There’s a reason why event planning is considered a specialty:It requires good organization and detail orientation, along with some savviness about venues, catering, speakers, and other logistics. But when done right, it can do wonders for your business’s growth prospects. 

There’s almost no such thing as too much planning. The best plans start with well-defined objectives: Decide exactly what you want your target group of attendees to do after the event, and the rest of the planning should fall in place from there. 

And that relates to another important bit of planning: the guest list. Early in your planning, take a good look at your list of contacts to see whether you have enough of them to match your target demographic. Consider buying a list for this purpose, or partnering with other entities that have the connections you seek.

The next bit of planning concerns the budget, which you want to make sure to be as precise as possible about. Knowiing exactly how much you can spend will determine how much you have to do yourself or contract out. Ideally, you want to bring in outside help for as much of the work as possible. At the very least, consider outsourcing the registration and logistical aspects of the event. Hire a specialist in this area, preferrably a local entity.

Regardless of whether you do the planning yourself or work with a third party, make sure you choose a venue that has good parking and, if appropriate for your target demographic, access to mass transit. Of course, you will be visiting a lot of places (and perhaps sampling a lot of cuisine if you’re planning an event with food) before deciding on a location. Depending on your budget and target demographic, you could seek out sponsors to cover the cost of food and beverages in exchange for some branding space at your event.

If your event includes speakers, make sure to give them plenty of information about the kind of presentation you are expecting. Offer to help support them in their preparation for the event, including provision of multimedia capabilities, if appropriate.

As the day of the event approaches, send out reminders to people who have said they are coming, along with people who either haven’t committed yet or who are on the fence. If possible, call important (would-be) attendees to remind them of the event. The same goes for speakers, but again, only if time permits.

Social media afficionados love to talk about tapping into the power of influencers, which means what it sounds like: individuals whose social media profiles not only have strong followings but also have the demonstrated ability to convince others of their opinions. As such they represent the holy grail of marketing: word-of-mouth.

Who you choose as your target influencers is just as important as how you engage with them. A growing category of software can guide you through the process of finding people to reach out to. Klout is the best known of these, but others in the space include Twylah, TwentyFeet, Peer Index, SproutSocial, and CrowdBooster.

Communicating with influencers is a lot like public relations, only using social media. Keep that similarity in mind when setting goals for influencer outreach. As with any form of marketing, the more precisely you fine tune your objectives and measure performance, the better. Be realistic about the number of online personalities you choose to reach out to, and how much resources you wish to commit to engaging with them. Depending on the size of your brand or business, you could focus on your 30 to 50 main influencers and allocate your budget on engaging with them.

However, if you don’t have the wherewithal to identify and in engage with influencers yourself, this is an area well worth investing in outside expertise. To learn more about how this type of marketing can help grow your business, please email freeconsultation@ticular.com.

People who don’t work in business development might think it’s more glamorous than it really is, consisting entirely of wining and dining current and potential clients. In reality, bizdev can be a grind. It involves travel to spots that are far from cosmopolitan, and requires cold calls, rejection, and the application of the law of large numbers. And it demands that you come up with your own ideas to make a difference for the client if your company has either failed to carve a unique niche or offers the exact same thing as any competitor does.

But that doesn’t mean you should abandon all hope for bizdev. We have learned about the practice from some of the best in the business, and also cultivated some of our own successful tactics. We’re about to share with you seven of the best-kept secrets to business development. Learn them and you can expand your company’s horizons.

Some of the best advice we’ve seen remains underused. So if you embrace the following seven tips to the fullest, you’ll be ahead of the competition. 

1. Think like a professional designer, even if you can’t afford one yet.

2. Use consistency and attention to detail to make your business more visible and accessible.

3. Get your ego out of your marketing materials: Be your own customer advocate.

4. Re-purpose existing content in creative ways to attract more prospects.

5. Take what you already know and turn it into an information product.

6. Practice strategic giving –- and read The $100 Startup.

7. Explore joint ventures with people who see your customers before they come to you.

What is it about a juicy business ethics scandal that grabs so many headlines?

Partly, it’s a guilty pleasure – it’s hard to look away when corrupt corporations or high-profile chief executives get busted in public. We boil over with righteous anger (if not a little jealousy) when power players score eight or nine-figure paydays at the expense of countless “little people” who wind up broke, dead or terminally ill.

Ethical horror stories like these can be instructive, but they’re also dangerous.

The bigger the scandal, the more imaginary distance it puts between the perpetrator and the small choices the average person makes on a daily basis. Who’s going to be hurt by that extra ten bucks on the expense report? It’s not like we’re jetting off to the Caribbean with a widow’s life savings. Most of us would never consider crossing an ethical line like that.

Or so we think.

One problem with that assumption is that few of us ever get close to a line that big, so we don’t really know for sure what might push us over it. The other is that decisions that big are rarely made in one step. They usually result from a series of tiny compromises made over a long period of time.

In his classic business book The Success Principles, Jack Canfield makes a down to earth case for being what he calls “a class act.” You and I have no control over what the fat cats get away with on Wall Street or Capitol Hill, but we do control the choices we make and the commitments we keep. Trust is eroded between coworkers and business partners every day in hundreds of little ways that never make the headlines, but they add up to big long term impacts on success and relationships.

Authors like Zig Ziglar, Stephen R. Covey, Andy Andrews and Miguel Ruiz offer similar ideas on what it means to be a class act. Here’s a sample of some of their best advice on ethics:

1. The simple truth works best.
2. If you make an appointment, show up.
3. If you can’t show up, show respect and call.
4. Keep your commitments and don’t promise things you can’t deliver.
5. If you can’t keep your commitment, do what you can to make it right.
6. Do the right thing, even when it’s the hard thing.
7. Acknowledge and thank people who invest time and effort to be of service to you – even the acknowledgement of an email can brighten the day.
The business world can be a tough place and commitments get broken. While there are some narcissists and sociopaths out there who try to game the system, usually the other party is someone like us who’s just doing the best they know how. What can you do when people break their commitments to you?

If it’s an isolated incident, try these repair tactics:

1. Confront the issue factually and directly, but with balance and respect.
2. Propose solutions based on shared interests, not opposing positions.
3. Put metrics in place to keep track of promises and results.
4. If real amends have been made, accept them and move on.
5. Forgiveness doesn’t mean accepting similar behavior in the future. A pattern of broken trust probably means it’s time to ditch the relationship, even if it’s a customer or a boss.

Author and speaker Andy Andrews suggests that instead of asking if a choice is “wrong” we should ask ourselves if it’s WISE. Each incremental step we take away from the place we recognize as our ethical center is one step closer to crossing a line that may become irreversible and carry unintended consequences. Keeping small promises to ourselves and others is the key to success and self respect.

Questions: How have you or your colleagues been affected when someone compromised their business ethics? What solution did you find and how did the parties benefit from it?

Some get hooked on marketing automation while others obsess about metrics or branding. While all of them can improve performance, none should take priority over the need to interact with customers and influencers.

Interaction is necessary to help your target market  retain the information that you provide. In the era of mobile digital communication, we are flooded with data, to the point that it’s hard to remember any of it for very long. When one first encounters information, it enters short-term memory, where it risks being usurped by the next set of data to come in. In fact, short-term memory can hold about seven items for no more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. However, each time information is repeated or used, the more likely it is committed to long-term memory. Interaction reinforces information and will help your target group to remember the information that you want them to retain.

Prioritize Interaction Online and Offline

To initiate interaction online, you need good content. Here are a few ways to improve what you post on the Internet.

• Use your unique background to provide an original approach to known challenges in your field.
• Determine the most relevant keywords for your area of expertise and make a point of (re-) using them.
• Keep sharing your highly original and useful content over multiple communication channels that are utilized by your most important influencers and decision makers.
• A useful acronym to guide how to structure your communications is AIDA, which stands for: Attention; Interest; Desire; Action.
• Watch out for comments and respond in a timely fashion.
• Make sure that you include contact data with your content to facilitate action.
• Ensure that inquiries receive immediate response.
• Offer incentives to encourage an ongoing dialogue.

Network Offline

To initiate interaction offline, you could attend networking events. Make sure beforehand that you:

• Identify the people you would like to meet there;
• Determine what you’d like to be the outcome of meeting them;
• Do your research so you know which topics they are interested in;
• If you haven’t met them before, identify the people who could introduce you;
• Make sure that you look and act professional – refrain from fragrances (Allergens);
• Have business cards with you that include services or products you offer;
• Follow up within 48 hours with an acknowledgement;
• If you are going to attend another networking event related to their interest; contact them.

Make these things your priority in 2013 and all of the other aspects of marketing will be a breeze.

The most popular Google searches in 2012 were:

1. Whitney Houston
2. Gangnam Style
3. Hurricane Sandy
4. iPad 3
5. Diablo 3
6. Kate Middleton
7. Olympics 2012
8. Amanda Todd
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. BBB12

Walmart outperforms all other U.S. brands on Facebook, according to the latest report on the topic by Socialbakers..

This jibes with what we’ve previously said about Walmart, which for over a year has outranked other brands in Facebook engagement. Runner-up Samsung also also has more fan interaction than all but one brand.

Note, however, that Socialbakers‘ definition of brands excludes entertainers and celebrities, many of whom enjoy more engagement than any brand included in the report.

Actually, the most engaging pages on Facebook have a religious focus: Jesus Daily in particular has held the top spot in engagement rankings for over a year and a half, and during this period of time another five theologically focused pages have remained in the top 20.

So, does that mean Jesus Daily is a better role model than Walmart? Both merit at least some attention, if not full emulation. Liking their pages on Facebook will enable you to receive updates that will give you ideas on how to improve your own page engagement.

That said, a copy of Socialbakers’ report on Facebook page performance appears below. Let us know what you think in the comments section beneath this post.