A successful viral marketing campaign was really a necessity for Buzz2009, a daylong event held last July for association executives. The conference was about social media for associations and featured a roundtable discussion about "creating an environment for viral marketing success." Naturally, the event's organizers, association newsletter publisher SmartBrief and social media advisers SocialFish, were under pressure to demonstrate their own expertise.

Using a word-of-mouth approach through select social media channels, the buzz on Buzz2009 went viral extremely quickly. As a result, the face-to-face event, limited to 80 attendees in Washington, D.C., sold out in a few weeks; an additional 5,000 people attended the roundtable discussion virtually. And all this was accomplished with less than two months to market the event.

"It was a serious blitz," says Rob Birgfeld, a director at Washington, D.C.-based SmartBrief and one of the principal organizers of the event. "We were deciding whether or not we were going to do this, and then the second we signed up for the location space, we had all systems go. It was an incredibly quick turnaround."

Much of the marketing for Buzz2009 was accomplished via blogs -- on the Buzz2009 site, as well as via the organizers' respective blogs, SmartBlog on Social Media and the SocialFish Blog. Even after the event sold out, the organizers continued to build the chatter around Buzz by offering a few scholarships for the conference; interested parties filed their "applications" via blog posts of their own, explaining why they were deserving of a scholarship. The most creative entries were reposted and linked to other blogs, increasing the viral nature of the show's publicity.

Of particular importance to the viral steam of the event was the name recognition of the speakers, well-known experts in viral and word-of-mouth marketing. The keynote was delivered by Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. The roundtable discussion featured sought-after luminaries such as Guy Kawasaki from the site AllTop.com and National Geographic's Brendan Hart. Because these and other star presenters already were widely read online, word spread rapidly among readers that their presentations could be attended virtually. The buzz continued to build right up until the event: According to Birgfeld, nearly 2,000 of the people who attended virtually had registered that morning.

Goal tending Any group could potentially harness the power of viral marketing. "Just like you would with meetings, start with your strategy," advises Jeff Hurt, Dallas-based director of education and engagement for the meetings-industry consulting firm Velvet Chainsaw. "What is your intent? Why are you doing this? Just because it's popular online right now doesn't mean you should embrace it and run."

You may want to increase the buzz around an event, or increase registration; those are distinct goals. "Think about traditional PR methods, when you count how many times the press has mentioned your event, how many eyeballs have seen it," Hurt points out. "It isn't necessarily to drive people to come to the event; it could be to drive home some of the messages of the event, or just to let the outside world know, for instance, that face-to-face meetings matter." Gauging the success of any venture, of course, requires first clearly defining the objectives.

The next step is to determine where the potential audience hangs out, suggests Michael McCurry, CMP, Chicago-based strategic account manager for event-services firm Experient. "Sending out a bunch of messaging to all the social technologies to see what gets a response might not have a whole lot of legs to it," he says. "If you're an association, for instance, take a look at where your members hang out. Is it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Where do people convene? What's their community?"

Targeting the proper communities helps you make the most of these platforms. "One of the beauties of social media is the ability to leverage -- particularly in Twitter -- the follower path," says McCurry, who has nearly 13,000 followers on Twitter. If he sends a tweet about an event he deems worthwhile, and just 10 percent of his followers find that information to be valuable, "that's 1,300 people who might turn around and retweet to their followers, or post to a Facebook page," McCurry notes. The chain of events is set in motion for the post, or the information, to be spread virally. Such is the nature of social media.

Initial outreach "It's very difficult to tell what's going to be viral," points out Jeff Hurt. "There's not a scientific method to it yet." Even so, he adds, a number of approaches have proven to be effective in his experience.

For example, Hurt says, "one of the easiest things to do is to encourage people you have already secured -- speakers, important figures within the organization -- to help create some of the viral content." They might record something brief on a webcam, for instance, or on a Flip camera; the message doesn't need to be longer than 30 or 60 seconds.

At that point, suggests Hurt, inexpensive, easy-to-use tools can be used to put together a slick video. It doesn't need to be fancy -- Hurt suggests Apple Keynote, with which you can add music and graphics, or Animoto, a free web-based application that creates music videos from a collection of still photos or video clips. Hurt used this tool often for the gatherings he planned for his previous employer, the National Association of Dental Plans. "We found that our attendees liked that kind of stuff. It was very appealing and eye-catching, and you could end the video with your web address for the conference site. We'd also publish the video on YouTube and then embed it in our conference blog, along with a link to register."

In terms of creating buzz and excitement about the brand, Hurt adds, it's just as effective to produce such videos after, or even during, the event. "People like to see themselves, and it's a great marketing piece that you could use for another year," he says. And once posted on the conference site and YouTube, attendees can easily share through other sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Strategic distribution Keep in mind that these sites are merely channels of distribution. Ultimately, a strategically developed message and campaign is a necessity. "Don't mistake leveraging social media or social networking as a strategy," advises Louise M. Felsher, CMP, CMM, event marketing consultant for San Carlos, Calif.-based Ellipses Strategic Marketing. "This is a very common mistake. It's like getting a gym membership and thinking by just having one you will become fit."

Felsher describes the diligently  thought-out approach she recently used to market events for a family winery.

• Careful wording. Felsher used specific words in public event postings and online ads that she knew were likely to show up in common searches.

• Targeted locations. Ads were placed where they would find the largest potential audience.

• Personal narratives. Ad copy told compelling stories, aspects of which were picked up by several food and wine writers and bloggers.

• Photos. Pictures, like one showing the vintner's family dog greeting
visitors against a backdrop of wine barrels, helped to convey the unique, personal atmosphere of the winery.

"The links to the story and photo were tweeted and retweeted and appeared all over the foodie and vinophile sites," Felsher says. "Our postevent metrics showed that this viral marketing actually tripled our attendance."

Felsher emphasizes that the content and wording of the original posts and ads were crucial to the program's eventual success. "You really have to leverage technique and put forth effort for social media to have relevance to a viral marketing campaign," she says.

Tweaking for next time The structure of Buzz2010 will be slightly different, says Birgfeld, though the marketing approach will be similar. Instead of a daylong event, Buzz2010 will consist of three morning events, one each in June, July and August. Because the topics will be more association-specific than last year's viral-marketing roundtable, and because the events will begin at 7 a.m. Eastern time, the online component will likely not be live, but a recorded and edited webcast to be made available later.

One new initiative this year is to simultaneously build buzz and develop content by posting questions in advance to attendees through sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. According to Birgfeld, "We'll say, ‘we're putting on this event, we're going to have this person in the room and we're going to be covering this subject. What questions would you like to ask? What would you like to see us touch on?' We'll be utilizing a lot of different networks and a lot of different platforms. I think that's going to yield some very interesting results."

As of the beginning of May, almost no marketing at all had been done for Buzz2010. Yet, according to Birgfeld, the demand is already there. "We are looking at significant sales and quick sellouts as a result of the buzz that was generated from 2009," he notes.

The success of last year's viral campaign, combined with the exclusivity that resulted from the quick sellout, appears to have built significant momentum for this year's event. Birgfeld mentions a brief tweet he sent in late April, merely telling followers to be on the lookout for coming details about Buzz2010. "People were retweeting it," he reports, "and they were like, ‘Yes, I'm ready!'"