Holding an event? Wondering how to best promote it? There is certainly one thing you that cannot afford to ignore – Social media. Social media is an amazingly powerful tool to promote your events. It can be used to increase registration, increase buzz, and ultimately increase attendance. It enables you to reach a wide audience. It also enables invitees to connect with each other and share information.
However, remember social media is a channel, not a strategy. The optimum way of utilising this medium will depend on your target audience and how they interact online. So chose your platforms carefully and ensure it matches these needs. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are often very good options for most.
How can you use social media for your event?
- Promote your registration page on the wall on your fan page. If you provide great content, you can promote the direct link to your event intermittently.
- Create a Facebook event. This should contain all the lowdown on the event. The page means you can easily invite your fans and make it easy for them to share with their friends. You can create a Facebook Event from your fan Page for any business-related events. Alternatively, creating an Event from your personal profile enables you to message all invitees directly into their inbox.
- Generate traffic to your event pages by hosting giveaways for individuals who use the pages to register their attendance. Offer larger giveaways to attendees who post links to the event page.
- Create a dedicated Facebook page for larger events. Exploit this opportunity fully by getting attendees involved in the event by asking them questions that influence the content/ agenda for the event.
- Have your own event sales/registration page outside of your social media pages.
- Add social share buttons to your event registration page including TweetMeme Retweet Button, Facebook Like Button and LinkedIn Share Button. This will increase your popularity perception, encouraging others to share. Capitalise on this by positioning your social share buttons at the top right “above the fold”.
Use location-based services such as Foursquare.- Offer live micro events on your fan Page. Your Facebook fans will relish the opportunity to interact with you live. You can use this engagement as an outlet to add value and to seed your upcoming event.
- Encourage your attendees to engage with each other and share with others once they have signed up for an event. e.g. encourage them to write on your Facebook event wall and engage through other social channels.
- Use images and video to entice, such as photos or videos of previous events.
- Record and post record of events via Facebook, blogs, video, and photo sharing.
Useful tools to help you manage your event
Plancast - lets you know about the events your friends plan to attend as well as other cool events coming up in your area.
Yahoo - Upcoming Yahoo, great for adding your event for people looking for local events and get more exposure
Lanyrd - Great site that has some cool features including: see what events your friends are attending or even speaking at. Find conferences near you. Track what’s going on during the conference, even if you aren’t there including who is tweeting what. If you’ve missed out on a event you can easily catch up on slides, video or podcasts.
TweetBubbles is a tool which can make your presentation more exciting by live feeding Twitter during events or seminars. If you use TweetBubbles, opinions and questions posted by the participants of the events will be over-layed on top of the presentation as tweets in bubbles.
Twittercamp is a desktop app (Mac and PC) that runs in Adobe Air and displays in near real time the incoming tweets for a specific account. It is elegant, and very suitable for setting up as self-running apps on big shiny plasma screens at conferences.
Pathable is an online community and social network that helps your attendees meet, connect and stay in touch – before, during and after your event.
Thrillcall Nucleus is a social media marketing tool that enables bands, venues, and live music promoters to create events and publish content all in one place.
Eventbrite is a simple and popular powerful tool to manage, promote and sell your event. Promotes your events on Facebook too
Bizzabo is still in it’s launch stages. It’s a free location based mobile app for networking at business events. Bizzabo lets you know exactly who the professional attendees are and allows you to get in touch with them.
Are you organising your events via social media? What tools have you used and had the best results from?
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About Lilach
Using online ads to promote an event–how effective are they? Thanks!
Kevin K Lau recently posted..Your Social Marketing Networks Update!
Online ads can help get “bums on seats”. Facebook ads’ are particularly good for that although I would recommend you try the organic ways first before you start spending money. JV partners as well are good, most events these days offer an affiliate fee and this is another good way to get attendee’s.
Thanks for this Lilach you have explained the ins and outs of creating an event perfectly, now to give it a go. Thanks, take care.
David Sharp recently posted..Why I Promote 7 Minute Workout
Twitter: davidgsharp
Thanks David my pleasure:) If you run webinars or teleseminars I find these tools useful as well and apply the same principals:)
Great list of recommended websites. I was just lookin around on Plancast… really neat:)
Twitter: workwithpreston
Thanks Preston:) Yes Plancast is a great tool, hope you find it useful:)
Great post, and taking things to a new level. Thanks for sharing!
Colette aka workfmhomediva recently posted..Want To Make Money This Wednesday?
Thanks Colette, my pleasure:)
Hey Lilach… I like those resources you have shares. I am checking some out now. Thanks for sharing!
John Moussan recently posted..Why Is It That Some People In MLM Are More Successful Than Others?
Twitter: johnmoussan
Thanks John, my pleasure:)
Love using Eventbrite for my Mom’s Nite Out events! They are free to use and the widget countdown is a great asset!
Wendy recently posted..Help for a husband to find the perfect Christmas gift for his wife
Thanks Wendy. I too use Eventbrite, it’s easy to use and works well with Social Media. They have some great widgets like you say you can add to your website:)
Thanks for the new resources Lilach. Going to spend some time checking these out and working them into my marketing plan.
Val Heisey recently posted..Network Marketing Quotes you will find power in…
Twitter: valheisey
Thanks Val, my pleasure:) If you run webinars in the future and need to get “bums on seats” using these strategies is a great way:)
This is a great resource! I just launched my website on my live event coverage service. I think businesses need experts like you and me to use these tools effectively, don’t you? I’m glad to have found your post and I look forward to learning more! – @andreacook
Thanks Andrea, my pleasure:)
Wishing you the very best of luck with your live event coverage service, sounds really interesting:)
Lilach, you give such value in this post. Definitely going to be looking into these sites to promote future events. Thank you so much. Juli
Juli Becker recently posted..It’s Here! Brandi Robert’s Interview With Michelle Alpha Pescosolido
Twitter: Juli_Becker_
My pleasure Juli:) I’ve run many events, including offline and webinars and have leveraged social media and my list purely to get attendee’s, it’s a great way to not only get lots of people to your event but also helps with follow up and creating a real buzz about your event:)
Good article. I would like to share few points that it need to define geographic area where your target customers will able to join or not. How much percentage will be join? like wise.
Because, social media is very wide tool for any event where mass people are available,therefore, it must require to do analysis about each social media sites where you will be promoting.
Each social media are working very different, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,or Google+ etc are working differently despite of rivals. So, it need to analysis carefully when you are making plan of gather traffic.
Nice article. Thanks.
Thanks Virag:) Yes you’re quite right, if you’re putting on local event you need to consider the geographic area and how to promote it accordingly. For example http://www.meetup.com would be useful for local events too.
The good news is that more and more people are providing webinars and live events where you can simply attend by logging into your PC which makes the power of social media even more prominent when organising an event:)
Love this! Just tweeted it!
Thanks Pamela, appreciate the tweet:)
This is a good post. Thank you for all the recommendation and important information. Good job.
Thanks Abby for your comment:)
Love this, great post Lilach!
Thanks Julie, appreciate your comment:)
Great post Lilach, but I think you could miss a trick if you don’t include LinkedIn in the mix. Talk about your event in the groups you are in (interspersed with useful content of course), find events going on in your area and their organisers, create LinkedIn events and use the url to help publicise your event that way, and use LinkedIn’s powerful messaging capability to let your contacts know about it. If you’re nor using this amazingly powerful platform you could be losing out on raising your event’s profile!
I agree
woudld also like to thank Lilach – this post is very helpful – live tweeting/blogging events is something I intend to offer starting next year
Naomi Johnson recently posted..Your Online Reputation Matters!
Twitter: NJJSocialMedia
Thanks Naomi, my pleasure:) Delighted you found it useful – wishing you lots of luck an success with your live events next year
Thanks Julie, I completely agree:) LinkedIn is also a great way to promote your event, and works particularly well with local offline events. As you say it’s also a useful tool to find events to attend in your local area:)
Thanks for some brilliant information Lilach. As you know we use social media to promote our weekly webshow but the other resources you have shared with us here we will put into action when we resume http://chrisandsusan.tv in the New Year.
Thanks for all your support during 2011 and looking forward to spending 2012 on line with you.
Have a great Christmas
Chris & Susan
Susan recently posted..Make Your Word Gold
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Thanks Susan my pleasure:)
Wishing you a fabulous Christmas and New Year too and here’s to an even more fabulous and successful 2012
Lilach you have appealed to my one-upmanship. I receive your information as a watered plant in the sunshine. What appeals to me most is the relevant business structure you present, it’s not lost on me the need for take and give. So I write to say oh yes I will use your information but the proof in the pudding will appear when my success involves you in one way or another. That’s promoting an event ( TBA) using social media, according to Mycybermap.com . I even Brand it as Mycyber EFX Thank You
John thank you so much for your lovely comment. It’s really put a smile on my face and I’m humbled by your lovely words:)
I wish you the very best of success with your business and would be delighted to assist you in any way I can – feel free to connect with me on Skype too at lilach.bullock
Here’s to a very successful and exciting 2012:)
I never knew there were so many options to promote events. This is very timely as I am about to start conducting more blogging workshops.
Thanks Marcie:) Best of luck with your workshops:)
Nice article on using social media to its potential!
Twitter: gsuefong
Hi
Thanks for the book. It’s really helpful.
I have signed up with stumbleupon but can’t find how to make tiny url’s?
Please can you help?
Thanks
Deb
Twitter: YorkFoodFest