utilizing social media for events marketing

Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing

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@AliSABKAR

Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

Social media enables event attendees to connect in powerful ways. Social media can help promote events and empower attendees to share.


Though small organizations still rely heavily on traditional marketing channels to promote their events, social media is also an important outreach tool: 77% of event marketers who work for a small business or nonprofit say they use social media to promote their events, and another 14% say they plan to do so in the next year, according to a survey from Constant Contact.


When in the Event Life Cycle Do Marketers Promote? Event marketers who use social media were asked to rank their level of social media activity (lightest to heaviest) leading up to a planned event. Most (60.3%) marketers cite the days just prior to an event as their heaviest social media marketing phase, 26.7% cite one month before the event, and 14.9% cite one to two months prior to the event.


Most Popular Channels: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Facebook is the most popular channel for event promotion: Among those who use social media to promote their events, 88.8% say they use Facebook, followed by Twitter (66.0%) and LinkedIn (53.8%).


Goals of Promoting via Social Media The top reason event marketers are currently using social media is: • educating & informing prospects about

upcoming events (55.9%), • driving word of mouth (40.3%), • attracting event attendees (38.7%), and

growing email lists (38.2%).


Event marketers' goals for future social media use are loftier:

• 66.1% want to use social media to reach more

people, • 65.0% would like to gather feedback from past

event attendees, • 62.9% would like to attract more event

attendees, • 61.9% would like to remain engaged with past

event attendees.


About the survey: The Constant Contact-sponsored survey was fielded in October 2011 to small businesses (50 or fewer employees) that use Constant Contact's event marketing product. Results include responses from 474 marketers across a range of B2B (26%), B2C (26%), and nonprofit (48%) organizations.


Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for social networking strategy and social media enablement.

15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events By: Ekaterina Walter


#1: Registration Buzz You don’t have to wait until the day of your event to create a buzz—it can start at the registration stage. Services such as Eventbrite, twtvite and the Events Pages on Facebook & LinkedIn let your attendees share the event with their networks as they register.


#2: Sharing Buzz Encourage your attendees to share details of your event early by offering incentives for spreading the word.


Make sure all your event promotions include pre-agreed hashtags (#EVENT) in prominent positions to encourage people to start using them early when they talk about your event. You don’t want two or three variations getting coined as it will be much harder to follow conversation threads.


Once you’ve got your speakers lined up you can include their profiles—and Twitter handles—on your website and other promotions, which will help your audience get to know them if they don’t already and even start suggesting questions and topics that might help your speakers gauge the audience better.


#3: Event-Shaping Buzz SXSW has always been active in asking attendees for their views to help shape events, with 30% of their programming chosen by attendees. Without going to these lengths, you can conduct simple polls before your event.


#4: Rumor Buzz In 2009 a rumor flew around Twitter that comedian Dave Chappell would be playing a secret midnight show at Portland’s Pioneer Square. No-one was able to confirm or deny the rumor, so it just kept running until 5,000 people had showed up. Midnight came and went, and no Dave Chappell. At 1 am, just as everyone was starting to think they’d been victims of a Twitter, Dave Chappell walked on stage and rewarded the crowd with an impromptu gig.

Rumors of surprise special guests or exciting prizes can help to invigorate your event and get people talking.


#5: Use QR Codes for Ad-Hoc Presentations Nowadays it doesn’t matter how ad-hoc your event is. Even if it’s being held outside with no traditional conference facilities, you can use QR codes to share your presentation without a projector by uploading your presentation to Slideshare, then creating a QR code that points to the presentation. Print an image of the code and anyone with a smartphone can scan it and go straight to the presentation.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tag/qr-code/


#6: Collect All of Your Speakers’ Blogs in One Place How do you keep your attendees up to date with all your speakers’ news, whether before, during or after the event? With Netvibes, you can use the RSS feeds from blogs to create a dashboard of all their latest posts.


#7: Twitter Backchannels There’s no need to stick to the rigid format of talking, then opening up to questions from the audience. With a Twitter backchannel run on something like Tweetwally, not only can the audience provide commentary on the talks, but also non-attendees can follow along on Twitter. A good solution is to have a screen up in a communal area away from the live events, with marshals collecting comments and feedback to put to the speaker at an appropriate time.


#8: Sharing Images By setting up an official Flickr page and using small prizes and incentives to encourage participants to upload their own photos, you can quickly build a great unofficial photo record of the event, which you can use again in future promotions.


#9: Sharing Locations Encourage attendees to check in using Foursquare at different locations around the venue by rewarding them with discounts, special offers and other incentives. Not only can everyone see which booths are popular, but also you can encourage them to explore locations that they might otherwise have missed.


#10: Open Up Your Event to Virtual Attendees If you don’t want space to limit your attendance, consider opening your event up to virtual attendees. Some events, go one step further and are entirely virtual, with speakers recording sessions miles apart, cutting the need for a conference venue, travel or accommodation. Virtual attendees can ask questions via Twitter or Facebook, or comment on events using hashtags to create what is potentially a global conversation.


#11: Video Streaming Live recording is the keystone to a virtual event. UStream, Facebook or a dedicated YouTube channel can enable you to stream events live, either in whole or in part. This is particularly valuable at large events where attendees are never going to get around to all the talks. If you’re going to do this on a large scale, it’s worth investing in dedicated recording equipment and a separate Internet connection, as you’ll be using a lot of bandwidth.


#12: QR Code Hunts How can you make visiting your booth more fun and stand out in a busy venue? You can use QR codes to create a theme hunts for fans to win prizes. Reward your attendees for sharing blog posts, weblogs and photo galleries at your event with prizes and discounts.


#13: Publish Your Twitter Wall If you have a whole lot of media you don’t know what to do with, try using Storify to collect Tweets, videos and photos and embed them in your website or share them through social media.


#14: Give Access to All of Your Talks With Links to Videos You can make your website the main place for post-event catch-up by using Ustream and YouTube to embed video of your biggest events. This can also serve as a great marketing tool for next year’s event. Make sure you have an email sign-up on the same page to capture interest, and you can even get ahead of the game by offering incentives for early interest.


#15: Publish Your Presentations You can use Slideshare to reach a whole new audience beyond your own website and help convince new audiences to sign up for next year’s event.

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@AliSABKAR

utilizing social media for events marketing

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