Below is Chris McCann’s interview with Edith Yeung, a well-known event producer here in the SF Bay Area, about how she got started as an events producer and then specifically how to use conference influencers to help market your event.

Edith Yeung is the founder and executive producer of BizTechDay, an entrepreneur conference where inspiring entrepreneurs share practical business and technology strategies. BizTecDay 2010 will take place in San Francisco, Seattle and New York (you can save 30% on tickets on our Conference Deals page) this fall. Edith has successfully produced over 40 entrepreneurial events and brought over 5500 people together in the past 3 years.

What’s your story, how did you get into the event production business?
In 2008, 10 years after working for many different enterprise software companies (Siebel, Oracle, and AT&T) I left my last corporate job with Autodesk and decided that I really need to find what I am truly passionate about and what really want in life.

Immediately after I left, I realized that I need a new set of friends – entrepreneurial friends. I went to a couple of networking groups which I thought really sucked, so I decided to start my own entrepreneurial meetup group.

Tell me about the first meetup you organized.
3 years ago, I started my first entrepreneur meetup with 5 people at the Hotel Kabuki, San Francisco. I paid $300 bucks and I knew 3 out of the 5 people who attended… I thought it was kind of silly I had to pay to see my friends, but I really enjoyed the process and the experience of bringing people together.

Slowly but surely, I learned and became a little bit smarter about organizing events. My meetup group grew from 5 to 10, to 20, to 50, to 100, to 300 and later on became BizTechDay – the conference!

BizTechDay’s purpose is to bring together amazing innovative and scalable technology ideas and help grow a new generation of entrepreneurs. It is about bridging the gap between technology and business people.

How long did it take for you to transition from your meetup group to your first conference, and how big was your group at the time?
It took about 12 months, my group was about 1200 people at the time.

What is the most unusual thing that has happened during an event you produced?
The first year of BizTechDay – Tim Ferriss (our 2008 morning keynote speaker) decided to come back in the evening and ended up spending almost 3 hours with us just chatting and drinking wine. It was a blast!

What was the most fun event you have organized?
I really like the Co-Founder Matching event I did recently… it’s basically speed-dating for co-founders. Over a hundred potential business partners got the chance to meet in one room. I will match them (email intro) only if both sides want to meet afterwards.

Thanks for sharing your story. Now let’s talk more about marketing your conference and getting your conference members to help you out.

Who exactly are you bringing together at your conference?
Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and investors,

If you had the resources to ask for only one type of conference member to help you with marketing, who would it be?
First, start by reading this post I wrote on identifying influencers: http://www.biztechday.com/how-to-identify-influencers-for-your-business/

My guess is that you are asking about the mavens and the connectors. These are individuals who are in the know of your industry. They are on top of things. They like to gather all the latest industry news. The mavens are the ‘Hubs’ of the human social network.

How do you ask these members for help marketing your event?
Just ask the mavens!  Fundamentally, all mavens want to help. They want to be on top of things. But think about how you can help them. As much as mavens love to help people, they especially appreciate those who think from their point of view. Offer them something of value. Help them to help you. It could be:

• Member discounts
• Group discounts
• Bring a friend for free
• VIP passes

For your marketing efforts using “influencers and conference members” what marketing channel do you use most? Email, Facebook, Twitter?
We used them all!  But one thing I have to say:

• Emails serve a particular purpose. When people open your email, they expect you give them specific information. It’s OK to sell in an email.
• Twitter and Facebook, on the other hand, are for social purposes. Your audience doesn’t expect you to sell or market your event directly (or you may lose all of your friends). This is the channel where you generate buzz and conversations around your event. This is where you put your creative hats on and get people to talk about you and your event.

Can you give me an example of another conference organizer that you think does this well?
Not exactly using Twitter or Facebook, but South by Southwest successfully used Foursquare really well to let everyone else in the world know where all the tech influencers are, which certainly drives buzz and gets the tech world’s attention.

You can follow up with Edith on Twitter @edithyeung.