Giving Your Fans a Megaphone...
Enabling Technologies and Ellie Vollerthum have taken the The "Raving Fan" Strategy... and made it their own.
What's the Raving Fan?
It's about flipping your event from a 1-way broadcast of you talking AT your event attendees to creating a conversation AMONG your customers.
She writes:
Hi Jeremy, Our Raving fan at the September 28th event featured Howard Hughes Medical Institute with 4 people coming from their organization. They were speaking highly of our services because they presently use us for Email Archiving. They have already engaged us for a large Office Communications Server/Unified Messaging implementation. So the event was a success ( even though I would have preferred more than 18 people attending!).
I would give this event a “B” compared to the “almost cancelled” Philly event. The Philly event had only 4 organizations ( 10 people) but they were large firms ( Wyeth, Virtua Health, Air Products and Sungard Higher Education) but I would rate that event an “A” because it was very interactive, lots of discussion and you could tell the TDM’s there were very engaged. We should get lots of business from this one! Luckily, you guys talked me out of cancelling. It goes to show you quality is better than quantity sometimes!
So, let your customers tell the stories for you and just facilitate the interaction. Well done, Ellie!
Along these lines, check out my Give 'em a Megaphone Lens on Squidoo.