For years, I have been frustrated with our industry’s conference and event promotion. Without a single, comprehensive calendar of search and marketing conferences, we’re left to subscribe to every newsletter and publication just to be informed of an upcoming event. Still, we often miss the smaller, local seminars and meetings.
This year, I practically neglected Ad:tech and overlooked Shop.org; I would have missed Bay Area’s SEM Coalition networking event entirely had it not been for a reminder from a friend. Fed up, I endeavored to find a solution.
Posted to the right of the blog is an RSS fed online marketing event module updated by Zvents. So intrigued by their unique technology, I set up an online marketing events group which aggregates conferences throughout the United States and makes them available to us through that page, RSS (as seen to the right), or an iCalendar as I mentioned previously.
Why Zvents?
Unlike Eventful, Going, and other event websites, think of Zvents as a search engine. Not as having search capabilities to look for events but truly, a search engine. Zvents crawls the web and indexes events ensuring a comprehensive event database. Marketers should already think of SEO for their event pages, Zvents gives us another reason to do so. Most event sites depend on user input for venue and event details; in relying on their audience, their database is not only easily incomplete but skewed to that audience. By indexing the web, promoters, store marketers, teachers, and cities can optimize event content with the hope of being catalogued by Zvents. More comprehensive results = broader and larger audience.
Where I win is not only in the comprehensiveness of the information but with a parent/child like structure that allows us to create groups of similar events within broader groups. Groups allow users to subscribe to receive updates and stay abrest of activities. In my case, the Online Marketing group is an umbrella for smaller groups specific to Affiliate Marketing, SEO, Search Marketing, and Online Commerce. Each, aggregating events related to that theme and rolling them all up to the parent. You can join the Online Marketing group or any of the more focused groups to stay on top of only that topic.
Their engine powers the event databases of numerous local partners including the San Jose Merc, Denver Post, Boston.com, OC Register, and the Miami Herald. Imagine how you, as a marketer, could leverage Zvents’ platform to draw folks in store for classes, parties, sales, or other promotions. Like a search engine they are crawling to aggregate events, like natural search, promotion is free.
While I mull over how to use Zvents, enjoy the calendar, I hope you subscribe or even post it on your own site.
Oh! I almost forgot, I even figured out how to translate them as Netvibes modules. Here’s the online marketing event feed and a module as an iCalendar
Awesome thanks!