfortable in an overstuffed chair that had been provided for him, took a big sip of his coffee and set it down before crossing his arms (paws?) and saying, ” If you want me to behave the in way you’d like, you need to take good care of me.”  He went on to enumerate press release formats, timing, the need for images, etc.  His opening comment has never left me.

Your objective is to make the job publishing your information as easy as possible.  Don’t think of it as enticing reporters to write about you; think about it as writing the article for them.  The ease and accessibility of your information increases your likelihood of getting the release picked up.  If someone has the time to delve farther, they will.  If not, your information/message still stands a chance of getting out there and in the very form you designed.  85% of the virtual press coverage I get for the things I do are direct reposts of my press release.  The other 15% liberally mine information, quotes, links from what I provide.

Look at where people are looking for information – blogs, virtual media, information and special interest groups.  I resuscitated my press list a few years ago when a fairly well attended artistic project posted a list of the press they had gotten for that project.  It was big!  I grabbed it, researched it with the help of a friend, and it became the basis of the list that I use now (it’s not about stealing, it’s about recognizing what is worth stealing – that group made it public!).  I update the list every time I send out a release, and you should too because these contacts change rapidly and contacts can become stale faster than you think.  We’ll talk more about building networks and relationships in a later post.

No matter how you choose to communicate your information, whether you choose to adopt a more traditional press release format or not, whatever you send should have this basic information at the very top:

• Issue date – when it was sent
• Release date – when it is okay to post it
• End date – when is it no longer news
• Who to contact, the sponsoring organization, an email contact (the last is optional, but I assure you that you increase the possibility of additional coverage if you have a contact that is outside of missed IMs and lost note cards)
• A headline or title … your “What”
• “{Region or estate where this is happening}, Second Life”

Continue reading ““If you just build it, They might not come: promoting events in Second Life” (3)” →

By Caledonia Skytower

Part Two: The Basics – Who? What? Where? When? How?

When promoting any event, you will need to create text and images to aid you in your efforts to attract interested people to your event or venue – to spread the word.  It does not matter whether it is posting or a poster, these five basics should always be front and centre: Who? What? Where? When? followed closely by How?

You have a finger’s snap worth of time to catch someone’s attention.  If a potential participant looks at your material and cannot answer the first four of those five questions in less than 15 seconds, you have lost them.  If you want to attract an audience, people beyond your friends list, don’t make it hard for them.  Forget the catchy subtitles, or the extensive explanations.  Distil the essential details into quick bites, simple phrases, and make them prominent.  The other information is just that: “other.”  Once someone’s attention is caught, THEN you can dazzle them with your witty descriptive prose and all the cool people who are making things happen.

Who and What. The “What” is the number one single most important detail, and should be the first thing people notice.  It should be concise and precise: Is it music?  Is it live? Is it a DJ? Is it Theatre? Dance? Poetry? Literature? Gallery exhibition? Fund-raiser?  “Keep it simple.”  If you are in doubt, say the words to yourself out loud, “keep it simple!”

It is easy to mistake “Who” as an invitation to laundry list everyone involved. DON’T.  Name the venue, the group behind it, the sponsor; or if none of those apply, don’t put anything at all.  Those people who might get prickly because their name did not get on the poster as someone who is a part of it are not thinking about how successful your event is going to be, they are thinking about the glamour of being on the poster.  If they really were invested on the success of your event, they’d be happily distributing your poster and inviting everyone on their friends list to come instead of wheezing about poster details.

“Who” is always secondary to “What.”  “What” rules.  “What” is supreme.

Examples (with “What” underlined) :

• Seamus’ Pub brings you DJ Liam McNarry
• Seanchai Library presents “Tales of Despereaux”
• Paul Barkley Live, in Concert at the Whoo Doo Lounge

When you have a “Who” that is a specific group or venue, and your operations are on-going (you produce more than one event – ever) then “Who” becomes a critical part of building your audience long-term.  If you produce successful events, you want people to know that it is you behind this one.  You want them to see your “Who” and say, “They do great stuff.  I might go to that.”  So while “What” is always supreme, do not forget “Who” and attach it as closely as you can.  Your objective is for people to think of them together, even though they are two distinct questions.

Where & When. Be specific with your date and time.  Be aware that you are trying to recruit an audience from all over the world – different time zones.  So it is important to be clear.

Don’t assume, as many people do, that everyone thinks about virtual events in SLT (Second Life Time).  True, Linden Labs designated SLT as a means of coming up with a uniform time rubric for the entire grid. However, there are those who still stubbornly stick to the central references used in other world endeavours such as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). You can’t please everyone. Pick a time zone identifier that is going to be easy for the greatest amount of your audience, existing and potential, to interpret, Stick with it and indicate it clearly.  Don’t get all fancy by listing an array of times in different zones; you’ll just confuse people. Everyone does time maths in Second Life: those outside Pacific time do the maths, and I assure you that those of us who live in Pacific time do the maths when planning for our friends around the world.

Sometimes “Where” will overlap with “Who.” As long as you are conscious of that, and you have answered the question effectively, you are good.  There’s no need to duplicate.

Be sure that you liberally make available either the landmark or the grid address (SLurl) of the place where your event will be taking place.  Pass it out like holiday candy that you bought on clearance.  Most recently I have been including both landmarks and SLurls, whenever possible, to my in-world communication.  Some of the more specialised Third-Party Viewers (like Radegast) deal with location information in different ways to meet the special needs of their users.

Bottom line: everywhere that your “What” is, there your “When” and “Where” should be too; quick and easy to access. (calendar, blog, Facebook, Google+, notecard, poster – everywhere!) Do no assume!

Continue reading ““If you just build it, they might not come”: promoting events in SL (2)” →

Welcome to the first in a news series and to a new departure for this blog – articles by guest contributors. In this series, and over the coming weeks, Caledonia Skytower examines the ins and outs and dos and don’ts of event promotion in a virtual world.

By Caledonia Skytower

1.    Blasting the Myths

Second Life is like baseball, or rather like baseball movies.  Is it really? There is an insidious myth in virtual worlds that if you create something that you believe is wonderful, and tell a few friends about it, people will (and should) come flocking from all parts virtual to see your brilliance, experience your events, fill your jars with awe-induced tips.

“If you build it, they will come”, may be a misquote from a certain Hollywood movie featuring Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta and James Earl Jones, but there are times when it feels like it is the motto by which many live by when developing something in a virtual world we want to share with others.

But here is the myth-shattering reality: it takes almost as much time and effort to promote something successfully, as it does to create it. Event and ongoing venue promotion is hard work.  In managing Seanchai Library, which has decent and consistent success for a venue that does not have a single dance pole, I spend approximately 15 hours a week.  Four to five hours of that, depending on the week, is in promotion – nearly one-third.  It is enough to make you get tired of hearing your own promotional voice. You really cannot  get tired of promoting if you want to build a meaningful presence, or have more than three of your BFFs attend your event or explore your creation.

There is no one single way to reach people – no silver bullet or easy answer.  Why is that?  Because people are diverse. They take in information and make decisions about where they spend their time in different ways.  Just as there are different types of learners – people who absorb information best visually, audibly, and kinetically, etc – people look for and process news information in ways that suit how they personally are wired.  It is more than just sending out a few note cards and IM bombing your friends list.  If you want to build a healthy audience base, one with an ever-changing balance of faithful supporters and refreshing new pixels, you have to get information to people in a form and manner that taps into their natural habits.  That is your job!

Back when I was artistic director of a non-profit performing arts company in the first-world, we used to print posters and would allot a certain amount of them to the cast and crew.  This is a pretty fundamental strategy, because your number one audience source (pay attention to this!) is always friends and family.  So you want your performers/artists to be passing the word – to be “roaring lions” as the saying goes.  Actors especially, like keepsakes. A poster is a classic one.  We had to keep reminding people that, unless their back seat had become some unique kind of public place with a lot of people coming and going, leaving posters in the back of the car was defeating the intent of the poster.  Put the posters where people will see them!

The same holds true with information of all kinds about places and events in Second Life.  You have to figure out where people are looking for information, and you have to get your information there for them to see.  You have to be clear and consistent.

This is something that Inara and I have discussed many times – how people can be so naive about promotion.  To be fair, not all of them have had the experience that we have had: having both been virtual journalists and had some experience in promotion elsewhere.  Most of us are consumers of such information, not the progenitors of it. So that is how this series was born, and I want to thank Inara for her support in publishing it.

I do not know absolutely everything about marketing and promotion.  I am not even a marketing professional in first-life. However, over the years I have learned a thing or five, and what I know I will share.  Some concepts do not change with technology or platforms, they just have to be re-applied appropriately in the new context. In this series of posts I will share everything from absolute beginner basics, to evaluating the success of your efforts.

Hang on, and have your pencils sharpened.  Successful events and healthy region traffic will be your final exam.

NEXT POST: The Basics – Who? What? Where? When?

Catch the Entire Series

If You Just Build It… is a multi-part series. To catch up with everything, follow the links below.

1. Blasting the Myths
2. The Basics: Who? What? Where? When? How?
3. Words matter. So does how you use and share them
4. Creating Visual Collateral