A friend of mine got a new marketing job at a start-up, part of that job is social media marketing. He was asking me about event promotion using social media. Social media marketing can work really well for event promotion. Here are my suggestions for using social media marketing for event promotion.
Commercials
I like the concept of commercials for event promotion. These can be done in writing, audio or video. The ideal in all cases is to have the speaker or speakers talk about what they will cover. They should also solicit questions about the topic that can be covered in the presentation. Finally, tell people where they can ask questions after the event. This could be a comment on the blog, a forum, a LinkedIn group or anywhere else you can have a dialog.
Write or record the event promotion
In written form a blog post is a good method to use for event promotion. Audio promotion is done via a podcast. This can be done as an interview even over the phone.You can post the podcast on a blog.
Video promotion can be easier than it seems. If the person is not local, ship them a Kodak Zi8 or similar and a microphone and they can video themselves. One advantage of video is that you can put it on YouTube, the second most visited search engine, a great way to promote your event.
Promote the promotion
Next you’ll use social media marketing to market the promotion. Use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and/or Google+ to promote your commercial depending on where your audience frequents. Use bookmarking sites like Delicious and Reddit to help search engines find your work. Another tactic that helps with short message platforms like Twitter is a “top 10” or “top 5” reasons to attend and put those out one or two per day until the event day. Do two final tweets, one an hour before and one 10 minutes before. These last minute promotions are good for the person who wasn’t sure if they would be able to attend but find they have free time.
During the event
You of course selected a hashtag for your event and that hashtag has been on every promotion or notice about the event. It is on the title slide also. During the presentation, if the speaker makes a particularly good point, tweet it. Also look at the Twitter stream during the event and retweet good points made by others.
After the event
Frequently, attendees have more questions than the speaker has time to answer. This is a perfect opportunity for another promotion. Tell the audience that you will post all the questions and answers on your blog and tell them when. In the blog post you’ll do a quick summary of the session in addition to the Q&A and point them to a recording which is where you will capture them as a lead. Finally promote the event recording on Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
Let me know if you have other social media marketing tactics that have worked for you.
[photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugo90/]
