Marketing is Ask & Offer. What are we asking you to do? What are we offering you so you’ll want to do it? Ask & Offer are key as we launch full-on into marketing Social Web Week CT July 10 to 16 in New Haven.

Ask & Offer is also key in understanding the ins and outs of the Left to Right Movement. A&O is very different depending on where you are left to right. With 23 days to kick-off, we’ll be focusing the next 3 weeks on the following left to right sequences:

• Awareness & Buzz for the week and each of the 7-Day themes. The Ask: click this link and share it. The Offer: with so many links and articles being passed around, the cursory twitter or facebook link to www.socialwebct.com or to one of the themed days (e.g., Friends & Family Sunday), just won’t cut it. It’s not enough of an offer. Find a hook - a good story, a personal or unexpected twist, drama, fun, bloopers. That’s how you preface the link and get people to click and share.
• Attendance for each of the 22 events (and counting). The Ask: click this link, mark the date on your calendar, be there! The Offer: the lure of the great topic or the star panelists, right? At best, maybe. There are so many great topics and star guests out there - you’re likely just adding to that noise if you can’t rise above that din. How about this as an offer: who else is going? and what are they excited about? In other words, comment streams that show (literally with pictures) who’s going and what they’re all buzzed up about. E.g., twitter streams - as you see, we’ve already added them to the site. When you tweet about swCT events, try doing these 2 things: 1) tell us why you’re excited about it; and 2) use #swCT hashtag so, follow you or not, we can all see and benefit from your thrill. (For example)
• Advocacy from attendees to their networks (phone, email, twitter, facebook, etc.). The Ask & Offer: Ah, it’s part and parcel of our Left to Right discipline to take the movement in steps. This week we’ll focus on Awareness, Interest, Attendance as above. The bridge to Advocacy - as important as it is to convert every fan into 5, 10, 15 more - we’ll cross when we’re nearer. Left to Right is a marketing discipline - in a world of so many great ideas and cool technologies, how do move the meter in the ways that matter?

P.S. if you’re wondering about episodes 2.2 to 2.3, we cut them as video shorts below. The last 2 weeks of L2R we spent with the swCT crew hammering out events and logistics. After all, without the event, there is no event marketing. From hereon to finale Wed, July 14 it will be all marketing all the time.

Disclaimer: These are notes; they’re one way to think about marketing with results. They’re not the only way. Have your own ideas? Share your comments here, or submit a post (see gray sidebar on the right). We’d love to hear from you!