Going Solo

With Going Solo, I’m learning tons about how to advertise/promote something through social media. It might seem ironic, as a large part of my work has to do with explaining social media to people, but this is the first time I’m really actively trying to get the word out about something. Of course, I have established my reputation as an individual through social media, but I never really tried to achieve that. It’s something that happened to me, took time, and sometimes almost feels like an accident. I didn’t have an agenda.

In the case of Going Solo, however, things are different. From the start, time was of the essence, as there was a set date where everything had to come together (and that date is now less than two weeks away). I had an agenda: get the word out to as many relevant people as possible, encourage people to blog about it, to register, or to sponsor. Gather feedback, leads, and even get help. Encourage a community to form around Going Solo.

A new experience for me. I made mistakes of course, and learnt from them (I won’t detail everything in this post, or you’ll still be here reading it tomorrow morning — if you haven’t fled by then).

One of the things I still haven’t quite figured out is whether it’s better to “spread the word” all over the place, or concentrate on one or two spots. It’s the same kind of headache I faced recently with videos: upload everywhere, or chose one service and stick to it? My tendancy is to be present in as many spaces and communities as possible, though I’m not sure I quite trust my judgement there. Urs of ComMetrics thinks it’s better to concentrate on a few tools rather than spread oneself too thin (see the end of his post):

As well, to sustain your competitive edge it is necessary to limit the social media tools you use – using a blog and Twitter well is better than doing Facebook, MySpace, blogging, and Twitter – it just fritters away your time.

Urs Gattiker, unified communications – what it means with Twitter, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us

The discussion is open.

In the meantime, as I’ve spread Going Solo all over the place, I’d like to give you a round-up of where you can find us.

Facebook

• Going Solo event
• Going Solo group (this seems to be working really well!)
• Going Solo fan page
• Going Far fan page
• we’ll be adding public events for the pre-conference drinks and the party shortly
• video of LIFT08 Open Stage speech

Upcoming

• Going Solo upcoming event

E-mail

• Going Solo newsletter on Google Groups

Twitter

• Going Solo Twitter account

Crowdvine

• Dedicated Going Solo social network (for attendees only)

There, I hope I didn’t forget anything! I’ll write another post on keeping track of coverage, but in the meantime you can check the link collection on del.icio.us (includes blogs posts and interviews, mainly).

You know that one thing that’s important for us at Going Solo is to take advantage of all the modern tools that social media provide us. That’s why, for example, we’ll talk about how you can use blogs and other forms of social media (Twitter, for example) to help make yourself known to prospective clients.

And of course, we’re also eating our own dog food. Going Solo was blogged about even before the date and time were set, and of course we have a Twitter account, Facebook group, and of course a dedicated social network for the event attendees (reminder: looks like many of you still need to join there!)

Hell, a few days ago, I even created an e-mail newsletter for Going Solo! How about that?

As you can see, we have no fear trying out all sorts of exotic means of getting the word out about Going Solo. Registration will close soon, yes (I still need to blog the exact date, thanks for reminding me), but until it closes, it’s still open, and Hotel Aulac just next to the venue still has free rooms. So, it’s worth the trouble!

We’ve gone a bit over the top here and taken the trouble to create a poster you can actually print out on paper (completely portable). You can even send it out to your friends as a PDF e-mail attachment if you want!

Enough blah-blah. Here are the links to the files (A3 colour is best, but not everybody has an A3 colour printer, so there are A4 and black-and-white version too):

• Going Solo poster, A3, colour
• Going Solo poster, A4, colour
• Going Solo poster, A3, black-and-white
• Going Solo poster, A4, black-and-white

Now, obviously, the Going Solo crew cannot travel all over Europe this week-end to plaster posters all over the place. So, we need your help. Grab a friend, print out a bunch of posters, and go put them up in strategic (but legal!) places. For added online fun and sharing, take a photo of your poster (make sure the context is well visible), upload it to flickr with the tag “goingsoloposter” and put the link to the photo in the comments or e-mail it to me.

Thanks for helping out!