Facebook

This is like the default sub-topic in every event-related blog, isn’t it? And that doesn’t imply you have to automatically skip this part; it implies that there’s so much about Facebook that you just haven’t put to use yet. If you’re ready to shell out a few dollars, you can use Facebook features exclusively meant for businesses. You can upload your customer list and find the ones with an existing profile on the network. Once that’s done, you’ll be equipped with a custom audience that can access your posts and ads. You will also get access to a lot more customer data and the best part is – you can keep returning to your existing customers even as you keep adding new members. Along with that, you get insights into the likes and dislikes of your customers which, from a sales and marketing perspective, can be used to devise foolproof strategies.

Batchbook

Yeah, because everything with a ‘-book’ is a buzz. For less than $40 a month (and a 30-day free trial), you can get this exceedingly sophisticated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform that gives you all data pertaining to your customers in a single place.

Batchbook lets you

• Create customer profiles
• Create to-do lists
• Club customer data obtained from all social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc) with existing contact information
• Do all of the above on your mobile phone

It’s easy-to-use, highly resourceful, and it’s mobile friendly. For $40, that’s ridiculously too much!

KISSmetrics

Quite similar to Facebook and Batchbook in terms of profile building, KISSmetrics is rather data-driven. It tracks where your customers go while on their mobile, tablet, or PC in terms of digital content. It comes with a 14-day obligation-free trial and later charges close to $80 per month for the ‘startup’ package, which enables unlimited customer profiling and lists. KISSmetrics gives you an insight into the kind of content that makes people linger and campaigns that stir maximum interest.

OnePulse

OnePulse is THE platform that lets you connect personally to your customers. You can ask questions about anything related to your brand or event, and receive responses from customers in real-time via the OnePulse mobile app. It’s like WhatsApp for companies to communicate with their customers. You can also invite customers and form a private OnePlus community to get instant feedback regarding their experiences with your brand. The big win about OnePulse is that it’s pocket-friendly – you’ll be charged around $31 for 100 responses from the OnePulse community, all-inclusive, while getting a private community of customers into OnePulse is absolutely free.

Yapsody

Biased? I’d say we’re smart and extremely fair since we gave everyone else a fair chance to make an impression before we made our move at the end. So, last and no-way-the-least, Yapsody is one of the very few (and best amongst these few) event ticketing platforms that lets you maintain a close rapport with your customers. You will get your own Virtual Box Office (Online Ticket Store) and also a customized URL to let your customers know all about your event. This is going to be a hub for personalized FAQs that you can put up to help out your customers, your contact details so that they can directly get in touch with you, social media tools and widgets to enable spreading the word easily, and a MailChimp integration tool to easily import your contact list. Really, are we just an online ticketing system? I doubt!

The post Unique Ways To Get To Know Your Customers Better appeared first on Yapsody.

What is the Yapsody Pass On Fees?

• With our Pass On Fees feature, you can decide who pays for the ticketing fees: YOU or your Event Attendees.  It lets you pass on the ticketing fees to your attendees which they can pay while booking your event tickets. 
• Mark-up the ticketing fee as extra revenue or simply pass on the savings to event attendees. Hence,  the ticketing cost you are charged by us is borne by your attendees along with the cost of the tickets. 
• Since fees are added to the cost of the tickets, event ticketing becomes free for you. Either way, the extra cash goes in your bank and not into the pockets of an overpriced ticketing provider.

How Does It Work?

• You can use our interactive fees calculator to know your revenue-generating potential from Absorbing Fees or Pass On Fees for each event based on your seating type, venue capacity, and ticket price.
• We do not hold these funds, so you can collect both the ticketing fee you were going to get charged along with the ticket price you set up. This amount gets deposited to your payment gateway account which is linked to your Yapsody account. 
• At the end of the month, when the invoice is generated, you pay Yapsody the ticketing fee that is already collected from your customers.
• Do remember that Yapsody remains free to use for free events, always. 

New to Yapsody event ticketing? Sign up now as a presenter and sell your first 50 tickets with NO ticketing fee + Pass On Fees & collect money directly in your favorite Payment gateway account.

ALERT – Use our Our Holiday Season Offer while creating an event to avail of a FLAT 25% Off. 

The post What is The Yapsody Pass On Fees? appeared first on Yapsody.

As an event ticketing platform assisting presenters & hospitality enterprises all over the world, we have analyzed every possible dimension of successful and not so successful events. Here’s Yapsody’s 10 step guide on designing the ultimate event experience. 

1. Be Clear on your Event Objectives

The most successful events we witness in terms of selling out tickets and drawing more footfalls are those whose organizers have a clear picture of their event objectives. Your event goals are the purpose of your event – to party, to celebrate, to educate, or to persuade. Narrow down these event objectives and check if they are relevant, achievable, and measurable within the designated time-frame. Once you figure them out, every other process falls into place. 

2. Delegate Tasks Equally

Whether your event is big or small, your team members should be firing on all cylinders. They should be clearly aligned with your event marketing strategy and their role in achieving them. While creating an event on our ticketing platform, you can assign tasks to your members equally through our User Management System. So, if one member needs to manage the Ticket Pricing and the other needs to integrate Event Marketing Tools, they don’t need to depend on one single person handling the dashboard.  

3. Map Out Your Event Venue

An event venue can make or break your reputation. Imagine an outdoor event planned during the monsoons without having a contingency plan of moving indoors. Similarly, mapping out the event venue will help you arrange the entry, seating,  standing, dining, and exit points. Ask for a seating chart from the venue owner which will help you assign different price points for different seating sections. 

4. Make Your Sections Easily Navigable

Imagine a music festival with attendees from all over the world. Not only do you need to surpass the language barrier, but also make sure all the sections of your events are easily navigable through simple signs or instructions. Position the food, bar, and smoking sections easily accessible from the main stage.

Easy access to these counters + reasonable pricing = More revenue. 

At no point during the event should your attendee feel a disconnect from the event experience. Also, don’t make your attendees cross rivers and mountains to access a restroom.  

5. Streamline The Security & Check-In Process

This is where we see many event attendees lose their cool. Nobody wants to wait for hours just because you didn’t create multiple check-in points. Make sure security checks are handled before anything else. Once they’re in the clear, validate their tickets through a QR Code scanner.  

An attendee might turn up late but it’s your job to not make them wait any longer. Imagine being stuck in a queue while hearing your favorite band strumming their latest summer single. Our ticketing system supports 12 prominent languages & over 150 currencies to bridge any communication gap between event presenters and attendees. 

6. Don’t Make Your VIP’s Wait 

After all, they are VIP for a reason. Create a separate line for guests belonging to the Reserved Seating sections. A luxurious black-tie event in a casino is not synonymous with sweating it out in a line. Keep your VIP guest list updated before they start pouring in. They are paying top dollar for your tickets which should be reflected in your event experience. 

7. Make Your Main Stage Memorable 

The main event stages of any EDM festival or an expo delivers the “larger than life” experience. The stage design and audio-visual setup of your main stage create an atmosphere that energizes your guests. With the right budget, you can go for a holographic setup as well for that futuristic leap. Every year, thousands of events organized all over the globe blow up on news and social media just because of their main stage setup.  

8. Will They Do It For The Gram? 

Now, that you’ve taken care of all the essentials, you’re waiting for that euphoric audience reaction. You created a brilliant event marketing campaign, brought the best artists to perform at the hottest venue in town, and sold out the venue. As an organizer, it’s normal to expect an outpour of Instagram posts and stories #tagging your event. Your event success will be heavily reflected on social media through user-generated content. Even something as small as a signpost or a quirky art installation will have your event attendees pulling out their phones for a selfie. So, while you’re planning an event, always ponder “Will they do it for the Gram?”

9. Expect The Unexpected 

An event organizer hopes for the best and prepares for the worst. In the entertainment industry, we’ve seen things go haywire even with months of planning. Your artist might catch the flu or miss a flight. Or maybe the rain gods decided to generously flood your venue. As an event planner, you should always be ready with a contingency plan A, B, and  C. This is truly a testing ground for any event presenter to prove his mettle and not disappoint his audience. 

10. Go Above & Beyond

Event planning and organizing is a constant hustle. But the returns are tenfold – financially and emotionally. Treat every event as your first and last and you’ll surely go above and beyond for every minute detail. For you, it might be the 10th event in a month, but for an attendee, it might be his first. Create a memorable experience and you’ll have them coming back to you for more. 

We hope our 10 step guide resonated with you in planning your future events. Do share your personal experiences in creating the perfect event experience below in the comment section. 

Don’t forget to SIGN UP with us if you’re an event presenter looking for an end-to-end event ticketing platform.

The post Designing The Ultimate Event Experience appeared first on Yapsody.

We would like to extend heartfelt gratitude to our event presenters for using our platform to sell tickets online, and continuously providing us with valuable insights. Without your timeless efforts, continuous support and association, we wouldn’t have moved an inch closer to what we have achieved today.

There is a sense of satisfaction, and the whole experience has been fulfilling. We have come a long way, and will continue to improve and give you an experience to cherish for the lifetime.    

We’ll continue to strive to make your experience with Yapsody even better. This is just the beginning; we will achieve several milestones together!

The post 200,000 Events! A Big Thank You For Making It Happen appeared first on Yapsody.

Even paid marketing tools, like PPC, can prove to be terrible investments if they’re not dealt with appropriately. You may end up overspending and yet not receive desired results. This only leads to one conclusion – no matter how much you spend on marketing tools, your conversion rates eventually lie in your own hands.

This particular blog post will help you understand the most popular PPC model, Google AdWords, so that you can improvise on your AdWords campaign and get maximum returns out of your investment.

The first step towards understanding Google AdWords would be to understand the definitions of the metrics involved:

1. Impressions and clicks inform you about the number of people who have viewed your advertisement and how many have actually clicked on it.
2. Click-through rate (CTR) measures the number of clicks against the number of impressions. Basically, it tells you how many people, out of the ones who viewed your advertisement, also clicked on it.
3. Cost-per-click (CPC) is the average amount per click that you’re paying for your ad. This cost depends on three factors, namely bid, competition, and quality score, which will be discussed later.

What is Quality Score?

Quality Score, or QS, is Google’s algorithm to calculate the strength of your keywords, based on which the position of your advert in the results pages is determined. Lower your QS, higher will be the price you’ll pay. QS is measured on a scale of 10, and it’s at this score that you get the cheapest price per click. You can increase your QS by improving the relevance of your keyword to the ad and landing page. A good score might fetch you the top 4 positions in the search results.

The Significance of Account Structure

AdWords follows a Hierarchial Structure and you need to understand its significance before you start investing in advertisements. If your account structure isn’t clearly defined, your entire strategy might fall apart.

The first step is to have a crystal clear idea about your purpose. You might actually want to write down the key demographics of your target audience and what kind of keywords they might enter in their searches. For example, if you’re hosting a non-profit event, your target audience is likely to search for “non-profit events”, “charity events”, “fundraisers” etc.

Next, divide your account into campaigns and ad groups that follow an understandable nomenclature. This makes things easier for your future reference and also for your teammates if they’re going to be accessing the account, too.

What kind of keywords?

While reading the previous section, you might have lingered over the words – what kind of keywords they might enter in their searches. Even though you’re focusing on your target audience, pointing out the exact keywords that they’re likely to use can be quite a feat.

The best thing to do would be to fall back on Google’s autocomplete suggestions when you search for the keywords. Also, when the search results are displayed, scroll to the bottom of the page to find related searches and voila, more keywords!

Know Thy Competition

Yes, know them very well, especially their keywords. Compile a list of all your competitors and note the search terms they’ve been advertising for. Analyze their adverts to discover their choice of keywords. You could use SEMrush to get an insight into what’s working for your competitors.

Apart from SEMrush, also try the Google Keyword Planner that gives you keyword ideas if you input a landing page. Simply paste one of your competitor’s web pages in the tool, refine the results using the category filter and get blown away by the results. Give yourself a minute to come back to senses and put together the huge amount of information that’s at your disposal now – volumes per month, level of competition, and the suggested bid for every keyword.

Define Your Niche

Don’t just be restricted to everyday keywords, instead, find longer-tail keywords (which consist of more than 4 words) and ensure that your ads get displayed for these searches. There are two primary advantages of using longer-tail keywords: less competition and increased precision, both of which directly imply reduced cost and increased conversion rate.

Fix a Budget

When you’re defining a budget, make sure you’re taking into account everything. And by ‘everything’, I mean EVERYTHING. The smallest of internal allowances have to be accounted for before you actually go ahead and start spending on any kind of advertising, including AdWords. Keep a few factors in mind when you are formulating the budget, for example, the price at which you selling your event tickets, whether you’re aiming for a break-even or actually wanting to earn profits, how much profits are you thinking of, and so on. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you discover your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

Know Your Worth

More like, know the worth of your keywords. Your CPA is your budget limit; it helps you set the maximum bid for your Ad Groups and also allows you to tweak the performance of an individual keyword.

If your cost per conversion surpasses your CPA, you might want to straighten out a few flaws:

• Your choice of keywords is poor
• You’ve incorrectly used keyword match types
• There’s a lack of negative keywords
• Your QS is very low
• There’s a Keyword to Ad copy mismatch
• Bids that are too high or too low

And so on.

It’s not about the Money

If your ulterior motive is not really to earn profits, that gives you all the more a reason to clearly define what you wish to gain from your event. Your Call to Action could be aimed at gaining more subscribers or increased social engagement; in any case, you need to have a tracking system in place. Rely on Google Analytics and setup conversion tracking. These goals can then be imported into AdWords and assigned a value and category wherever necessary.

Now That You’re Done…

Let’s begin!

That’s right, you’ve got your AdWords campaign in place, but where exactly are you going to drive all the traffic to? That’s correct – your landing page!

NOT your homepage, folks, your landing page.

If you’re paying a large sum for paid searches, it won’t make sense that these direct to your homepage because it just makes the user frown and give up. Your landing page should fulfill certain requirements, and these include:

• The message displayed on your landing page should align with your advertisement.
• Use headings, sub-heading, and bullets to keep the message brief and understandable.
• Eradicate all other distractions (menus, other CTAs, pop-ups and so on).
• Elaborately describe your offers and USPs.
• Testimonies and reviews act as good supports.
• Make sure your CTA isn’t vague and ambiguous.
• Make it crisp, elegant, and fast.

Be Friendly

It’s almost a ‘moo’ point (if I were to go all Joey-like here), but you need to understand that I mean mobile-friendly and not just friendly-friendly. Your adverts have to be optimized for mobile devices as well as desktop because Google’s search algorithm prioritizes mobile optimized results. AdWords allows you to create mobile-friendly adverts, and you could actually dedicate a separate Ad Group to mobile only. Always keep an eye on mobile vs. desktop performance and keep making changes accordingly. Use conversion tracking for the same.

Call Me Maybe?

If your campaign is aimed at taking bookings or enquiries over the phone, use click-to-call ads, where a phone call is triggered directly when a user clicks on the ad and he will be saved the trouble of visiting the website and fetching your number. This saves a lot of time, you provide a good user experience, and you can also expect better conversion rates with this simple tactic.

Test the Waters

Before you dive in right away, it’s always better to check the temperature and measure the depth.

Your assumptions about the campaign could go horribly wrong because, let’s accept it, we’re dealing with people and people can be very unpredictable at times. So, keep testing everything: keywords, synonyms, and related terms. Test different landing pages, different ads in the same ad group, basically everything you can.

Also, Google’s default setting prioritizes spending money by attracting most clicks. But, you’re more focused on getting better conversions and ROI, so always set it to “rotate indefinitely” even if AdWords warns you against it.

The Beginning

This is a taste of what it’s like to actually plan out an AdWords campaign and by now you know that you can’t get done with it simply by paying the amount. Yes, there are a lot of other things to factor, other measures to take, other plans to carry out to make sure you’re actually getting good returns from investing in PPC, but that doesn’t mean you should get scared and not give it a try at all. It may look like a hassle at first, but once you start working on it and carry out one campaign successfully, you’ll have the framework registered in your mind and the subsequent times won’t be as difficult. Remember to start slow, start small, and plan out every step. Focus on your most important conversion first and expand only after you’ve achieved success. Make sure your landing page is relevant to your advert and refrain from using your homepage.

In conclusion, I’ll just say that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you’re learning from them and doing better the next time. All the best!

The post Kickstarting Your Google AdWords Campaign for Online Events in 2020 appeared first on Yapsody.

The two best things about Facebook adverts are that they’re targeted and they’re cheap, and you only need a Facebook Business Page to be able to use them. Their primary motive is to drive traffic to a specific landing page, and your ads will only appear in the news feeds of people who belong to your target audience. This is decided by their profile movements and demographics.

KNOW THY CUSTOMERS

This one gives me a déjà vu because I’ve already used the same subheading in another blog post, but it’s just so apt that I couldn’t control myself.

Facebook is a platform where people demonstrate their inclination towards a wide range of interests – favorite colors, shows, actresses, destinations and so on. All of this serves as data for you to formulate your marketing strategy to cater to your customers. One of the best ways to track down people who might be interested in your brand is by tapping on the followers of your competitors. For event presenters like yourself, you might want to catch hold of people who are interested in the kind of events or concerts you organize. If you’re hosting a fundraiser for a certain cause, you might want to place your ad in the feeds of those who are actively supporting the cause or have previously attended a similar fundraiser.

KNOW THY CUSTOMERS TOO WELL

Now there’s a subheading that’s not been repeated!

While Facebook adverts are cheap, having a very broad audience is definitely going to be expensive, even for Facebook ads. Try to be more precise with the factors that you use to filter out your target audience. Maybe these filters will not work the first time, so keep experimenting as you track your traffic. After a few tries, you’ll have a clearer idea of who your audience actually comprises of.

KNOW THY CTA

Am I overdoing the subheadings? Well, you’re still reading, so probably not.

Your Call-To-Action is the make or break point of your advertisement, so make sure you frame it wisely. If you want your ad to be noticed amongst a stream of Harry Potter posts and cute puppy videos, you have to make sure it’s tempting enough to be clicked on. Try publicizing a specific offer, like an end of season sale or a giveaway, because they usually catch attention.

PICTURES SPEAK

Your Facebook ads are going to be little square boxes with minimum number of words (20%, to be precise). So, if you want them to stand out, you’ve to make sure the imagery you use is catchy. Be bold with the colors and use pictures of people, because this provides a certain level of human intimacy. Also remember that you don’t have to be gaudy to be catchy.

ADVERTEST BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE

Before investing a huge amount in Facebook ads, allot a small test budget for a particular target audience and run your advert for around a week, use Ad Manager to track its performance and keep changing your strategy accordingly. Under Audience and Placement, you’ll get an insight into the age groups who clicked on your ads the most number of times, and also whether the clicks were on a mobile device or a desktop.

In Conclusion, Facebook provides a highly targeted platform for advertising. You practically get to customize all aspects of your ad campaign – how long will your ad run, how many people can view it, how much can you pay for it – and analyzing the results is even simpler. If you’re smart with the budget you invest, you can exploit all benefits that Facebook adverts have to offer.

The post A Crash Course On Facebook Advertisements appeared first on Yapsody.

Events are meant to promote networking, and networking does not begin on the day of the event itself. In order to get your attendees excited about the event and also to create new content for the same, you need to engage with them prior to the event, and this is how you go about it:

BLOGGING

Blog posts are rich in content and they largely influence the way your event is perceived by your audience. By creating good quality blog content, you can not only engage with existing attendees, but also expand your reach to other potential attendees. Resort to platforms like LinkedIn, apart from your own website, to put forth your event and your views in front of thousands of other professionals in your niche. You could also request your speakers and partners to write guest posts so as to give your audience a little glimpse of what they’re up for in the event.

TWEET-CHAT

It’s really surprising how much can be achieved with a string of 140 characters. Tweet-chatting is a live event that one can host on his Twitter account, encouraging followers to participate in a discussion on a certain topic using an assigned hashtag. Choose any topic relevant to your industry and make sure it’s something that calls for discussion and is not mundane, create a suitable hashtag, schedule a tweet-chat and ask your speakers and other professionals from the industry to join in.

TWITTER POLL

While we’re on the subject of Twitter, here’s another amazing feature that Twitter launched quite recently, namely Twitter Polls. Users can now post a question with two choices for answers and ask followers to vote. As an event presenter, you can ask your audience engaging questions that vest in them a certain power of deciding what goes in the event and what stays out. For example, ask them to choose between two cuisines, and say that the winner cuisine will be served at the event. You could also ask them to choose between two topics, themes, or even guest speakers. This will ensure that they feel more connected to your event.

WEBINARS

This is a really cool way to connect with your attendees before the event and give them a feel of what the event will be all about. Bring in your keynote speakers, plug in a webcam, create a YouTube account and, using the ‘Hangout on Air’ feature, you can instantly start broadcasting live. On enabling live chat, you’ll be able to interact with your viewers who would ask questions and make comments that can be moderated in real time. The best part is – you can wear PJs while you’re at it and it won’t even be unprofessional!

PRE-CONNECT

As I pointed out in the introductory sentence of this post, networking is what people seek when they attend events. So, give your attendees a chance to network before the event through online conferences. You could use apps like Presdo Match that have networking functions, allowing attendees to connect with each other.

FACEBOOK CONTESTS

Competitions and prizes turn every mature adult into an excited child, so what better way to get your audience geared up for the event than hosting an online contest? Facebook competitions are very easy to organize, and you can always give away event merchandise, free event tickets online, free sessions with the keynote, an overnight stay at a good hotel and other cool goodies as prizes. Using Gleam, you can host a competition and give incentives to the participants on the basis of likes and shares. Also, you’ll be able to grow your databases by capturing their email addresses.

FUN CAMPAIGNS

The best way to get noticed is by being different. And different certainly equals silly in many cases. Instead of sticking to tried and tested methods, come up with fun competitions and campaigns where you prompt your attendees to upload funny pictures to earn a discount on the tickets, or a free goodie. Create a crisp hashtag for this campaign so that it’s easy to follow the activities, and by the end of it, you can also put them all together to display on your page.

Presenters work really hard to make an event happen, so placing its fate in the hands of the one day that the event is on is a huge risk. Your chances of having a successful event depend largely on the build-up, too. So, make sure you direct your efforts into these pre-event engagement techniques to increase your chances of making your event a memorable one.

The post Clever Ways To Engage Attendees Before Your Event appeared first on Yapsody.

Segment Your Audience

Marketing 101 – Everybody is different. It’s easy to find people with similar preferences, but never exactly the same. So, sending the same email to everyone is definitely not going to work. Segment your potential audience depending on their interests and then send customized newsletters.

Personalize Your Templates 

With smart email inboxes that filter out spam getting through can be a task. Your mails fall prey to Select All -> Move to Trash. If you don’t want your emailers to end up in spam, personalize your emails. Include names of people who the newsletter is addressed to instead of shooting mass emails to your entire database. Unless your emails are engaging on a personal level, it will be ignored.

Call-To-Action

You’ve segmented your target audience perfectly, you’ve crafted personalized emails with amazing content. Now what? Now, you unleash the power of the Call-To-Action (CTA). You’ve led them on a path and now must give them a clear direction to their destination. If your emails have a CTA that redirects your readers to the registration page or a survey, they are will respond because they’re already in the flow. Make sure you use active verbs like “Register Now!” or “Take the Survey!” on your CTA buttons to create impact.

Mobile Optimization

80% of your target audience is going to view your email on a mobile device: either a smartphone or a tablet. If your email template is not optimized for mobile devices, your chances of getting a response from your email viewers will narrow down to an extremely thin line. So, ensure that your email gets displayed flawlessly on all kinds of digital platforms by adopting a responsive design.

Automate Campaigns

Email marketing campaigns don’t display instant results, so make sure you have a backup of automated emails that ensures constant engagement with your audience. Birthdays, follow-ups, blog updates – they could be anything. Make sure your entire email marketing campaign revolves around your automated schedule so that nothing goes south. Create relevant content, sit back and relax while all your emails get delivered during hours that are most responsive.

So, you see, the efficiency of email marketing hasn’t been compromised due to newer strategies. It still remains just as effective, only a few simple measures that make it all work out in your favor.

If you’re a presenter or an event marketer looking to automate your email marketing strategy, Yapsody’s ticketing platform offers MailChimp Integration to simplify your efforts through email marketing examples.

The post Smart Tips for Effective Email Marketing appeared first on Yapsody.

LinkedIn is synonymous to networking in professional spheres. You see how this Events feature was actually making it really easy for event presenters to build connections and promote their event through LinkedIn, but since it wasn’t advertised a lot, not a lot of people were aware of this feature which eventually led to its shutdown. Is there any other way to build connections with your potential attendees and promote your event amongst them on LinkedIn now?

CONNECT

If you really want to build a network, make sure you’re proactively adding existing contacts and connecting with people on LinkedIn after every meeting. Also, develop a habit of using the Status Update box at least twice or thrice a week. This will ensure that every time a user belonging to your network signs in, you will appear on their timeline.

RESEARCH & INSIGHT

While LinkedIn allows you to create a group solely for your event discussions, you could actually get some valuable insight and do good market research through existing groups that are relevant to your niche. There are numerous groups only targeted towards event planners, and by engaging in a few that might be significant for you, you could expand your database.

Suppose your upcoming event has event planners living in Texas as the target audience. If you’re an active presenter, you might be having your own email database, but if you wish to expand it, you could try out this approach: Join a few groups and turn on LinkedIn’s Advanced Search option to filter out members living in Texas. Once you’ve done this for quite a few groups, you can rank them based on number of members fitting your criteria. Also, carry out a parallel assessment of these groups – how active they are, what is the criteria to post something on it etc.

Now that you have a select list of groups that can serve as good platforms for your event, start participating in discussions and also start your own discussions. Don’t bluntly promote your event; instead, make people aware of your event through your subtle comments and discussions. Instead of a one-way promotion, interact with your audience.

InMail

Apart from refining groups, you can also use the Advanced Search tool to filter out individuals who fit your criteria. For example, you could look for people who’ve listed their profession as ‘Event Planner’ or ‘Event Organizer’, or their industry as ‘Event Planning’ or ‘Event Services’ in Texas. Browse through the profiles appearing in the search results and send personal invites using available contact details or LinkedIn’s InMail service, which is available for paid members.

We hope these tips help you to continue using LinkedIn for interacting with your potential audience and promoting your event. If you know of other ways to use LinkedIn’s features to help out event planners, do post them in the comments below!

The post Ways To Grow Your Network On LinkedIn For Event Marketing appeared first on Yapsody.

1. Social Media Influencers

Of course, Social Media is a default sub-heading in all event related blogs. Want to sell event tickets? Social Media! Want to make your event popular? Social Media! Want to attract guest speakers? Social Media!

But what is it about the Social Media that actually makes a big show of your event?

Even if you don’t have a gargantuan budget for online promotion, you can do wonders if you just get in touch with people who are already popular on the Social Media. Find out bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, and Facebook pages that belong to your niche and have a huge list of followers, and collaborate with them. This way, your event will be recommended by highly trusted personalities to a potential audience of over a million, and that will definitely make it stand out.

2. ‘Live’ in The Moment

Marketing 101: Using numbers and statistics in a statement makes it sound 92% more convincing. I just made THAT one up, though.

Coming to the point (and these numbers are real, mind you), 86% of buyers would appreciate interactive media content, and 76% of people regretfully accept that browsing through a friend’s pictures of an event or a place they vacationed in makes them want to go there, too. So, keep your live feeds going at a full speed, click pictures of photogenic locations and areas in and around your event, record small video clips (or vlogs, as they are called) and keep posting them on your event’s Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube channel, website, blog etc. to create a more interactive environment with your audience.

3. Share The Love

Whenever you receive attendee feedback about your previous events, or if anyone across the web has posted anything positive about the same, you should share them on your profiles to add a pinch of, or maybe I should say a mound of credibility to your firm. Your potential attendees will heavily rely on the past experiences of your previous attendees instead of self-promoting statements made by your own company. So, make sure that you glorify good reviews and use them to make your event stand out.

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I won’t deny, social media definitely consumes a lot of time, and for busy people like y’all, it can wreck your schedule. But, there are ways to manage it, and here I’m going to explain five top ones:

ON THE CLOCK

Event planners practically live off clocks and calendars, so this shouldn’t be a tough one. When you sit down to post event updates on social media to sell your event tickets, you might get distracted really easily, especially when there’s always that ‘View 10 New Tweets’ and ‘20+ New Stories’ popping up again and again. To top it all, you now have push notifications on your smartphones for all twenty social media apps that you’ve installed.

Give specific time windows to these outlets and only be active on them during those intervals. First thing in the morning, plan out your social media ‘schedule’ and stick to it. Turning off your notifications will definitely work since you won’t feel the urge to go back every 10 minutes to check your feed and spend so much time on it. Also, make sure that whenever you’re working on a platform during the time allotted to it, work ONLY on it – create content, engage with your followers, interact with people and so on.

A LOT AT ONCE

Having pre-produced content in bulk always helps, because you won’t have to fidget with new ideas and find ways to execute them right at the eleventh hour. Whenever you manage to squirm a little time off, maybe just before you sleep, after you wake up, during breakfast, or while traveling, you can list out tips related to your industry and post them on Twitter. These same tips can be converted to infographics that you can post on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest (try using PicMonkey or Canva for the same) and also include your logo in these pictures to increase your branding.

Yes, content creation might take some time, but scheduling it is a cakewalk for an event planner, at least. Use apps like Hootsuite to schedule hourly Tweets, and follow a similar approach with Facebook posts as well.

SMALL IS BIG

When you have ideas on your mind, you want to jump into the implementation. And if you take a really big leap, you might just fall and break your head. This simply means that just because there are a hundred social media outlets out there, you don’t have to be on each one of them all at once. Instead, start with platforms that you’re familiar with, or the ones that are popular in your niche. Later, when you are smoothly managing these platforms and are still left with enough time to start promoting on others, you could expand to more channels.

HOW FREE IS FREE TIME?

As I already mentioned, you could use up your free time (or ‘dead’ time, as they call it) for following up on your social media accounts. This is usually the time where you anyway can’t do something else that’s really productive, for example, when you are waiting in the checkout queue at the supermarket, or waiting for someone at the restaurant before a meeting. You could utilize this time to check your feed, retweet people on Twitter, and you could also create new content using your phone.

SCHEDULE YOUR CONTENT

This is probably a continuation of the second point. For every kind of content that you want to put up online, you can have a rough idea in your mind about the where, when, and how. Divide your content into categories, and then plan how much from each one of it are you going to post in a day, or over a week. So, you won’t have to spend another hour contemplating the kind  of content you want to post, instead, you’ll have a domain that’ll give you a line of thinking when you’re considering what to post.

IN CONCLUSION

So, there you go. Now that you know it won’t be that difficult to manage your social media accounts, you can utilize that time you spent stressing out for coming up with new social media strategies, all the while keeping these five tips at the back of your head.

The post How To Effectively Manage Multiple Social Media Accounts appeared first on Yapsody.

1. Focus on quality. You have to keep your press release to-the-point, undoubtedly, but that shouldn’t disturb the essence of your article. Normal people are going to read your press release, and it might be the first impression you create in front of them. So, make sure the language you use is publish-worthy and appealing to the readers.
2. Find the sweet spot. Every event has a highlight, a sweet spot, which is responsible for roping in 70-80% of the target audience. Make use of this when you’re writing the headline for the press release. This may be an exclusive speaker, an exquisite venue, or a scrumptious cuisine – you ask around and see what interests people the most about your event.
3. Use bylines. A byline comes right under the headline and is not more than 15 words. The function of a byline is to enhance your press release and bring out a key factor of your event. For example, if your press release is titled “Wildhorse: Next Stop For The Tenors”, your byline could be a little elaboration of the title and could be something like: “The Tenors to continue their Under One Sky tour and perform live at Wildhorse Resort”
4. Cover the 5 W’s. As mentioned earlier, journalists are busy folks and definitely not big fans of long-form. Cut your press release short by addressing the 5 W’s – what, where, when, who, and why – in a nutshell.
5. Back up your body with quotes. Quotes are pretty impressive in press releases, so go ahead and put in words of your guest speakers, past attendees, or other mentions that your event has received elsewhere. This will boost up your event’s identity in front of your readers.
6. In conclusion. The last paragraph of your press release should be very crisp, where you wrap up the story and include contact information about your client and maybe your team as well. Also, put in a few details of what exactly your client does in this paragraph.

If you really want to excel in the art of writing press releases, you can adopt these habits:

1. Read plenty of good newspapers.
2. Refrain from using hyperbolic adjectives.
3. The press release should be written in the third-person format (no ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘You’ etc. unless it’s a quote).
4. Don’t exceed 300 words.
5. You can add a pitch letter along with the highlights of the story.
6. Place three “#”s at the end of the press release, center aligned.

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