Event managers are increasingly turning to social media to help plan, promote and manage the follow up of events.
Tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all free and are a fantastic way of promoting your events and encouraging delegates and prospective delegates to engage with you and each other before the event takes place.
However, social media doesn't have to be used during the promotion process alone.
Social media sites are a great way to continue the debate, networking and conversation about your event during the actual event and long after it has passed.
You can encourage delegates to continue talking and promoting your event through social media.
Create a Twitter hashtag unique to your event and encourage delegates to update their own Twitter feeds with tweets about it using this hashtag.
This means that anyone at or interested in your event can instantly see what people are doing and saying.
As part of the promotion process, event managers may have created a Facebook page specifically for the event.
If you have fans of your Facebook page attending, you can encourage them to add content, such as videos, photos and links.
The more user generated content, the better.
Once your event is over, it's important to continue using social media to ensure your communication with delegates is kept high and to give delegates a way to continue networking with each other.
If your event is an annual occurrence, ensuring you update your social media platforms will provide you with a good source of content and marketing material for the following year:
Did people really enjoy one particular area, did they wish one speaker had longer to talk, was the food horrible? By listening to what people say, you can improve the quality of future events.
Social media can be an effective way to reach a wider audience than you normally would have access to.
Not only is it a popular tool for many individuals, most them are also free to use, making it one of the most cost effective marketing mediums out there.
Used carefully and appropriately, event managers can utilise the popularity of these tools to help boost the success of their events.
Yet managing all these social media platforms can be a time consuming process.
However, many event management software solutions contains social media modules.
These allow you to integrate your social media accounts into the one solution - making them easy and fast to update.
Combining social media event marketing with other online solutions such as email marketing and online registrations is making the event planning process more streamlined and efficient.
Event management software solutions contain all these modules and more, giving event managers time to concentrate on more strategic tasks.
Tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all free and are a fantastic way of promoting your events and encouraging delegates and prospective delegates to engage with you and each other before the event takes place.
However, social media doesn't have to be used during the promotion process alone.
Social media sites are a great way to continue the debate, networking and conversation about your event during the actual event and long after it has passed.
You can encourage delegates to continue talking and promoting your event through social media.
Create a Twitter hashtag unique to your event and encourage delegates to update their own Twitter feeds with tweets about it using this hashtag.
This means that anyone at or interested in your event can instantly see what people are doing and saying.
As part of the promotion process, event managers may have created a Facebook page specifically for the event.
If you have fans of your Facebook page attending, you can encourage them to add content, such as videos, photos and links.
The more user generated content, the better.
Once your event is over, it's important to continue using social media to ensure your communication with delegates is kept high and to give delegates a way to continue networking with each other.
If your event is an annual occurrence, ensuring you update your social media platforms will provide you with a good source of content and marketing material for the following year:
- Add photos to your Facebook page, Flickr account and on Twitter photo sites (such as TwitPic)
- Add any videos of your event to your Facebook page and to your YouTube account
- Continue discussing the event with delegates in your LinkedIn event page
- Create blog posts with your thoughts possibly guest posts from delegates or partners and with any updates or messages you'd like your delegates to receive
Did people really enjoy one particular area, did they wish one speaker had longer to talk, was the food horrible? By listening to what people say, you can improve the quality of future events.
Social media can be an effective way to reach a wider audience than you normally would have access to.
Not only is it a popular tool for many individuals, most them are also free to use, making it one of the most cost effective marketing mediums out there.
Used carefully and appropriately, event managers can utilise the popularity of these tools to help boost the success of their events.
Yet managing all these social media platforms can be a time consuming process.
However, many event management software solutions contains social media modules.
These allow you to integrate your social media accounts into the one solution - making them easy and fast to update.
Combining social media event marketing with other online solutions such as email marketing and online registrations is making the event planning process more streamlined and efficient.
Event management software solutions contain all these modules and more, giving event managers time to concentrate on more strategic tasks.