Trade Shows and Event attendance on the rise, due to social media
Trade shows and Live Events are not what they used to be.
Attendance is down, shows are cancelling due to low attendance and companies reduce their budgets they put toward them. So, if I’m stated these facts, then why did I title the article “Trade shows attendance on the rise, due to social media?”
Simple, I believe we are about to see a return of the importance of face-to-face meetings, events, sales, etc. Am I saying a decrease in the use of social media? Absolutely not. In fact, I believe social media and new technologies will be the contributing factor in bringing back the face-to-face meetings. Think of it like “cabin fever.” Eventually your body just tells you, hey, it’s time to get some fresh air, go for a walk and get some vitamin D! I believe we’ve just been in a long “chat room fever,” and that we need to go out and talk a walk.
Recently, I contacted a sales lead through LinkedIn, only to find she was about 30min from me. I suggested that I stop by to discuss her needs and challenges when sourcing branded marketing products for her exhibits at trade shows. She responded by saying, “I would love that. I rarely have people come by to talk and it would be a great break from email and the computer.” I agreed completely with her and said, although I don’t always deal well with traffic, I miss the traveling and connecting with new people.
So what does this all have to do with trade shows and events? Social media has been a great avenue for people to spread the word about their events. Reaching masses of people who no one could call or get in front of in such a short period of time. The problem is there is so much to cypher through, that we are overloaded with options. With Google’s release of Panda, which is summed up well by SEOmoz, “Panda starts off with human quality raters who look at hundreds of websites.” Is a great start on getting rid of a decent chunk of the junk that shows up on the first few pages of a search. This hopefully will put the more useful information and quality content early in your search. So say you do a search for, “Events in April 2012 in DC,” more websites that don’t spend huge money on SEO will show up higher in results for provided good straight forward info about their events in DC. You may even find a listing for a block party on your street. Ha, ok probably not that. But I hope you get my point.
So to recap my points.
- Chat Room Fever – Face-to-face and live events are due. It’s time to take a walk.
- Social Media isn’t dead – It will play a big part in getting people outside
- Simplified Internet – Search engines need to continue getting rid of the junk to shuffle through
APG Exhibits – Part of the solution, not the problem.
