Hey L.A. Event Planners!

Zvents is exhibiting on June 5th at the L.A. Event Style Expo, and we’d love to meet you there! Get a free pass to the show (a $60 value!) when you register and use the promotional code PPLA. This special one-day event takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Stop by the Zvents Booth (#530) and Mention this Blog Post and get a Free T-Shirt!

Show admission includes these special events:

10:15 - 11 a.m.
Keynote Presentation by Lynda Resnick
The marketing mind behind brands like POM Wonderful and FIJI Water, Lynda Resnick knows how to integrate events into successful branding campaigns. Matching the right events with the right customers is key to her success. During this keynote presentation, discover the strategies she employed at high-profile events such as the Academy, Golden Globe, and Emmy awards to ultimately make her brands household names. She’ll offer keen insights into today’s competitive marketplace and share tips for the ultimate event business success.

3 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Behind the Scenes at the GRAMMY Awards: What it Takes to Make Mega Events
In this session, Erick Weiss will moderate a discussion with top event producers from a cross section of industries: Branden Chapman, VP with the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Len Iannelli, VP with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, David Finch, CMP from Amgen and Judi Froehlich-Pascoe with Americas, BCD Meetings & Incentives and the eWomenNetwork. The discussion will focus on the commonalities and differences between the various industries and what it takes, behind the scenes, to produce world class mega events.

Panelists:
Erick Weiss, President - Honeysweet Productions
Branden Chapman, Vice President, Production & Process Management - The Recording Academy
Len Iannelli, VP of Special Events, Marketing - 20th Century Fox Film Corp.
David Wellington Finch, CMP, Sourcing & Compliance Manager, Meetings & Conventions - Amgen
Judi Froehlich- Pascoe, Director of Business Development, Americas BCD Meetings & Incentives Managing Director - LA eWomenNetwork

BizBash LA Event Style Awards 2008
4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
See the events that dazzled! Celebrate the year’s best events at the BizBash Event Style Awards 2008. Glimpse best practices and get new ideas when more than 15 event categories are honored for outstanding industry contributions.

Interested in the full conference program? Visit the BizBash site for more information about the day’s educational sessions, and use discount code PPCONF for a special rate!

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Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and Founder, was recently captured at The Kelsey Group’s “Drilling Down On Local ‘08: Marketplaces” Conference. In his presentation, Ethan discusses Zvents’ business model and how time-based promotions are an essential online marketing tool for all local merchants to get consumers in through their doors.

With the overwhelming and startling growth of local advertising revenue, Ethan Stock explores how Zvents is leading the evolution of local search - showing its impact on the advertising industry and what trends to expect in the future.

Check out the video below!

Online Videos by Veoh.com

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We’ve been cooking up new ways to promote local businesses and events, and we’re thrilled (exhausted and relieved!) to announce that the Enhanced Listings beta period is officially open.

What are Enhanced Listings?
A new way to make your event or venue listings stand out from basic listings, and benefit from enhanced features and design options.

By upgrading your Basic Listing to an Enhanced Listing, you can:

• Tailor your marketing messages with special offers, news and announcements and promo codes
• Appear prominently in search results with a colorful, highlighted listing
• Increase brand awareness by adding your company logo
• Upload a video ad, commercial, or virtual tour
• Stylize your listing with colorful custom graphics
• Enhance your brand experience by removing advertisements or user reviews

We offer two packages - and Enhanced Detail Page package and a Search Results package. You can also add additional upgrades, such as removing ads and user reviews, or adding custom graphics to the border on your listing.

Here’s an example of an Enhanced Detail Page Package for Sibby’s Cupcakery in San Mateo:

The Search Results Package highlights your listing in search results:

For a limited time (a few weeks, most likely), you can create Enhanced Listings for your business, venue or events - for free! Join the beta now.

And remember…every listing created on Zvents is shared with our growing 250+ Zvents Media Network partners too.

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What’s that saying for the month of March, “In like a lamb, out like a lion”? While this usually applies only to the weather, March was a great month at Zvents, and a more appropriate saying for our March is “In like a lion, out like a pack of lions”!

In addition to the six partners we launched a couple weeks ago, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of four more media partners:

The Charlotte Observer: Serving Charlotte, North Carolina

Greenwich Time: Serving Greenwich, Connecticut

Santa Cruz Sentinel: Serving Santa Cruz, California

Stamford Advocate: Serving Stamford, Connecticut

Cute lion cub photo courtesy of Arno & Louise.

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It has been an exciting week here at Zvents! Zvents turned 3 on March 19th, and six new media partners launched the Zvents Media Platform and joined the Zvents Media Network, including:

Chico Enterprise Record – Chico, CA
Chico is home to California State University, Chico and Bidwell Mansion State Park, one of the 25 largest municipal parks in the country. Interested in learning what’s going on in downtown Chico? How about where to the country’s largest collection of yo-yo artifacts? You’ll find it all now on ChicoER.com.

Daily Democrat – Woodland, CA (who wrote a great article about how Zvents helps the Woodland community find “Things To Do”
Also called “the City of Trees”, Woodland is known for its architectural treasure of Tudor, Victorian, and and Mission Revival homes, some of which are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Planning a visit? Make sure to visit the world-famous Hays Antique Truck Museum, recognized for being the largest museum of its kind in the world.

Monterey County Herald – Monterey, CA
One of the top tourist destinations in California, Monterey is home to the world-class Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Naval Postgraduate School, and hosts one of the most popular jazz festivals in the country, the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Ukiah Daily Journal - Ukiah, CA
Located in southern Mendocino County, Ukiah is a charming small town known for its grape vineyards, pear orchards and hot springs. Don’t miss the Ukiah Country Pumpkin Fest, where you can see some HUGE pumpkins!

Ruidoso News - Ruidoso, NM
Ruidoso is the largest community in Lincoln County, and the economic hub for the region. There are several art galleries exhibiting work by local artists, and learn more about the Wild West’s more infamous characters at the Billy the Kid National Scenic Byway Center.

Lubbock Online – Lubbock, TX
Cowboys, music and Buddy Holly - just a few things that make Lubbock famous. Make sure to visit the Buddy Holly Center, a tribute to the Lubbock native who made rock n’ roll history, and to other notable West Texas musicians.

Welcome new partners!

And event promoters, that’s six more channels where your event and business listings are automatically promoted!

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Southern California Media Partners In Zvents Network

Yesterday we posted about how Zvents syndicates its listings to over 200 media partners. Following up on our promise to share more regional information (while we update our Media Publishers page!), below is a list of our current media partners in southern California and the greater Los Angeles metro area:

• Orange County Register
• LA.com
• Daily Breeze (Gardena)
• High Desert (Victorville)
• Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario)
• Los Angeles Daily News
• Pasadena Star-News
• Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA)
• San Bernadino Sun
• San Gabriel Valley Tribune
• Squeeze OC
• Whittier Daily News

If you have a SoCal business or want to promote events happening in southern California, listing on Zvents (or a Zvents’ media partner site) will automatically share your listing with all the media partners in the Zvents network, including the local media outlets listed above.

Ready to list your business or events? Sign up for a free account today!

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Earlier this week, I spoke with an account manager from a local public relations and marketing agency about Zvents, and realized the need to better explain a key benefit of our service. She thought the listings she entered for her client’s business and events showed up only on Zvents. That’s when I realized that we needed a post on the benefits of Zvents’ syndication, pronto.

Did you know that any event or business listing added to Zvents automatically gets syndicated to our 200+ online media partners?

Here’s how it works: if you list your business or event on Zvents or any of our media partner sites, your listing shows up on ALL of them. Enter one listing and it shows up in over 200 places. That’s it.

Three Benefits of Listing on Zvents:

1. Your Listing is Promoted Everywhere. At Once. As a business owner or event promoter, you only need to enter information one time, and it is automatically pushed to over 200 media outlets.
2. Saves You Time. Instead of entering or sending the same event information to multiple media outlets and websites, you can enter it on the Zvents network in one fell swoop. Also, when you edit your listing information, it updates all the listings at the same time.
3. Increases Your Chances Of Getting Promoted In Print. Many of our media partners are newspapers, whose editors use the Zvents database as the starting point for selecting featured events for their print editions.

As an example, let’s look at one of my favorite local ice cream shops: Ici in Berkeley, CA. This tiny shop elevates ice cream to another (heavenly) level, with unusual flavors such as Rose Pistachio, Burnt Caramel, and Malted Vanilla. If you are in Berkeley, make sure to stop by – it’s amazing. And full disclosure: I don’t know the owners or anyone who works there – it’s just GOOD.

Ici is listed on Zvents - but because it’s on Zvents - it is also automatically listed on several other Bay Area media websites:

• Contra Costa Times
• InsideBayArea.com (the online site for several Bay Area newspapers, including The Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, San Mateo County Times, The Argus, Daily Review and Alameda Times-Star)
• Marin Independent Journal
• Palo Alto Daily News
• Petaluma360.com
• San Jose Mercury News
• Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Ici listing on Zvents:

Ici listing on InsideBayArea.com:

(Notice the description and the photos are the same on both sites.)

Hopefully, at this point you’re saying to yourself: “Okay, I get it. But my business is already listed on Zvents. How did it get there, and how can I take ownership of it?”
Zvents is a local search engine, and part of what we do is actively search the Web for information that is useful to our users. If your business is already listed, you can get control of it by signing up for an account (it’s free) and sending us a message.

We’ve launched a lot of new partners in the past couple months, and are in the process of updating the list on our ever-growing Media Partners page. In the meantime, we plan to post about the partner networks in various areas of the country. Want to know which media is participating in your area? Leave us a comment, and we’ll let you know!

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