How to Promote Your Events With Social Media

The other day John Haydon and I were on a live Webinar where someone asked how to go about launching and growing an event program using social media tools.

I didn’t have time to explain fully so thought I would write up the process here for you now.

  1. Start talking/tweeting about your event in advance – Building anticipation, expectation, and sharing the news is vital. People need to book diaries, and also you need to show that it is worth looking forward to – an event, not just an appointment.
  2. Add event to FaceBook, Upcoming, LinkedIn – Use all the community tools to share the event date and details, not just for logistical reasons but also social proof.Create social media event
  3. Blog, Tweet, leading up to event – Keep up the momentum and the information flow. Help grow the anticipation. You will have lots to talk about, from polls, through to adding speakers.
  4. Add opt-in to event registration – A crucial step is to get people onto an event email list, so you do not lose contact with anyone.
  5. Gather Questions – When you get the persons opt-in details, also get them to provide questions they have, these become fodder for your presentations.
  6. Go viral with send to friend and tweet-this – Use WordPress plugins, FaceBook features, Twitter, to get attendees to spread the word. Make it easy and people will bring along friends, growing your participation and also making more likely to attend and get value out of the event. People want to stay consistent with their own recommendations.
  7. Decide twitter hash tag and flickr tag for your event – Attendees build further buzz through back channel discussions, so make sure these can be found by aggregating chatter around one hashtag.
  8. Use multimedia during the event - Share pictures before, during and after using Flickr tags/groups, TwitPic, Qik, FaceBook groups and YouTube channels, and encourage attendees to to the sameMultimedia social media
  9. Provide recordings and downloads – Downloads also have chance to go viral if you encourage sharing
  10. Build your list for the next event – Benefit from the “compounding” effect
  11. Follow up – Don’t leave your audience hanging. Use groups, forums discussion after event to consolidate your new community.
  12. Gather feedback for how to improve – You want each event to build on the last one, learn each time. Social media is excellent for gathering feedback.
  13. Call for Questions/Topics - Use crowdsourcing to create your next event.
  14. Deliver what people want – Start planning next event around supplied answers and you will be confident you are delivering what is needed and desired.
  15. Keep communicating – Build anticipation early, consistently and often using FaceBook, Twitter and your email list
  16. Repeat!

Two good examples of how social media can be used to promote events are ThinkVisibility in the UK and the SOBEvent in Chicago. I am also involved in a purely online series of events that are very exciting and are using social media to the max, but I can’t talk about them right now so look out for the above tips being utilized in my Twitter stream very soon!

Do you have any good tips or examples of events promoted through social media? Please share in the comments ….

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Web 2.0

Comments

10 Responses to “How to Promote Your Events With Social Media”

  1. AlexE on April 17th, 2009 1:35 pm

    You could also add you event to our free events listing site and we’ll drop a listing into Google for you.

  2. Phillip Gibb on April 17th, 2009 1:42 pm

    Great list and sequence.
    I believe that I can apply this quiet effectively to an event I am planning. Even for unique church events.

    Phill

  3. Today in Search and Social Media - 4-17-2009 - Search Engine Marketing Blog on April 17th, 2009 6:26 pm

    [...] How to Promote Your Events With Social Media [...]

  4. Bobby Rettew on May 4th, 2009 5:57 am

    Thanks for this list of ideas. This helps with our multimedia suggestions for our clients and our events. This also re-affirms that video can be an important tool for marketing an event.
    Bobby

  5. associationjam.org on May 4th, 2009 4:11 pm

    How to Promote Your Events With Social Media : Codswallop…

    How to go about launching and growing an event program using social media tools …

  6. Josh Feldberg on September 26th, 2009 11:18 am

    Nice one. really useful

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  8. gobieta » 13 Pasos para Promover tus Eventos en Social Media on January 25th, 2010 11:39 am

    [...] para garantizar su éxito. Aquí te presento mi versión de los tips publicados hoy por el blog codswallop.com, espero que te sirvan en la promoción de tu próximo evento en Social [...]

  9. Logan Nathan on May 1st, 2010 2:05 pm

    We have released a FREE Social Media tool, which will make it simple for anyone to post any kind of event and tweet it. Others visiting the site (including via Twitter search and traditional search engines) can also ReTweet the event to their Twitter Account and/or link it to their Facebook page. Check out http://tweetmyevent.com and see how you get instant traffic within minutes after posting the event!

    Note that we are working few additional features to the current version. Love to get comments and feedback via feedback@tweetmyevents.com

    Note: To get best out of the event posting, we suggest everyone to use relevant #hastags on their tweet before posting their event form TweetMyEvents.com Hope this helps.

  10. Ted on August 25th, 2010 7:43 pm

    Another cool way to promote your events for free is a new site called http://eventtap.com which displays events going on right now in your area. It’s pretty new so there isn’t a whole lot of content on there yet, but I suspect it will be quite popular in the next couple years.

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