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!

The post Social Media Marketing Checklist For Event Promotion appeared first on Yapsody.

We realized it was high time you stopped experimenting with useless techniques to promote your event on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, and virtually every other social media platform that you can think of. Honestly, having a ten-line instruction set to guide your audience to your online ticket store is definitely not working because nowadays, people don’t even read their medical reports that sincerely. It doesn’t matter how rich or witty your content is – if it’s not a click away, it’s no good, anyway! To overcome this major blunder, Yapsody decided to come up with Widgets to make social media promotion a lot easier.

WHAT?

Yapsody offers you two essential widgets that are very effective and make event promotion look like a cakewalk:

1. Text Link Widget: You can have a text link that can be shared in your Facebook posts, your tweets, or your blogs. This is a direct hyperlink to your event details.
2. Button Widget: Yapsody generates a source code for you to integrate on your official site. This way, you can have a customized button on your website to link to your event instead of boring text URLs.

HOW?

Once you’ve set up an event at Yapsody, you just need to follow these simple steps to get your Widgets:

• Click on the Event you wish to share, the details of which will be displayed on the right hand side.

• Click on “Edit” on the top-right corner.

• The Events Summary will open by default. Select the “Widgets” option.

• From the two options of Text Link and Button Widgets, select whichever you want to use.

• When you select

a. TEXT LINK WIDGET:

Click on “Generate Code”. Use this code across social media platforms and anyone who clicks it will be redirected to Yapsody to buy event tickets.

b. BUTTON WIDGET:

Click on “Generate Code”. Your Development Team should use this code to integrate the button on your official website.

WHEN?

Well, this section is as useless as the techniques you’ve been playing around with to get a better grip on your social media promotions. Of course, the answer is – NOW! If you have an event and want to go about promoting it, go ahead and use those widgets to make things a lot easier for you. After all, why would we have them in the first place if they didn’t help our presenters? So, stop fidgeting and start widgeting right away!

The post Widgets – Event Promotion Tools For Event Presenters appeared first on Yapsody.

#HASHTAGS!

Create a customized hashtag for your event and inject it into your event content wherever you post it. Be it a Twitter tweet, a Facebook page, a Tumblr blog, or a YouTube channel, you need to make your hashtag viral. Make sure your hashtag is sensible, witty and crisp because sometimes, hashtags can be a complete disaster. For instance, Susan Boyle’s album had a release party with the hashtag #susanalbumparty. Pretty grossed out, eh?

ALL TEXT AND NO GRAPHICS MAKES YOUR POST A DULL GUY

When you draft a post or a tweet to promote your event, bear in mind that normal people who are struggling to keep up with the pace of life are going to be reading it. So, you need to make sure it is really catchy and not simply dry text. Put in pictures, videos of your previous events, or mash up quotes by some good speakers who’ve attended your event; integrate them into a delightful collage and put that up to grab their eyeballs. Don’t overdo it, though, or it’ll look too gaudy and you might simply come out as a desperate attention-seeker.

ONE-SIDED LOVE, OR PROMOTION, ONLY CAUSES PROBLEMS

Your communication with your target audience has to be more of a two-way thing. No matter how engaging your content is, merely watching and reading it will bore your people in no time. Make sure you put in a few contests, challenges, or other online interactive sessions so that your audience develops a stronger connection to your event. Also, tell the world about the feedback’s and reviews that people have given you, and the way you reply to all of them. This way, they’ll know you’re accountable and approachable.

KNOW THYSELF, THY FRIENDS, THE FRIENDS OF THY FRIENDS, AND EVERYONE ELSE

The essence of social media marketing lies in building a QUALITY NETWORK, that is, a network comprised of not just of a lot of people, but also renowned people who have their own throng of followers. When these people promote your event on their social platforms, your reach is magnified exponentially as large audiences are automatically notified of your event. This marketing strategy gives your promotion a great head start. Follow them up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms; and every time they put up content regarding your event, make it a point to post comments from your end, too. This way, their followers can get a link to you directly.

Always remember, it’s a cycle between you and your audience: you need them, and they want your event. All you need is to consistently keep them informed about it and WHY exactly they need to be a part of it – in other words, keep watering that fruit tree!

That is pretty much all the showbiz summed up!

The post Effective Ways To Use Social Media for Event Promotion appeared first on Yapsody.