As we network in our professional lives, often issues come up surrounding business cards come up. Yesterday the representatives of EveryMeeting.com had the chance to attend two very high profile events, and noted some positive and negative business card transactions.

1. Never go out without your business card. Every single person in a company is that company’s sales person outside the office as well as inside. The virtual reality of business today has blurred the lines between office hours and personal time. So you should always have business cards available whether on the clock or off socializing. At the events we attended yesterday, there were two people who’s services were of an urgent need – neither had a card available. TIP: If you put on pants to go out for the day, be sure to put business cards in your pocket or your wallet. (Ladies who were skirts, you get the message I am sure.)
2. Accept a card with grace. I like the tips from GreatFXBusinessCards.com (we have never used their services, so this is not a direct endorsement of their products) but they write, “Act as though you have received a gift.” Upon accepting a card, you have the opportunity to repeat the name and be corrected on pronunciation–to be corrected on pronunciation after this is a bit more of a gaff. You should also ask any questions that the card itself may bring to mind and comment on the design if practical. The idea is to show interest in any contact’s card, which will make them more likely to be interested in yours. At yesterday’s event a young lady who had asked for a card from a colleague later threw it on the table where we saw it in a plate of discarded food. The young lady was not someone that colleague will not call in the future as he extended her every courtesy, and that gesture was just the tip of her business mannerism portfolio. TIP: When someone hands you a business card “Act as though you have received a gift.”
3. Be sure your card is up to date an accurate. A business card is a quick way for people to contact you and you don’t want to be looking for a pen to write a new phone number on a card when you should be engaging in a valuable conversation with a potential client. Cards can be done now in just a few days, and sometimes within 24 hours, so there is no reason not to change your card when you phone number, address or email change. Be sure the card is readable, and made of a stock that is not too flimsy. Folded, and odd shaped cards might get attention, but tend not to fit in a rolodex or the plastic card files many people use, so what you get in ingenuity, you might loose in the card being saved for future use. TIP: Carry accurate cards with clear information.
4. Understand business card culture. In Japan when you receive a card it is considered rude if you write on it or put it in your back pocket. In India be sure to put your university degrees and honors on your card, and always hand it to someone so they can read it with your right hand. In France, and even Canada today, having your business card translated into French on the backside is a must. In the US it is permissible now to have a business card even if you are looking for a job, in fact it can help you land an important contact, however this is not so in Germany or many other countries. So you can see that there are many cultural issues that the simple business card must adhere to if you are trying to make a good impression and get that business relationship off on the right foot. TIP: Know the culture and business card practices.
We hope these tips help you at the next networking event and be sure to stop back to learn more about making the most of your professional meetings and events at EveryMeeting.com.

Sources for this article:
http://www.greatfxbusinesscards.com/business-card-etiquette.htm
www.kwintessential.co.uk/…etiquette/france-country-profile.html
www.worldwide-tax.com/india/indpractice.asp

I had the opportunity to attend an event hosted by the Detroit Chapter of the American Marketing Association, featuring Scott Monty, Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager for the Ford Motor Company and Sheri Sullivan, Consumer Dialogue Director for Team Detroit.

Ford is by far the leader in the automotive industry with regard to social marketing, and has gained ground not by forcing their way into the media limelight via their mighty budgets, but instead by a culture of listening. Scott Monty opened the session quoting Woody Allen, “90% of life is just about showing up,” but then made sure to follow that quote up with Ford’s spin on social media: “Be there and make a difference.” From the onset you understood that Ford’s social media mission is something different than most company cultures will allow.

Ford has used social media to break down silos between development and marketing as well as between key groups in the company such as engineering, and legal. They have broken with the conventional by letting engineers speak directly to consumers on social media platforms, a notion utterly earth shattering in the auto industry, but that is just what Ford has done. Yes, they have prepped the speakers as would any good communications group, but they allow an engineer to answer in their own voice, as opposed to having every word scrutinized by a legal team.

Ford has also used social media to engage consumers. A couple campaigns the Ford social media team are touting as successes include The Fiesta Movement (http://www.fiestamovement2.com/) where Ford has given Fiesta cars to 16 people in various areas of the country asking them to drive and comment. Ford is now entering phase two of this successful project in anticipation of the U.S. launch of its star European product. Then there is the ability for consumers to customize their own Mustang at Ford’s Mustang website (http://www.fordvehicles.com/mustang/) where over 900,000 people have taken them up on the offer to create the Mustang of their dreams.

The takeaway is that Ford is responding on social media in a way that their customers want to talk about each particular product. Ford is actively listening on Twitter, and using several people on each Twitter handle to respond to those 140 character threads with over a dozen user names including @Ford, @FordFusion, @FordTrucks and more. And they found that their truck consumers are not so much Tweeting but found more frequently on forums, so they also have a presence on many of the top truck forums.

Bottom line to all this, Ford’s perception is growing with regard to safety, and many other metrics over time. Scott Monty summed it up when he said that at Ford, “Social media is not a marketing function, or a PR function, but a customer service function for the entire organization.”

How does this apply to EveryMeeting.com? Ford is engaging in events throughout the country to engage their customers and potential customers not only in the social space, but also in the real space. The ultimate social media, when online connects with real life. Good job Ford Motor Company, many have a lot to learn from your efforts, keep it up.

Engage Attendees and Measure ROI with One Simple Tool

by Greg Alexander

Given the current economic situation, meeting and event organizers were among the first to be asked to justify spending habits – defending their events and their careers. Gauging return on investment (ROI) and return on objectives (ROO) has become a priority, causing a search for tools to accomplish both tasks – minus costly or labor-intensive processes. Audience response systems (ARS) have been used for many years as a fun way to engage audiences. The technology is quickly being adopted to provide detailed evidence of ROI and ROO in support of meeting effectiveness.

The average attention span of attendees is seven minutes (Papp, 2006). Even the best presenters have difficulty competing for the attention of attendees with the lure of technology such as smartphones so readily available. ARS allows presenters to ask questions during presentations, the audience responds with keypad or other devices, and results are immediately displayed. In one survey, 98% of attendees preferred ARS in presentations (Cawley & Culpepper, 2007).

Providing metrics on the ROI or ROO of a meeting or event can be a daunting task. In order to go “green,” many organizations are utilizing online tools for post-event surveys. However, only approximately 10-20% of attendees typically reply to online surveys. ARS offers a simple “green” solution. By asking survey questions during sessions a much higher percentage of attendees respond and data is immediately available for analysis.

According to a study by Davis, Freemantle & O’Brien and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, physicians attending interactive sessions experienced significant positive changes at a rate of 95% more than those physicians attending non-interactive sessions. Imagine having the ability to improve meeting and event effectiveness by 95% – and having detailed reports to prove it!

While audiences love ARS for the fun factor, the true value for most organizations is gathering opinions, gaining consensus, voting on issues, assessing learning, initiating discussion and more. Response technology has advanced to allow attendees to participate with a variety of devices – even from remote locations. Presenters use familiar programs like Microsoft PowerPoint® to poll and report. If you are looking for a simple way to engage attendees and collect invaluable data, invest in ARS.

Greg Alexander is Market Manager – Government for Turning Technologies, the global leader of audience response solutions. Contact Greg directly at galexander@turningtechnologies.com or 330.884.6078, or visit the Turning Technologies website at www.TurningTechnologies.com.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ — One problem always facing the 40,000+ professional associations and organizations is getting more people to their meetings and events. In an effort to make life easier for association meeting planners, software developer RB Systems, Inc. launched EveryMeeting.com(TM), a place where associations can post their meetings and events, including speaker information and link to a contact person or website for further follow-through. EveryMeeting.com also allows for the posted meetings to be spread virally on over 150+ social media outlets. Individuals looking for meetings or events can easily search by profession as well as geography.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091027/DE99336LOGO)

RB Systems was supported by mentors in business development available through the Ann Arbor SPARK new business incubator, which is partially funded by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The launch took place at the Michigan Meeting and Event Expo this week in Plymouth, Michigan.

Today’s economic climate has put a lot of pressure on associations to retain members who might have had their memberships previously paid by their employers. Conversely, professionals who were in one career field that suffered job losses might be entertaining career changes and are now looking for the professional connections that associations provide at their meetings, events and trade shows. EveryMeeting.com will provide that connection from associations to professionals, who might not even be aware of a particular association, through an easy to use search mechanism that includes a geography search, Google Maps, links to the association home page and more. Even web based meetings and seminars can be included. And after posting, an association member can use various social media links to easily spread their meeting on Twitter, Facebook, Digg or over 150+ social media outlets.

For as little as $4.99, meeting organizers can post a meeting and attract new possible attendees. Annual memberships are only $29.99 and associations can list as many meetings as they would like for one entire calendar year.

About RB Systems, Inc.

RB Systems, Inc. is an Ann Arbor, Michigan based company started in 2004 as a contracting database firm. With over 25 years of software development experience, the principles in the firm continue to stretch their limits to increase database performance and security.

Since the economic collapse one year ago, many companies have changed their attitudes towards face-to-face meetings. The reasons vary but they are mainly due to internal/external budget cuts, downsizing and the overall impression it gives ether their stockholders or the general public.

With the economy starting to rebound things may are changing – and with good reason.

Just read what the Wall Street Journal had to say in a recent piece by Joe Mullich:

In a new study by Oxford Economic, a global research firm, provides clear evidence that business travel directly leads to an increase in both corporate revenue and profits. The study found that every dollar invested in business travel results in $12.50 in added revenues and $3.80 in new profits.

The article went on to state that “…Adam Sacks, managing director of Oxford Economics USA said “The research informs us that when a company reduces its travel budget, it loses both revenue and profits, giving competitors a real advantage.” The study indicates that if a company eliminated its business travel, corporate profits would drop 17 percent in the first year. “And it would take more than three years for profits to reach the same level as before the travel budget cuts,”

This is great news for the meeting and events business, not only in the United States but worldwide. That translates to good news for the independent meeting planners, agent and the industry as a whole.

It is nothing new to learn that face-to-face meetings are the most effective means to communicate with your customers. Survey after survey has proven that face-to-face meetings are most important when negotiating important contracts, interviewing for management positions, meeting new clients and networking. If you want to increase sales, improve your relationship with current or new clients, become educated on an industries product or service or close a sale – face-to-face meetings is the number one way to improve your chances in doing so.

If you would like a copy of the aforementioned article please send an email to info@face2facetravel.biz with the word WSJ ARTICLE in the Subject line.

About Face2FaceTravel

Whether you are looking to book a one day meeting for five people or a multi-day day, 250 person sales conferences, the professionals at Face2FaceTravel can research, execute and manage your meeting or event. Personalized attendee registration, one-stop hotel booking, site selection, contract negotiation and access to a variety of suppliers are all part of the Face2FaceTravel way of handling your corporate meeting or event. Visit us on the web at www.face2facetravel.biz, read our blog at http://face2facetravel.blogspot.com/ and join us at Twitter at http://twitter.com/f2ftravelbiz

Any good business idea begins as a solution to a problem. So when we sat on the board of various professional associations and hobby groups the issue we encountered most often was HOW TO MARKET OUR MEETINGS and events.

And our lives are so busy, how do we find the RIGHT professional meetings, charity events or informational seminars that help us as opposed to bore us horribly.

For instance a local chapter of an association wants to attract new members and decides to conduct a meeting about how GREEN tactics are changing their industry, but does not have a huge budget, is composed of members with professional positions other than the association which take priority and they are not the biggest association in the area. To promote their meetings they post it on their website calendar of events, send out emails to past participants, list a mention in the local paper and tell a few people about it. They tend to get about the same number of people as they did for the last meeting, if not less. If someone is new in town and does not know their association exists, but might be interested in the GREEN topic, how do they really find out that this meeting is happening on Thursday about 14 miles away at 6PM?

EveryMeeting simply tries to connect those interested with their topic of interest to meetings and events that target that interest.

We also want to keep the site simple and easy to use, but we want to incorporate as many technologies as we can. So we have enabled meetings to be linked to social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Digg at the click of a mouse.

Originally we wanted people to be able to post meetings for FREE, but our attorney had some issues with that as we want to be sure all meetings are legitimate. So instead we made the cost very low, an annual membership to post as many meetings as an organization wishes (by a single assigned user) is less than the price of a logo’d golf shirt. We will use the proceeds to keep the technology up to date, and to add new features, but most importantly to help market and promote your meetings and events.

We also wanted to help associations and organizations make their meetings more functional, enjoyable and interesting, so we will provide tips from meeting and event professionals to help liven up those meetings.

But first and foremost this site is about YOU, the user. Thank you for entering our community, feel free to kick the tires and tell us what you think, and we will try to incorporate your comments in order to make the site better and delivering upon your needs.