In the next week, Wendistry is launching Social Media for Events and is hosting its introductory workshop in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday, September 15th.
When using social media to achieve event marketing goals, consider your event’s three phases: Before, During, and After. Here are some recommendations for each aspect of your event:
• Before the event: Event marketers need to focus on expanding their universe of prospective attendees while attracting exhibitors, sponsors, and other types of show-related advertisers. Social media can help build interest with video, podcast, and blog interviews, as well as social communities. With these formats, exhibitors and sponsors can share information without being directly sales-driven.
• During the event: Social media can broaden the conference’s engagement for attendees and those who are unable to attend in-person through the use of community forums and webcasts. Provide a special area during events for bloggers, videocasters, and podcasters, and allow them to use PR facilities to interview event speakers and attendees. Create a dedicated event blog to build excitement around the event and to provide a transcript. Microblogging formats like Twitter allow attendees to comment on the proceedings as they occur. Ask attendees to post to your photo galleries, either on your site or on public forums like Flickr. Provide Wi-Fi and public computers at the event to aid this process.
• After the event: Social media enables event marketers to remain connected to attendees, extend the impact of exhibitors and advertisers, and market other products including future events. Post webcasts, videocasts, podcasts, and photos on your site to attract a broader audience for the content and to help build a house file for future events. Also, leverage other types of information, such as forums, to continue to engage attendees.
Five Other Event Marketing Considerations
As an event and meeting planner or an event marketer, you must remember that social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Here are five factors that can have a big impact on your performance:
- Invite a wide range of content creators to participate. Everyone your event comes in contact with has the potential to contribute new material and add to the conversation and promotion of your event. This includes employees, exhibitors, sponsors, attendees, customers, speakers, and the press. Remember, they may not all share your perspective!
- Integrate your marketing efforts across channels. Expand your social media reach by promoting your social media brand IDs through your offline collateral and during the event. For example, some event marketers/planners have screens showing online forums during sessions.
- Exploit social media’s search friendliness. Social media can aid search results and enable you to reach a broader audience. Make sure content is optimized for the words your audience uses when they search.
- Encourage participation in a variety of formats. Since events often focus on a broad audience, invite contributors to use the media of their choice to connect with your event — blogs, videos, podcasts, social networks, forums, photos, and microblogs.
- Allow for activity that doesn’t occur on your Web site. Consider that content creators may use public forums, such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as their personal or company sites to distribute their content.
About Wendi McGowan