20 Social Media Marketing tips for your Events

Planning an event?

Social media can transform the way you promote and organise your event.

New techniques can be applied to all kinds of events; community get-togethers, conferences, training events, parties and charity fund-raisers. These ideas don’t just promote your event, they boost your overall Social Media Marketing.

You can use your website, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Google+, email newletters and blogs. There’s a role for social media before, during and after the event. Here are my top tips and suggestions:

Before the event

1. Announce the event in all channels – give your followers the news first.
2. Create a calendar for drip feeding information (such as speakers, artists, sessions, competitions etc)
3. Establish a hash tag on twitter for the event
4. Create polls to encourage feedback about what people would like to see at the event (Use LinkedIn as well as Facebook)
5. On Facebook – create an Event so people can rsvp, if appropriate.
6. Blog about the event, promote these posts on social channels & leave comments open.
7. Run competitions for tickets etc., but beware of Facebook’s rules on contests. Breaking those rules can result in punishment!
8. If you do use LinkedIn why not create a private group for people who’ve bought tickets. It’s a good way to communicate with those people and make sure they get the most out of the event.

During the Event

9. Use Twitter to capture questions for a Q&A, or for people to submit requests and feedback.
10. Report live using social media. Use your own staff, and invite the public to contribute too – using your hashtag.
11. Stream video from the event, if you can. Be careful to avoid bad lighting and sound issues.
12. Smartphones are really effective for live reporting. Add photos straight to social media from the event.
13. Post audio from your smartphone using AudioBoo – microphones in phones are great these days, as long as you’re not in a windy location.
14. Upload video if you have a decent wifi connection. Interview attendees, film first-person reports as well as recording key moments from the event.
15. If your event is mobile (a march or charity walk) generate a live progress map and embed it in your website or Facebook page. I’ve used Endomondo like this, and it works well as long as the phone has a solid data signal.
16. Have someone monitor the content that’s coming in on social media and curate this into your website. It’s possible to embed selected Tweets into web pages, or consider Storify to combine multiple sources into one elegant ‘story’, which can be embedded in your site too.
17. Use Twitter for instant competitions.

Social Media Marketing – After the Event

18. Archive the best content on your website and make it available to the widest audience.
19. Curate photo galleries for people who attended
20. Run post-event contests (for tickets to next year?)

Using these techniques means you turbo-charge your Social Media Marketing, as well as put on great events that people will rave about.

What have I missed – what’s your top event tip?