Quite a few bloggers have asked me for a referral code to use on their sites. I’ve also had requests for discount codes for those of you who want to promote the event to your community or mailing-list.
I’m happy to say that all this is now a possibility. Send me an e-mail (steph at going-solo.net) or a tweet (@goingsolo) to introduce yourself and your community. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!
Promoting an event like Going Solo is a huge amount of work — often more than what you’d imagine (and more than what I imagined initially). That’s why everything the community does to help counts.
We don’t have a team of online marketers to get the word out there. It’s basically down to me, and of course to what all the kind people supporting Going Solo are willing to do.
I’m a blogger and a busy person, and so I know how easy it is to “want to do something” but not actually get around to doing it. Or how easy it is to think that what I can do won’t really make a difference.
So, I’ve tried to make it easy for you to “do something” to help get the word out about Going Solo Leeds (to your readers/network/community/friends) if you feel like it.
First, logos and blog badges which you can easily insert in a blog post or a sidebar by copy-pasting the code we provide, like these two for example:
<a href="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/" title="Going Solo Leeds Conference: 12th Sept."><img src="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/files/going-solo-leeds-logo-yellow-rectangle.gif" style="height: 75px; width: 150px;" alt="Going Solo Leeds logo." /></a>
<a href="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/" title="Going Solo Leeds Conference: 12th Sept."><img src="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/files/going-solo-leeds-badge-180x260.gif" style="height: 260px; width: 180px;" alt="Going Solo Leeds Badge." /></a>
(You can find others on the Promote Going Solo page.)
Second, the Going Solo Leeds home page provides you with the main information and links, as well as a brief description of the event if you’re looking for some stock text (we encourage you to speak in your own voice, of course, but sometimes it’s handy to know what the key points are).
Third, the videos and photos of the Lausanne conference are available (and embeddable — Flickr and DailyMotion) as illustration material. I guess this is particularly relevant if you were present in Lausanne and want to point out one of the highlights of your Going Solo experience to tempt others to follow in your steps.
Fourth, there are events on Upcoming and Facebook (as well as a Facebook group) to which you can invite your friends very easily (you certainly know how it works if you’re on one of those two services).
Fifth, if you’re into offline stuff, you can ask me (steph at going-solo dot net, or @stephtara on Twitter) to have a box of Going Solo MOO cards sent to you, or print out our posters and plaster them all over your neighbourhood:
And sixth, so that you don’t have to figure it all out for yourself, there are two links you can use to point people to registration:
Comments(2)http://goingfar.expectnation.com/gsleeds08/public/register/order is the direct linkhttp://leeds08.going-solo.net/registration provides some extra information.While we’re at it:
http://going-solo.net is the Going Solo bloghttp://leeds08.going-solo.net is the Going Solo Leeds websiteHappy blogging, thanks in advance, and let us know if you don’t see your post appear in the coverage list soon!
Update 01.08.08: bloggers and community managers can now ask for their discount/referral code.
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.
Upcoming
Crowdvine
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).