Strategery

Date

August 14, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

No, it's not really a word, but it's something you should be doing. Most of us are way too busy with jobs, life and trying to have fun with our hobby/passion/pursuit to think long-term. This is natural. But every once in awhile, you see someone else stepping up their game and you think, "huh."

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Topics: Customers, Marketing

Google Analytics Integration

Date

October 31, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Google Analytics tracks your motorsport event registration marketing efforts

For those nerdy number crunchers out there on our Premium Plan, we have an early Christmas present for you: Google Analytics Integration. You can hurry to your Account Options screen and input your Google Analytics Property ID (looks like UA-XXXXXX-Y). Once saved, we'll immediately start using it to record visitor statistics on the following pages:

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Topics: Marketing, Features

Your Car Club Facebook Strategy

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Facebook screenshot by fbouly on Flickr"You have to make a commitment to view [Facebook] as a critical part of your business. Everyone from the CEO to whoever scrubs your floors has to be on board with the fact that these are your customers, and this is how they want to communicate in this day and age. It requires an investment of finances, time, or both. If you treat this as another store, branch, or office in your organization and accept that these are your real customers, your odds of success go up dramatically."


From growing Facebook leads by 4200% comes an interesting case study on raising the impact of a company's Facebook presence to drive actual sales. Replace "business" with "club" and "sales" with "entries" and think about how it applies to your organization.

My favorite part is the emphasis that this is how people want to communicate in this day and age. If you're not talking in those channels, they can't hear you. This is especially true for younger people who are the future lifeblood of every volunteer organization. We're working to make it easier.

Is Facebook or other social media part of your official club strategy?
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Topics: Marketing

Hashtags and permalinks

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

While social media like Facebook is not new to most of you, the nuances of Twitter and, more specifically, hashtags may be. "Tags" are a Web 2.0 method of arbitrarily classifying content rather than selecting predefined categories from a controlled list. The unstructured define-it-as-you-go approach gives control to the user over the server and is the system de rigueur of many popular web sites such as Gmail and Flickr. A hashtag can be thought of as a "social tag", or one that helps people interested in a common topic more easily find and consume related content. It might mean tweets on Twitter, photos on Flickr or bookmarks on Delicious.

Twitter explanation of hashtagHashtags are most closely associated with Twitter but their concept is simple: create a short, memorable string preceded by a hash (#) that can be used to identify related content across one or more web sites or services. For example, my first real experience with Twitter was the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. Having visited India, I wanted to know what was going on and the mainstream media coverage was fragmented and repetitive. Searching Twitter for the hashtag "#Mumbai", I followed a constantly updating stream of everyone talking about the terrorist attacks including many people on the ground with cell phones in Mumbai.

Create your hashtag/permalink on the basic settings screenHow does this apply to you? Last night we introduced a two-in-one feature for hashtags and permalinks for Premium plan customers. Set on the Basic Settings screen, each event can have a short, unique identifier to be used both as a hashtag and a URL shortening service with our new domain msreg.us:

http://msreg.us/YourHashTag


By promoting a single hashtag, you and your participants can easily find content posted anywhere about the event on services such as Twitter, Flickr and elsewhere. These shorter URLs will also fit better into tight spaces like Twitter's 140-character limit and are unlikely to wrap in your emails. Compared to our current URLs, the msreg.us version is as much as 75 characters shorter and points to the same place as the longer link.

Ok, maybe you're saying to yourself, "can I walk before we run?" We realize a lot of organizations still struggle with their web site let alone have a Facebook fan page or Twitter account, but that's exactly why you need to pay attention to these trends. These aren't just for heavy Internet users, they're vehicles you can be using to talk with both the current and next generations of your club. Few things get people as impassioned as motorsports so use these tools to maximize your voice. Start with the easier to remember, copy and type shortened URLs and then start thinking about how to promote the hashtags in your event literature and your social media postings.

"Like" an event on Facebook from MotorsportReg.comIn addition to making things easier for you, we're also making it easier for attendees to share and recommend your events on various services using the AddThis module and, starting today, the Facebook "Like" button. Anyone with a Facebook account can now "Like" your event which in turn may notify their friends and spread the word about your event and organization.

Want some ideas on how to use a hashtag to reach out and grow an audience? This talk by Baratunde Thurston titled There's a hashtag for that from Web 2.0 Expo last year may help. Warning: some NSFW language in the video.



In addition to a social media user, Thurston is also a comedian and editor at The Onion. You'll certainly laugh and, like me, wonder at first how this talk is relevant. But! Listen to the recaps and consider what might happen if you could reach out to a wider audience and one that might not be immediately aware of you but could be interested in what you do. If Thurston can make the swine flu funny, odds are you can reach just about anyone with your message.

Think before you leap but get a toe out there and get started!
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Topics: Marketing, Features

Crossed the 230 mark

Date

June 11, 2013 by admin

All aboard!  More than 230 organizations using MotorsportReg.comPutting together a list of customers recently, the final tally counts 234 unique organizations have held events with MotorsportReg.com since January 2008. With the exception of a few groups who are now defunct due to the economy, we still manage events for every one of these groups. Our customer loyalty is a huge source of pride for us here at Pukka Software so thanks for picking and sticking with us!

In case you've missed it, we announce every new customer on our Facebook page as well as our Twitter feed. If you're interested in keeping up with us, take a look at both places and consider staying in touch there as well.
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Topics: Customers, Marketing

Craigslist Marketing

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

These popped up on our radar in the last month or so - more of our customers are using Craigslist to troll for additional participants and cast their net wider. I think this is a great move because the majority of auto enthusiasts still aren't aware that they can compete in an autocross or drive their car on a racetrack. Those thrilling experiences are what turn car lovers into lifelong car club members, participants and (just maybe) volunteers.

One word of advice: use language that complete neophytes will understand. E.g., "Come to a solo event!" means nothing to the general public but "Race your street car against the clock at Qualcomm Stadium!" is a lot more engaging and understandable to the uninitiated.

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Topics: Customers, Marketing

AddThis widget performance update

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

addthis service breakdownA brief update on the AddThis widget we added in May - hundreds of links have been shared via social media services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more. This is why we're working to integrate with these services - more exposure, particularly via positive word-of-mouth - will generate more attendees and more members for your organizations. People will gladly tell their friends what they're up to if given an easy mechanism to do so. It's interesting to see the Facebook and Twitter dominance here. Is it that they have more users and clout or is it their users are more likely to be (or want to be) influencers among their peers?

AddThis widget expandedAre you using any social networking today to spread the word about your events? Is it working? Let us know what you're already doing so we can think about ways to help you do it easier, faster or better. Leave a comment below or drop us an email.
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Topics: Marketing

Targeting press releases to potential enthusiasts

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Formula RallyX Image - picture by Mike MalsedThe dirt-loving guys over at Formula Rally-X are waging something of an uphill battle: convincing Americans to give Rallycross in the Southwesternish United States. It's not that Rallycross isn't fun, it's that not everyone knows it exists nor that they can get off the sidelines and join in the action.

That's why this press release at Off-Road.com is a genius marketing maneuver: expose your oh-boy-this-is-so-much-fun event format to people who already like taking their vehicles off road and getting dirty. Think about your program: where might you find like-minded folks who aren't aware your program exists and that they can get involved?
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Topics: Marketing

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