How often do you update your blog? If you’re consumed by guilt at this question, then you need to read on to learn from your mistakes. If not, you should still read on to find out more about how to make the most of your blog.

1. Are you committed to your blog?

When you start off a blog for your company, it’s going to take some time to make a mark. If you thought that you would miraculously get overwhelming results and blog traffic that’s impressive in just a couple of days, you couldn’t be more wrong. Things like these take their own sweet time and impatience would only make matters worse. The trick is to stay committed even when the going gets tough. If you’re disappointed with the fact that your blog posts aren’t getting enough views and comments and you decide to give up halfway, you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life. You need to put up quality content and remain dedicated to your blog.

2. Are you doing the best you can?

Have you done enough for your blog? Are you giving your customers something worthy enough? These are a few questions you need to ask yourself. Look at your blogs from another perspective – if you come across such blog posts like the ones you’ve published, would you read them? If not, how can you expect your customers to actually sit and read the whole thing? Some blogs make the grave mistake of publishing articles that seem like a press release. No one wants to waste their precious time reading that! You need to make sure that your blog makes your customers drop everything and make your blog posts their priority.

3. Have you maintained your blog?

This is the most important aspect of running a blog. You need to nurture it and maintain it so that you can make the most of all that it has to offer. You need to update it regularly, fill it with interesting content of top-notch quality and also optimize it for best results. If your blog doesn’t feature in the first page of the search engine results, customers are going to remain oblivious to your blog no matter how interesting it is. That’s precisely why retargeting your blog should be the next item on your agenda.

We’re not just talking about a few views and comments on your blog posts here, we’re talking of the bigger picture. The number of people reading your blogs would increase your website traffic. With more people taking an interest in your website, you’re going to be soaring higher than you ever imagined.

With Yapsody as your online event registration platform, you can start selling tickets online and also build content for your blog through our event marketing services.

The post How Company Blog Helps in Promoting The Brand? appeared first on Yapsody.

Research shows (I wonder who does these) that the most commonly used event promotion channels are email marketing, word of mouth, event website, and registered mail invites (as if you need a research to tell you that). And there are six tools that can be used to carry out the promotion using these channels more effectively.

EVENT WEBSITE

Consider your website to be a year-round marketing tool that can be used as the central point for all your marketing activities. Here’s how you can use it to your maximum advantage:

• Put up pictures of your previous events to get your potential attendees an idea of what your events are all about.
• Upload videos of guest speakers along with their presentation slides.
• Start promoting your upcoming events well before their scheduled dates so that you have enough time to spread the word and create a buzz.

e-MARKETING

Never forget the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) theory. Because, whatever efforts you put in will definitely reflect in the results you obtain.

When it comes to e-Marketing, you have to keep experimenting. Vary your content, your mail timings, subject lines etc. You have to constantly be aware of what your target audience needs, and deliver them that.

And as you experiment, keep collecting data and analyze it. Next, you put it to use and strategize according to your analysis. Your deductions aren’t supposed to be filed and buried in a marketing report.

CONTENT MARKETING

My personal favorite, this one.

Blogs and articles are like oxygen for your marketing campaign – breathe them. Everything important and relevant to your event should be put up as a blog. This encourages people to be involved with you consistently, and also helps you build your brand’s image.

Also, keep in mind the 10:1 principle which states that for every 10 pieces of content that you put up, only 1 leads to effective promotion. Keep experimenting with your content, too, but event updates should never be off the table.

WEBINARS

Webinars going hand-in-hand with today’s generation would be an understatement; they practically hug each other as they walk. What could be better than getting all relevant information delivered to you live while you’re enjoying the comforts of your house?

Conduct webinars that either build up to your upcoming event or are based on previous themes or topics. You can even conduct interviews with your past speakers who have served as great influences to promote your event.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook is definitely used by everyone, but that need not imply that your target audience will also be just as active there. Try to find networks where your potential attendees are most likely to be found online, and share all content relevant to your event there. Also, when you’ve teamed up with speakers and sponsors, develop your relationships with them in arenas where their fans are also present.

PARTNERSHIPS

When you have good speakers on your list, ask for their assistance in building content pertaining to your theme to put up on social media, your website, and blogs. You could also interview them and share their videos on your networks. The key is to use them as marketing assets, but treat them as your team members.

The post Six Tools To Fix Your Event Marketing appeared first on Yapsody.

Social walls are big screens that are put up during events that collect and display all the social media activity that’s happening inside the event. For example, if you are hosting an casino events and have a dedicated hashtag for it, the tweets sent out by your attendees with your hashtags will be displayed on the social wall. This is refreshed every few seconds, ensuring that the display is real-time. Of course, your attendees will love it if their tweets are flashed on the big screen for everyone at the event to see, but is that all a social wall has to offer? If not, what else? Well, let’s have a look.

SCREENCEPTION

As funny as it sounds, that term is on its way to competing with ‘selfie’. The few seconds of glory that is received when an attendee sees his tweet on the screen encourages everyone to keep posting more and more on social media with your event’s hashtag. That level of social media activity can just work wonders for your event and your brand. Coming to screenception, it is a phenomenon that’s observed when someone clicks a picture of the wall when his tweet or post is being flashed and posts it. Doesn’t make sense, but sure as hell makes your online presence huge.

PROGRESS

The technology only witnessed the display of tweets and Facebook posts related to the event in its early days, but now social walls have a lot more than just that. Walls now have aesthetically arranged and integrated posts, images, and videos from across a large number of social media outlets including Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

WORKING

As much as I wish it were true, this Wall-E cannot think on its own and find out what has to go up and what needs to be ignored. For text posts, hashtag filters are used, while keyword or phrase filters are used for images and videos. Social walls can be highly customized, though, according to what you need for your event.

MODERATION

Like I said, this Wall-E doesn’t have a brain of its own, so it cannot moderate the posts that go up. Usually, live moderation is the most preferred technique where you can view and moderate every post before it is sent up on the wall using your phone or laptop. If you don’t have the time or resources for live moderation, you could also buy packages that provide basic profanity and keyword filters that can be preset. The easiest way to moderate the posts is by creating a twitter handle where you simply retweet the posts that you want to share and only these posts get to go up.

OPTIMIZATION

Social walls can be included in all kinds of events including conference events, trade shows, and fundraisers. You can embed social walls in a website or mobile app to create a buzz and encourage social media activity before or after the event. But, what matters is that your screen be large enough so that it is viewed by a large number of people at the same time. Social walls can also be used for internal purposes. For example, a private live screen can be used to connect remote employees to enable them to connect to each other.

WHY

• SOCIAL REACH: Like I’ve mentioned a million times before, it’ll increase social media activity around your event, boost conversations and foster communities before, during, and after your event.
• EASY TO USE: Live displays are big, but not complicated. They can be easily set up and configured. Plus, they create a happening environment that entertains your attendees and gives your event a tech savvy edge.
• MONETIZE YOUR WALL: You don’t have to share a random train of tweets when you can easily use your wall for running competitions and marketing your brand. Some smart techniques and you’ll be able to come up with a hundred ways of using the big screen.
• QUALITY CONTENT: Since their tweets will have a chance to get displayed on a screen that is being viewed by so many other people at that very instant present in the same room, the quality of the content is bound to shoot up.

WHAT

Social walls are a big leap when it comes to technology in events, and within no time, presenters have come up with innovative ways to put them to use. At the same time, one should realize that events have a lot more to them than just social media, so care should be taken that these big screens don’t overshadow everything else the event stands for. Your event wall shouldn’t just be an add-on; it should blend with the rest of your engagement tools and represent the innate values of the event. Depending upon your event, you can have a list of things to do with your wall, and the best way to figure that out would be to look at examples, sit with your team and brainstorm.

The post Wall-E: Social Wall For Your Event appeared first on Yapsody.

FORGETTING THE BACK CHANNEL

To most people, this may sound like jargon, but event presenters who run social media campaigns are familiar with this term. It basically refers to the conversations about your event going on in social media.

Even if your event isn’t the biggest event in town, if you have attendees, it’s highly likely that they’re going to be talking about it on social media. They’ll be tweeting their opinions, posting pictures of your event, maybe even blogging about the insights. You might want to keep track of this back channel by encouraging people to use a hashtag dedicated to your event. Keep your hashtag crisp and easy, so that people don’t forget or misspell it, and at the same time, it should relate to your event.

UNPREPARED FOR THE WORST

It’s not unnatural to believe that everything will fall in place, or go according to the plan. Nobody wants to overthink a situation and panic about it. But, for event presenters, you have to be prepared for all that could go wrong.

You need to have a communication plan ready with your team in case something goes amiss. That way, your social media guy won’t have to spend the entire event making rapid decisions and thinking on his feet. Of course, it isn’t a good feeling, thinking the building could be set on fire. But, don’t we still have evacuation drills?

CONTENT MARKETING + CUSTOMER SERVICE

Social media is a lot about content, but is that all it is about? There are many people who follow event pages or accounts to get general queries answered like “What’s the food like?” or “Where can we get the speaker’s slides?”

People with a background in customer service can easily tackle difficult situations related to customers, and are also great at analyzing feedbacks and making improvements based on that. So, make sure you don’t neglect the customer service aspect of social media.

NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF YOUR SUCCESS

So, you had a great event, your hashtag took the center stage on social media, people have been tweeting and commenting and posting about it – what’s next, though? How are you going to retain this response and use it to your advantage?

Favorite all the tweets people have posted about your event and screenshot or save the pictures, comments, posts, and blogs. When you put these up on your website, they are a real depiction of your dedication to your event and customer satisfaction. Also, they are feedbacks that you can analyze in order to chalk out improvements for your next event.

CONCLUSION

Almost all event presenters use social media as a key tool for promotion, but often make the same mistakes. Pause a little, look where you’re going wrong, make necessary amendments, and then move ahead. You’ll practically witness the growth that way when you receive positive responses.

The post How to Save Yourself From Social Media Regrets appeared first on Yapsody.