Social Media can make an event or conference go from good to great with a little planning and effort. Here are a few simple tips and an infographic to make it easier to execute your social media event promotion strategy.
Make Social Sharing Easy
Make it really easy for people to share information about your event on social media. Add social sharing buttons to your website and include QR codes that will load promotional tweets. Consider making a video greeting that can be shared on Facebook, Google Plus, etc..
Discounts and Contests
Everyone loves a good deal and winning prizes. Design a combination of discounts and contests to engage participants and give them an incentive to help get the word out. Make sure to include a hashtag (#tag) when announcing discounts, contests and winners. If possible get influential speakers and participants on board. Ask them to promote the event or conference to their followers, network and email list.
Leverage Storytelling
Storytelling is an extremely powerful way to engage and connect with potential participants. This can be as simple as asking speakers a couple questions and then converting it into an email transcript or blog post. If you have the time and resources planning a webinar with a few speakers is one of the most powerful methods to build interest and tell a compelling story. You can also record the webinar, edit it into short video clips to share via social media.
During the Event
Promoting communication via social media during an event is an import component of driving registrations for your next event. Before the event make sure you have adequate wifi for participants! If possible display a Twitter feed at the event and promote the use of a hashtag (#tag). When driving participants to engage via Twitter make sure to have a team member monitoring and interacting with people on Twitter.
Don’t forget to record everything! Film speakers, interview participants, exhibitors and take lots of photos. All the media collateral you produce at the event can be used to promote your next event. If you have the capabilities you might want to consider using a live streaming service such a ustream.com. This will do wonders to help fuel the social media conversation during the event. If planning to stream the event live make sure to let people know a head of time.
After the Event
Once the event is over the real social media work begins. Send all participants a survey to get feedback and testimonials, and share the best ones via social media. If you haven’t already done so connect with participants on popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This will make it easier to continue to build a relationship with them and market other events. If you were able to produce video and take photos of the event edit it in a timely manner and publish it via social media. Share it was participants and send copies to speakers for them to send to their network.
With a little planning and follow through, a well thought out social media event promotion strategy can do wonders for your brand and significantly increase the number of attendees to your events.
Infographic courtesy of Socialized.me.