Understanding what type of communication works best for the audience you are looking to target is essential. Once you have selected your target audience and your method of communication, then pick from these choice options ideal for event marketing.

1. Facebook

With a minimum of 2.19 billion monthly active users, Facebook has retained its position as the social media channel with the widest reach. The network allows you to reach the most varied of audience in terms of geo, gender, as well as age. Today, everyone from your newly born to your 96 year-old grandma is on Facebook. Even the house cat has an account. This is the channel for you if you are looking to reach out to the maximum audience to sell tickets online.

2. Instagram

Instagram has a slightly different approach to advertising and appeals to those with a high sense of visual aspect in their event. It’s popular with the millennial generation, especially women. Ideal for art festivals, dance performances, F&B events and the likes, Instagram is poised as the perfect social media channel to promote your exquisite pictures and videos.

3. Twitter

If you are looking to reach the wittier section of the millennial generation, Twitter is the network for you. It’s a fast-moving platform said to reach its post peak within 18 minutes. It’s best to have a new witty remark ready to keep relevant.

4. Snapchat

Snapchat is considered the trendsetter among social media channels. It offers you a unique mix of a younger crowd slewing towards the fairer sex.

5. LinkedIn

LinkedIn works great for more serious marketing. It targets professionals when they are in the mindset to make complex decisions. LinkedIn is especially useful in the Education industry, as targeting can be highly specific, and reach out to the exact audience for a particular program.

6. Pinterest

This is the only network that reports higher usage in rural areas as compared to the metropolitan mainstream. It is widely used to promote DIY workshops, craft fairs, and cooking-related events.

Choose Wisely

Remember, while marketing on these platforms, you not only need to keep the target audience in mind but also how you present your content to them. For example, while long textual marketing techniques may work on Facebook, visuals are the way to go on Instagram.

The post The 6 Ultimate Social Media Channels for Event Marketing appeared first on Yapsody.

• One billion hours of video viewed on YouTube every day
• Over 500 million people are watching video on Facebook daily
• Time spent watching video on Instagram is up more than 80% year over year
• Videos are six times more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than photos, and three times more likely to receive retweets than GIFs
• Snapchat has 10 billion daily video views

Here’s how video marketing can boost your social media marketing plan for events:

1. Broadcast live and get more attention

Using the ‘Facebook Live’ feature, you can broadcast videos to your audience in real-time. Apart from Facebook, social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Periscope also provide the live video feature.  You can rope in your event’s performing artists and use this feature for promotion in the run-up to the event.

According to Facebook, users spend 3x more time watching live videos than videos that aren’t broadcast in real-time.  Your Facebook followers automatically opt-in to get notifications when you are “going live” which further increases visibility. Once your live broadcast is complete, you can upload the video to your timeline for those users who missed it. This feature is also helpful to give a sneak peek of your event to potential attendees who might show interest at a later point in time.

2. Grab attention early and sell tickets quickly

It’s important to grab the attention of your audience within the first 10 seconds or less, failing which they’ll stop watching your videos and move on. Within the first few seconds, you must convey the purpose of the video to your viewers and also offer some interesting information about your event, like early-bird discounts, and offer for meet-n-greet with artists, etc. You should capture interest during the first or second frame of the video before users have a chance to scroll away.

3. Optimize for search to garner more views

As you would have noticed, most social media platforms have inbuilt search options wherein you can search using terms such as hashtags. Consequently, make sure that your videos are SEO optimized to get noticed in the search engines of these platforms as well as external search engines. To make sure your videos are optimized, add proper headline and description to your video posts. Also, add relevant hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to boost search results. On YouTube, apart from the title and description you can add keyword tags to your videos.

4. Keep clear call-to-action in your videos

A call-to-action is an invitation to your viewers to take action which is why you should end your videos with a bang. Video content marketing needs to garner certain user actions, whether it is getting them to visit your event, share your video, or purchase an event ticket. The most effective place to add a call-to-action in your video is at the end. While creating videos, you must define a proper flow viz. ‘Introduction – Content – Call-to-action’. Keeping call-to-action at the end helps to motivate them to take your desired action.

5. Take your audience behind the scenes

The reason your audience follow you on social media is to know you better and get glimpses of how you run your business. When you do the latter, they connect with your brand. Once they get connected to your brand, it improves brand loyalty which is vital to growing your business.

So, showing videos such as behind-the-scenes, artists performing rehearsals, or the crew setting up the event – can garner interest and brand familiarity as well as engage your audience.

6. Capitalize on trending topics and hashtags to boost engagement

Like all other posts on social media, you need to leverage trending hashtags and topics while posting your videos. Capitalizing on these can help you connect with your audience regularly and eventually lead to fulfilling 3 content-goals. Delivering content that interests your audience, increase engagement level, and boost the number of views for your videos.

7. Run video ads to a targeted audience

You can run video ads to a targeted audience, including relevant users whom you haven’t already connected with on social media and get them excited about your upcoming events. Marketing videos on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all have ad options that focus on increasing  views and engagement.

If you want to be sure about your video ad campaign, make sure your YouTube marketing is on point. If you get good engagement and views after posting a video on your page, you are more likely to get better results when you turn that video into a video ad campaign. It will eventually help you save a lot of money, which you can otherwise use to promote your event on other channels.

To sum up

After having implemented the above elements if you do not check the performance of your videos, all efforts go in vain. Monitor video analytics components such as the number of views, reach, average view completion rate, average view duration, etc. – to keep a tab on the effectiveness of your videos.

To sum up, video marketing stands out as one of the most in-demand forms of marketing currently. If you aren’t including videos in your social media mix right now, you are incurring a lost opportunity.

The post 7 Ways to Leverage Video Marketing for your Events appeared first on Yapsody.

What you need is some organized way of measuring how effective your event marketing on social media has been. There are tools for calculating the impact of your social media stint. Use social media tools

Social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have their own set of analytics that you can avail if you are promoting a casino event, concert event, theater event etc. by paying the company. Other users are not aware of these, but you can make use of these in built analytics to determine the reach and response of your social media promotion. Some of them are as follows:

Twitter Analytics

This tool of Twitter allows users to estimate the engagement their post has had with the other users of Twitter. All the data are provided to the user in a demographic format. Users can check the graphs of followers’ interests their location and other information. You can also see the number of views, shares and retweets that your post has invited.

Facebook Page Insight

If you have created a page for your event on Facebook, tracking its organic reach and engagement among users is not difficult at all. Through Facebook page insight one can get all demographic data like

1. Organic reach: views from non followers.
2. Viral views: views from people who were directed to the post by friends.
3. Engagement: the number of likes, shares, comments, mentions, etc.

LinkedIn Company Analytics

With this neat tool you can monitor your followers and other competing events. Here too you can avail specific demographic data regarding your followers and their activities. LinkedIn has some paid tools like:

1. Mention: track responses to your posts.
2. Brandwatch: advanced tracking of followers, their location can be obtained through this.
3. Trackur: gives you data about how active people are on your page.

Key Performance Indicators

You must also promote on Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr to make the event survey easier. Once that is done, check your events KPIs. Through this you can measure how successful the promotion has been. This is through measuring of the number of people who called up, made enquiries through mail and track actual event ticket selling occurred. Social media tools like Hashtracking calculates the number of times your hashtag has been used.

The post How to Measure the Success of Your Event Promotion in Social Media appeared first on Yapsody.

Sadly, not every sales executive comes up with the best of the performance. There is always up and down in the sales graph. In such a situation, the company should take a note of what it can do to get the maximum out of their sales team.

Well, here are some sure-shot methods that will help you reap the best from salespersons:

How good you are as a motivator

When you don’t get the desired result, gushing out fiery smokes from your ears and yelling on top of the voice won’t help. Calm down and provide your team the much needed support. Sit with them and look into the areas where they have gone wrong and need help. Instil confidence in them. Give them a proper briefing of the event; involve them from the beginning. Bringing them into the picture at the last hour with little planning will yield no result. Encourage your sales team with attractive rewards, incentives, bonus, trips, or a dinner with the company’s big boss.

Breaking out from the four-wall closed room

Sometimes, having a discussion in a four-wall closed room freezes your mind and stops the free flow of ideas. Break this norm and take the team out from this closed environment. A friendlier and relaxed atmosphere means less pressure; there will be more exchange of ideas that will always work to the benefit of the company.

Time is Precious

Don’t waste the valuable time of your salesperson. We often see that many sales representatives are occupied in entering data, finishing some insignificant admin work, resulting in a waste of time. The organization must find out ways to minimize the wastage of time. Understanding target audience thoroughly; providing sales team with a support staff to do all the admin work; equipping them with handy tools; and options of quick communication should be explored to save their precious time and increase productivity.

Exploring Online Marketing

Making best use of online marketing can be helpful in meeting the required targets. However, getting maximum ‘register now’ button clicked is not the only way to gauge the success of online marketing. Keep the sales group updated about the latest digital marketing tools. Limiting them to tools such as Google Adwords, SEO, Newsletters will restrict them from earning more revenues, especially when the market is really competitive. Feed them with regular social updates on trending business mantra, familiarize them with time saving and business friendly applications. Allow them to use social sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Google+ to run sales campaign and generate more leads and conversion.

Utilize these simple and easy methods, and maximize the revenue.

The post Your Sales Team can do much better, believe it! appeared first on Yapsody.

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.

I see presenters spending so much on advertising and marketing campaigns that have zero (why am I using this word, or number, so much!?) effectiveness. What they don’t realize is that the conversion rate (percentage of website visitors who end up registering for your event) should be their prime focus. For example, if a 1% conversion rate meant 600 attendees, 2% will directly imply 1200 registrations. Now that you know how serious this is, let’s go ahead.

Oh, and I totally forgot, all these methods are going to cost you zero (again!) money, just like Yapsody’s General Admission events (that’s how marketing is done, folks).

CONTENT

The primary rule of website content is that all of it should aim at selling your event, directly or indirectly. All. Of. It.

Once you’ve fitted that in your head, drill these rules, too:

• Start with your conclusion
• Use headings
• Keep the content crisp and brief
• Bullet and number information
• Summarize
• Highlight important information
• Respect privacy and copyrights

Now that we know the rules, let’s play the game. The kind of content that you could put up on your website includes:

• Information related to top speakers, previous participants, and also feedback that previous attendees have given, celebrity endorsements, press mentions, pictures from your previous events etc. in order to build trust.
• Up-to-date information i.e. always keep an eye on prices and discounts that your website displays. You could also embed a Twitter/Facebook feed or run an active blog.
• Nothing that doesn’t serve the purpose of getting people to register for event. This is usually the annoying banners selling foreign products, newsletter subscriptions, or auto-playing videos that can be really distracting and ward off potential registrants.

CALL TO ACTION

This is how you have to actually provoke website visitors to register for your event. To the eyes of the audience, it’s just a button, but to a presenter, these four elements actually build the button:

Offer your registrants something that’s beyond good speakers, food, venue, and agenda. It’s only when you offer them discounts or free coupons that you actually grab their attention.

Create a feeling of urgency to persuade them to register immediately, or they might exceed the time limit or the event might sell out. Limiting the time and quantity makes people who are probably not even interested get in the flow and register.

If you’re hosting a great event, you shouldn’t be hesitating in assuring registrants that they are guaranteed complete refund on cancellation or in other similar scenarios. This makes you more dependable and eradicates double thoughts from their minds.

Your call to action statement should be a strong imperative verb that invites the viewer to perform a task immediately, almost subconsciously. Verbs like “Buy Tickets” or “Register Now” possess the characteristics of a strong call to action.

COSTING

Start off with chalking out the average price of your ticket, and construct all ticket categories, special offers, and discounts around that price. For example, if your average ticket price is $30, your tickets should range from $25 to $50. Make use of these tactics to maximize sales:

• Have a minimum of two categories always (VIP and Executive, for example)
• Have at least three ticket types that trigger urgency (Earlier than Early Bird, Early Bird, Standard)
• Special offers can comprise of discounts for tickets amounting to more than $100, group discounts for 5 people and so on.
• Code discounts are yet another way to offer discounts that can be made exclusive and limited in time/quantity so that people feel the urge to use them.

NEVER offer tickets at a lower price than you did before for the same event. This is highly frowned upon in the events industry because your attendees will be infuriated if they purchased tickets to your event 3 months prior to the event, and people are availing “last minute discounts” to get them at a cheaper rate.

CHECKOUT

Your advertisements and promotional gigs may have lured people into visiting your website, but if your registration and checkout process is not impeccable, your conversation rate may take a dip. Make sure you keep the following points in mind when you craft your registration process:

• Make your registration form as simple as possible. If you have fields that may be unclear, don’t forget to add help text.
• Make it concise. Don’t ask for irrelevant and unnecessary information.
• Account registrations seem to lengthen the process to visitors, so try to avoid them.
• Localize language, currency, and payment methods depending upon the market and your target audience, because this is said to boost registration by up to 300%.
• Restrict the registration process to your website and avoid redirecting your visitors to another webpage, as this discontinuity and inconsistency may tamper with your brand’s identity.
• Use the right event registration and ticketing software that caters to all your needs. Yapsody offers you a ticketing platform that is user-friendly and professional at the same time, and has a number of other features *embed a link to the features page here* at your disposal that can help you plan out your event efficiently.

CONCLUSION

Your marketing campaigns are bound to fail if your website, which is practically the face of your event, isn’t up to the mark. Make sure you incorporate these four C’s as you work on your website, and your conversion rate is very likely to boost up.

The post Ways To Sell More Tickets With Zero Budget appeared first on Yapsody.

1. A Lot.

You have Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and two thumbs that can type at the speed of light (you know that’s not a joke). Throw your event all over the social media; post pictures, blogs, articles, memes, infographics, videos, and everything else that’s A, relatable and engaging for your target audience, and B, informs them about your event. How difficult is it to type 140 characters and just tell the folks what you’ve been up to? Who doesn’t like a little insight into what happens at the backstage?

2. Many Masters, Many Likes.

You may be the all-rounder, putting up an event as awesome as that, but it wouldn’t hurt to have perfectionists or specialists work things out, right? Do what you’re extremely good at – be it decorations, or developing content, or managing the guest list. Put together a team of people who are the best at what they do, this way you’ll do a lot more in a lot less time and there are minimum chances of things going wrong.

3. Light It Up!

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are great, but a blog will simply ace the process. Talk about why your event is a big deal, about the efforts that went into it, what it is all about, and make it public. Unless you shine that spotlight over your event, you won’t be able to grab their eyeballs. There are hundred other club, hotel, theatre, music & casino events are coming up, so why yours? Remember, that’s what you are answering.

4. Of the People, For the People, and By the People.

Involve as many folks belonging to your community as possible. Events have the capability to influence communities largely. Also, you can seek help from the experts in the industry and make your event better for your attendees. Strike good deals with these people, figure out ways to harness their resources and, at the same time, make it worth their time as well.

5. We’re Right Here.

If you’re stuck with something, you can always contact Yapsody’s support center. Get in touch via email, or just ping us on our 24/7 Live Chat. Our Support section has many FAQs to clear some basic doubts, and you can find numerous posts on our blog that’ll give you handy tips for making your event a success. At Yapsody, we’re always happy to lend an ear, a hand, or a shoulder.

The post How To Make Your Event A Million-Dollar Event appeared first on Yapsody.

WRITE ONE TO THE RIGHT ONES

Because promoting a Broadway drama at a rock concert event is so totally working out – not! When you think about your event, think about the kind of people who would want to attend your event. Approach your existing customers because they’re undoubtedly going to be interested in your event if they’ve held on all this time. As far as new ones are concerned, target the domains where your potential audience is likely to reside i.e. put yourself up on relevant websites where interested people are bound to stumble upon your listing.

#EVENT #HASHTAG #CLICHÉ #BUTWORKS

Agreed, hashtags can be really annoying especially when all the Instagram pictures are tagged with #instalike, #instacute, #instapic, and #instacrap. But that’s what is going to earn you followers. Yes, those hashtags are positively not getting you anywhere except spam, but a short, witty and crispy hashtag will do wonders. Your event hashtag is the one thing that people connected to your event are going to use for networking before, during, and after the event. Make sure it directly relates to your event, is easy to remember, and widely used across all your social media profiles.

HAVE THE RIGHT TRACK-TICS

Creating a hashtag is like putting your sandwich in the toaster. And if you don’t keep an eye on it, it’s going to burn down to nothingness. You have to keep a track of the progress your hashtag has made, and the concerns of your attendees. You can obviously have an automatic toaster that turns off when your sandwich is crisp enough, that is, use apps like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to keep a check on your attendees’ conversations and your hashtag. And never forget the three R’s of Twitter – Respond to their tweets, Reciprocate by liking the good ones, Retweet the interesting ones.

LET THEM BE DEMOCRITICS!

If your event is one of the audience, for the audience, and by the audience, then you’re already a big buzz. Nothing pleases them more than being offered the privilege of choosing their own topics for the event instead of being expected to attend an event they don’t even relate to. Organize polls, forums, debates, webinars – ANYTHING – to get them to choose the things they are interested to witness during the event. On top of that, your speakers will already have an idea about the kind of questions and issues that they’ll have to tackle during the event, and this would give them a brilliant head-start.

WORK THE NETWORK

If events were just meant to gather knowledge, Wikipedia wouldn’t have had an existence at all. A secondary reason (that is as good as the primary one) why people attend event is to share, to connect, to get to know other like-minded people. And if you’re given a chance to come in contact with such people even before actually meeting them at the event, the cherry on the top is so much bigger than the cake itself! Hit some really great social event websites, create communities and help potential attendees to network before the event. This will definitely add a value to your event and isn’t that exactly what a buzz is all about?

The post Effective Ways To Promote Your Event On Twitter appeared first on Yapsody.

WORK OUT THE SOCIAL MEDIA

When it comes to the internet, even the sky isn’t a limit. Social media is a superlatively effective and cheap medium for event promotion and marketing. You first need to be well aware of the social media hubs of your target audience. While Facebook is used virtually by everyone, Google+ and Twitter are places you’ll find most professionals. Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest are places you should resort to if you wish to create a rather colorful buzz. You don’t have to keep desperately trying to sell your event using social media; you just need to keep them engaged and entertained so that they feel connected to your event and your sales will build up on their own. Yapsody provides you with a social media integration tool so that you can easily broadcast your event over various platforms. Also, don’t forget to have a crisp #hashtag for your event!

USE ONLINE TICKETING

Everything that’s online is a buzz, they say. For event organizers who seek to reach out to a large audience, online ticketing is a must. Today, nobody would want to go down physically to vendors or offices to book tickets when you can give them the liberty to buy event tickets while answering the nature’s call (which is a pretty relaxed state to make transactions, by the way). Yapsody is home to a wide range of features that make online ticketing look like a cakewalk to you – the Online Ticket Store, customizable e-tickets, Yapsody mobile and iPad apps only posing as little cherries on the top.

METHODS OF PAYMENT

Customers today feel that it’s almost rude to ask for cash when it comes to payment. And that is only fair, considering how easy and secure the other payment methods are. Make sure the transactions related to your events offer payment gateways that are generally preferred by your target audience. Digitized payment methods ensure that even you don’t lose out on records when it comes to ticket sales and other transactions.

DATA ANALYSIS

This basically involves everything – EVERYTHING – your sales, the requirements of your attendees, channeling your existing data, and everything else that comes to your mind. For your social media management, you can use free tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics instead of toggling between your documents. Also, if you’re using Yapsody for your event, we provide you with reports that help you keep track of your statistics, sales, tax reconciliation and so on. As far as channeling your existing data is concerned, we allow you to import your professional mailing list into your MailChimp contact list using our free integration tool.

Technology is only as efficient as the person who’s using it is. Quoting Steve Jobs here, “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”

The post Event Planning Technologies Must Be Used By Event Organizers 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.

Well, you’re not to be blamed entirely because definitely, if you haven’t been using the social media strategy to promote your events, it’s just because you aren’t well “updated” about it. Let us do the honors, in that case!

TWIT-BITS OF TWITTER MARKETING

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Twitter? Okay, the blue bird, and? Yeah, 140 characters, and? Oh, come on! If there’s one thing Twitter is so full of, it’s the hashtags! Hashtags are the most effective AND effortless means to promote your event on Twitter (and Facebook, too). All you need to do is come up with a short, witty and crisp hashtag related to your event and throw it around every tweet about your event. If your hashtag is eye-catchy, people will be using it, too, and it’ll soon be a buzz.

Let’s face it – there are very few enthusiasts around twitter who’ll just casually slip in hashtags to your event in their tweets for nothing at all. So, loosen up things on your end and offer a free entry or gift hampers to a lucky user for using your hashtags.

If the event you’re hosting is a big affair, you can level up and commit an entire Twitter account for the event, instead of hashtags. This way, you’ll have a one-stop site for everyone who wishes to know anything about the developments in your event.

Shake up your tweets every now and then! You DO get pissed, don’t you, if your mom keeps reminding you to do the same thing over and over again? Well, your followers will get annoyed, too, if you keep on announcing that your event is coming. Instead, tweet about upcoming events – sponsors, giveaways, online contests – to keep them engaged and entertained.

Lastly, it’s good to ask for retweets, as long as you don’t overdo it, because then you’ll be looked at as if you’re heavily desperate to make this work out.

THERE’S A REASON FACEBOOK HAS ‘EVENTS’ – USE IT!

Status updates and personally pinging friends on Facebook are fine, but when you’re talking about a real event and big promotion, that won’t work. Your statuses are likely to get lost in the stream of profile picture updates, vacation photos and “10 things you never knew about blah” posts. And just how many chat windows are you planning to pop-up to copy-paste-send the same message? Not only is it tedious, but it’s impersonal and has a negative impact.

What you can do is create a Facebook Page for your event, and then create a Facebook Event from that. Creating a Facebook Page has many side-benefits, like:

• You can have a “Like” button on your personal blog or website for the event.
• Anyone can be invited to the Event you create.
• You can rely on the targeted Facebook ads to reach out to non-friends or followers who might be interested in your event.

The key to social media marketing is SHARING. Whatever you do, the progress you make, keep your followers updated on Twitter and Facebook (they being the largest platforms) so that your event doesn’t seem distant to them.

EVENT-HACK FOR FACEBOOK AND TWITTER MARKETING

The post Event Promotion Hacks For Facebook And Twitter Marketing 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.