Tips To Build and Retain Your Online Event Community DuringThe COVID Era

1. Keep A Pulse On The Social Media Landscape 

With online engagement rates going through the roof during the COVID era, it’s absolutely imperative that you keep an eye out for trending topics, industry updates, and conversations that your audience indulges in. Once you get into their train of thoughts, it becomes easier to connect with them. 

2. Participate Actively Through Event Forums 

To further your community building and retention activities, go for a targeted approach of participating in event forums. Being active in forums that are frequented by your target audience helps you solidify your presence as a brand that cares about what event attendees want. Retain your existing audience by sharing thought pieces and build new leads by showcasing what they can expect from your upcoming events in the post-COVID era.  

3. Ramp Up Your Lines Of Communication

When you’re actively trying to build your brand presence through community-building activities, the curiosity induced amongst your potential audiences will have them flocking to your online help desk for more information. This the time when you should keep your eyes and ears open across all your social media platforms. Learn more about Ramping Up Your Marketing Efforts in the COVID Era.  

4. Ask Relevant Questions

Not only is your online community of looking for the safest venue to attend future events, but they’re also wanting to share their personal thoughts and ideas as to what they would expect from you as an event organizer. Make full use of this opportunity to use our Questionnaires & Surveys feature to gather useful insights that will help you plan better for the post COVID era of events. 

We hope our community building and retention tips help you during this critical phase. For those looking to manage their cash flow and event investments better, check out our COVID RECOVERY Offer and SIGN UP to make full use of it. We also have a wide suite of marketing services that can help you build your online community with tailor-made solutions.

COVID RECOVERY OFFER 

FLAT 40% Off on our service fees up to 31^st December 2020 on all events created before 15^th July 2020.

Promo Code: COVID19-RECOVERY40 Click to Copy

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Your First 50 Tickets Are FREE

Create Your Event Now

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Here’s How You Can Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts in The COVID Era: 

1. Optimize Your Website To Rank Higher 

This is a time when online engagement and internet usage has surged exponentially. Your audience is searching for new modes of entertainment and online which is why your brand website should be optimized by SEO experts for it to rank higher. As part of our Assistance and Recovery Program, we’re offering our existing suite of marketing services to the hospitality and entertainment industry. 

Optimizing your website with the right mix of content and keywords will help you stay on top of search results and get discovered by potential audiences.

2. Use Surveys To Plan For The Future 

Apart from hosting web events, organizers and concert clients have been using our event ticketing platform to build their own questionnaires & surveys which helps them collect important data from their guests.  The types of questions you ask in a survey can give you a mountain of information that you can utilize for planning your future events.

Think about what your target audience expects out of the post-pandemic situation and questions which you need answers to that will help you plan better for the upcoming months. Here are 3 Types of Surveys to Improve Your Event Planning. 

3. Create A Strong Brand Recall 

All your marketing and branding efforts are a success only if your target audience is able to connect with your brand of events and shows in the future as well. Creating a strong brand recall ensures that your potential ticket-buying audience gravitates towards you and not your competitors. We have been helping key entities in the hospitality and entertainment industry with our marketing suite of services. 

If you’re an event presenter looking to use a robust event ticketing platform, you can SIGN UP here and also schedule a discussion with us to register for our marketing suite of services.  

Assistance & Recovery Program for Native American Casinos

In this climate of uncertainty, businesses worldwide have either curtailed their offerings or come to a standstill until further notice. Yet, acting purely out of our love and commitment to supporting our family of Native American Casinos in achieving a swift recovery, we are extending our existing suite of services to the Casino Assistance & Recovery Program. 

Our program will help serve your business operations, optimize your existing processes, grow your profitability, and save costs significantly on the road to recovery. Remember to stay safe as we, as a community will come out stronger than ever once this pandemic passes away safely.

Also Read: 

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Resources for Event Presenters

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Luckily for you, creating an event on Yapsody is the only prerequisite for utilizing our event marketing tools and services to supercharge your audience reach. Here’s something your event marketers to amp up their efforts and reach a wider audience.  

1. SEO Optimization For Events

Screenshot – Yapsody Dashboard

When you start off by creating events on our Online Ticket Store, you can optimize those events to rank higher on Google Search. Using the right keywords and description, you can increase the traffic to your online ticket store. This is one of the highly recommended, cost-free methods of reaching the right audience.

2. MailChimp Integration 

Once you’re done publishing your event, the next step should be marketing it to your existing guest list. With our MailChimp integration, you can send catchy emails to your event attendees to update them about your upcoming event. Maybe throw in an early bird discount to quickly sell out the first phase of tickets. 

3. Premium Event Listing 

Many of our event presenters prefer to spread the word through our high traffic generating website. With our Premium Event Listing, you can increase your visibility by almost 10x by getting listed in your choice of event category. 

Screenshot – Premium Event Listing

4. Social Media Sharing

As an event presenter, the more channels you utilize to display your events, the better. Posting our events from our social media channels is a guaranteed approach for reaching a wider audience and increase your ticket sales. Our numbers speak for themselves. 

Screenshot – Yapsody Facebook Insights

5. Facebook Pixel Tracking

Optimizing and sharing your event pages isn’t enough to stay ahead of the game. You need to track your ticket buyer’s behavior and improve your strategy if required. With our Facebook Pixel Tracking tool, know exactly where your potential ticket buyers dropped off in their buying cycle to further improve your marketing tactics. 

6. Google Analytics Integration

Easy, reliable, and accurate. Our Google Analytics integration is one of the most sought after tools. In pursuit of that perfect event, it’s necessary to understand which channels worked best in increasing your ticket sales and which didn’t. With Google Analytics, you get valuable insights that streamline your entire event marketing campaign.

Looking to take marketing strategy up a few notches? Read how to Step Up Your Event Marketing Strategy in 2020. 

The post 6 Event Marketing Tools & Services To Reach A Wider Audience appeared first on Yapsody.

Building Hype

You can have a killer line-up and a seamless ticketing page, but if your audience has no clue about your event, they won’t be landing on your page. Word of mouth used to work well but in this age of sold-out ticket phases, building the initial hype online that follows up to your event is absolutely crucial. Build momentum through highly visual yet shareable content like teasers, headliners, and early bird tickets. Divide your marketing campaign into pre-buzz, launch, and post-launch phases for content distribution. 

Give Your Event A Visual Personality 

No one trusts a shoddy flyer that is made with stock images. Invest in a graphic designer who can translate your brand ideas into simple yet eye-catching  GIFS and videos.

View this post on Instagram

Nothing deadly, nothing scary, just tricks, treats and a bag full of candy. Yapsody team wishes you a spooky fun Halloween! #Halloween #HappyHalloween #Events #trickortreat #Candy #Spooky #Scarynights #Yapsody

A post shared by Yapsody (@yapsody) on Oct 31, 2019 at 12:00pm PDT

Instagram is all about punchy aesthetics that makes someone forward your post or story to their DM list. Consider half of your marketing done when your followers start spreading the word. Keep an eye on the Insights tab to see which type of posts are doing well. 

Storytelling 

For certain events like an annual fundraiser cookout, people need content in the form of a story to refresh their memories. Testimonials of past attendees or short clips from the previous year will bring in both the old and new audiences to your event. This is a good time to refresh and repurpose your old content. Keep an event calendar in your “Highlights” section that helps your attendees plan better. Don’t forget a unique #hashtag that ties in with your upcoming event and makes it easier for people to discover your stories through it.  

Sell Tickets 

The ultimate goal for any event promoter is to sell out the venue. All the previous 3 strategies should eventually lead to a CTA that lands on a ticketing platform. You can add the booking link in your profile bio and also add it as a link in your stories where followers can swipe up and land on the ticketing page.  Some ways of accomplishing a sold-out venue quickly are:

• Giving out free tickets through “Tag 3 friends to Win” contest
• Early bird tickets which create a sense of urgency among the audience
• A flash sale with the messaging “Only 100 more tickets available”

Behind The Scenes 

People love being involved in the event through sneak peeks or behind the scenes. They love getting to know the brains behind the operations of an event. As an event marketer, you should post photos or videos of logistics crews, artist prep,  sponsors, and other participants. Use the Live Video feature by putting up a story informing your followers of the time slot that you plan on going LIVE. 

User-Generated Content 

Proof of a good hashtag turning into a great campaign is evident here. If your event turns out awesome, it’s guaranteed to leave a huge footprint on social media. Your audiences might go live during your event, or post a few stories, and eventually make a carousel post at the end of the night. Even after the completion of your event, you can repost their content on your feed. Everyone loves an awesome group photo, which is why user-generated content is a great way to wrap up your event into a memorable one. 

With the Yapsody’s ticketing platform,  you get features such as Reserved Seating, Ticket Customisation, QR Code Ticket Scanner and much more. Our digital marketing team handles your Instagram Event Marketing which is tailor-made for your brand. Reach out to us HERE if you want additional event marketing services which are an exclusive feature for presenters creating an event with us.  

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Create Blog Posts

If your company has an active official blog, use it to publish posts that will boost your event marketing. Make sure your content offers value to the reader before selling the event directly. Do a series of interviews with the event presenters that will deliver event context to prospective attendees.

Film a ‘behind-the-scenes’ video to showcase the amount of careful planning that goes into organizing an event and publish the video on the blog. Using visuals creates an engaging yet informative experience for viewers. Avoid content that is extremely promotional.

Find A Ticketing Platform

While expecting your audience to turn up on your platform to buy tickets is a fair expectation, think from their perspective. If they are unaware of your ticketing platform, they won’t be able to discover your events. 

Partner up with a third-party that has already invested in promoting its online event ticketing platform. This platform spends its time and resources in gauging your audience’s behavior and conversion patterns when it comes to selling event tickets online and coming up with cool promotional event ideas.

This significantly enhances potential ticket sales, while saving you the hassle of starting from scratch and entering the conversion funnel.

Leverage the Power of SEO

Simple as it may sound, a lot of event planners tend to overlook this basic traffic-generating activity. This works on two levels – introducing your upcoming event to audiences searching for relevant knowledge on the web and creating awareness among potential attendees.

Develop a consistent keyword strategy that is in context with your competition’s rankings as well as the relevance of your offerings. Ensure that your website is mobile responsive as that directly impacts the ranking and conversion process.

Reach Out to Past Attendees

In the quest to acquire and retain larger audiences, don’t forget to reach out to those who’ve already vouched for your effectiveness in the past.

If you have already held an event or if you have some registrations for parallel events, then these guests should be your first set of invitees. Encourage them to spread the word by offering them unique referral codes that can be easily shared in their social network. Earn your registrations by offering them a discount on new event registrations.

With this event marketing plan, you can not only explore the right audience but also influencers and evangelists on how to promote an event successfully.

The post Your 2019 Guide To The Most Effective Event Promotion Channels appeared first on Yapsody.

SPEAKERS CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM

Having attendees vote for their favorite speakers isn’t an entirely new trend, and has been adopted by many event organizers on existing platforms. But, a dedicated platform to crowdsource speakers remains absent (to the best of my knowledge, that is). Event organizers would love a platform where the registered attendees could vote for their favorite speakers.

COLLABORATIVE PLANNING

Many event planners have used Facebook apps for involving attendees while planning events, but they have usually been informal ones. The existence of a system where event planners could use a range of tools for involving attendees in planning their event would solve many hassles. With Facebook polls and the debuting Twitter polls, asking for yes or no opinions is easy, but voting, venue hunting, setting the event ticket price, project management, and sponsor sourcing could all be pooled together on one single platform dedicated to collaborative planning.

VIP CHECK IN NOTIFICATION

Being an event presenter, you might be well aware of what it means when a VIP checks in or registers for your event. Having an influential person attending your event could alter your registration process, and also send out a message to your social media management team to get in touch with them online. Probably depending upon their social/online presence and followers, one could single out VIPs from the list of attendees.

EVENT SPECIFIC SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

Yes, the internet is flooded with tools to monitor Facebook and Twitter. And that’s the problem. Event presenters are not selling products, they’re offering services. They want to know if they’ve created an impact, and provided a good experience to their attendees – ALL IN ONE PLACE. Social media tools that can be used by event managers to improve the experience they’re offering would be different from the usual marketing tools, and this needs to be addressed.

Lastly, there is a possibility I might have missed out on other real problems that can be solved by young entrepreneurial minds. On the other hand, the issues I’ve mentioned above may have already been addressed by applications, systems, or tools that I’m not aware of. In either case, please drop in a comment to enlighten me (and others like me), because you may just be saving a presenter from a lot of hassles.

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