It’s hard not to like events. I’m in the prime of my summer wedding years and who doesn’t like open bars, dancing and feeling like death in the morning? In PR, events are the bread to the press release’s butter. I recently worked on a project with the basic goal of generating awareness for a program launch. One of the metrics I use is the level of online discussion. With a simple Radian6 account I’m up and running and can track discussion volume over time.

Earlier this month an event was held to celebrate the program and generate content and discussion. The results were modest despite some smart people working hard to activate the offline participants into online action (tweets, blog posts and video/photo uploads). Two weeks later for the same cost, I launched a blogger engagement program. Here are the results about a third into the program.

Here’s why we found better success:
1. I worked with bloggers that I had a personal relationship with (borne from a professional one) that I knew would produce not only volume, but meaningful volume (subjectively determined by how captivating the post is + engaged readers are through substantive comments).

2. I worked with those same bloggers from the beginning to develop the program (they were invested –> excited –> stronger results).

3. The program we developed incentivized both bloggers and their readers to participate in a co-creation project that promised to produce a solid takeaway that the client can further merchandise.

4. The client was 100% behind the idea and was willing to try given the relatively low cost of entry.

5. I didn’t micromanage, but I dissected the results to find the source of small successes and worked with the bloggers to grow them to big ones. (See the second bump just before June 27th?)

These are a few tips from one very particular program. I’d love to hear yours.