For all event organizers, rookies or oldies, social media marketing is the one shot they HAVE to take. Come on, who doesn’t put up their upcoming event on Facebook? It’s the most obvious thing to do when you think of social media marketing. And that’s exactly why it’s a problem – it’s too obvious, which means, everyone else is doing it. If you have to ace this marketing strategy for your event, you have to upturn every little pebble you spot, and the least we can do is show you where the pebbles are. Now, that’s exactly where THE checklist comes into picture.
WHY PREPARING HAS THE ‘PRE’ – THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU START PLANNING
- Chalk out a timeline for all announcements and promotions related to the event.
- Come up with pictures and videos that back up your event across the social media.
- Create pages for your event on Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Try to get yourself listed on well-known listings websites or directories.
- Set up offers by claiming a location on Foursquare.
- Have a separate team to manage social media marketing, and that alone.
- Get a photographer – yes, he (or she) is a must have.
…AND SOME SPECIFICS FOR THE PREP STUFF
1. FACEBOOK
- *these many* posts in a day
- *these many* pictures and videos (trolls, memes, bit strips, comics, info graphics, short videos)
- *these many* paid promotional posts in a day
- Create an event or group or participate in one.
2. TWITTER
- *these many* tweets in a day – have a different count for personal tweets, partner tweets and the promoted ones.
- Create an event list comprising of all keynote speakers, partners, and attendees.
- Create a list of competitors to be monitored.
3. GOOGLE+
- *these many* posts in a day
4. LINKEDIN
- *these many* posts in a day
- Be a part of LinkedIn conversations that bear relevance to your event.
5. PINTEREST
- Build a board based on the theme of your event.
- Pin *these many* images to your board in a week.
- Create a contest on Pinterest for your event’s blog.
- *these many* blog posts and info graphics in a week
6. BLOG
- *these many* blog posts in a week
- *these many* info graphics in a week
And once you’re done pre-paring, you need to throw the bait and reel in the fish. Translation: you need to gather event-specific content to put up on your social media profiles. This includes interviewing and gathering feedback from your attendees, speakers, customers, sponsors, and people who have inspired the event in any little way, and all this is supposed to be done DURING THE EVENT.
For FACEBOOK, continue doing the mentioned tasks and also keep posting event photos. On TWITTER and GOOGLE+, you might want to
- Monitor how well your hashtags have been doing, and the number of times your event has been mentioned.
- Urge employees and attendees to spread the word by tweeting about the event and most importantly, using the hashtag.
- Appreciate the responses by retweeting and replying.
- Organize Hangouts on Google+ to communicate better.
As for the BLOG, try live blogging and report the on-goings of your event as they happen.
Once you’re done with the event, make sure you don’t kill the spirit right away. You need to retain your attendees by showing them that attending the event was worth whatever it took. And this is right how you do it –
- Check out how well your content is doing online – YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, and all other places that hold visual content related to the event.
- Try www.hashtracking.com to keep a tab on the buzz you’ve created.
- Try www.storify.com to make a collab of your best tweets.
- Have a final blog as a parting shot about the event.
- *these many* blog posts based on individual experiences
- Accept and appreciate feedbacks, follow-up on attendees, organizers, keynotes, sponsors, and everyone else who made the event happen and thank them.
Because, all is well that ends well!
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