Do you hold regular events, yearly conferences or the one off occasional event?
Would you like your attendees to create a buzz around your event, share their experience to encourage people to attend your future events and build your brand?
Social Media enables your event attendees to share and connect with each other. They are able to connect before, during and after the event when you start getting them to use social media.
I am going to share with you six ways in which you can use social media for your upcoming events.
Hashtag Selection
Hashtags are used in twitter, Facebook and Instagram. They are used to streamline a conversation about a particular topic, subject, TV programme, keyword or event.
Select a hashtag that has a uniqueness to your event and that isn’t being used by anyone else. Make sure it is relevant to your event and that when read as one word is appropriate and doesn’t read as anything else!
You can use a tool such as Twubs to check if a certain hashtag is being used and what is already being displayed under that hashtag.
Twubs is a hashtag directory.
Once you have selected your chosen hashtag you then need to let your attendees and potential audience know what it is. This can be done by sharing on twitter leading up to the event, in your email marketing and by sharing via images and videos!
Tweet Wall
Create a buzz at your event by displaying a tweet wall. A tweet wall is a dedicated screen which enables the tweets posted to that selected hashtag to display on a screen. This really encourages people to want to tweet to get their brand up on the screen in front of the people in your audience or exhibition. Some free promotion and brand building for them!
Make sure your tweet wall is monitored for any irrelevant posts that are negative, spammy and indecent!
Some of the tools we have used for our twitter wall is TweetWall and TweetBeam.
The tweet wall will generate all the analytics of the event which are great to view to see what exposure your event received, how many people engaged and who were your influencers. Once you know who your influencers are they are great as ambassadors for the next event.
Create Scopes
We love using Periscope to tease people whilst setting up for the event and giving them a behind the scenes tour!
When broadcasting LIVE people love to tune in and see what is happening before attending an event. This could also prompt people that are unaware of the event to consider coming along, and also get people engaging with periscope whilst at the event which will expand the reach of your event profile.
Speaker Showcase
Showcase your speakers knowledge and capture a teaser which can be used prior to the event. Use video and images to get in front of more people. Visual social media really captures your audience attention. You will notice that more images are being used online.
Put together a schedule of these images leading up to the event but also posting them out throughout the day of the event.
You can also create Vlogs where they explain what they will be talking about which will enable your attendees to see a preview of who they are coming to see.
Capture The Experience
One of my favourite exercises is capturing the experiences of your attendees and sharing them via your social media profiles.
Make sure you have an event activity where you can get your attendees having a little social fun! We recently run an event called Get Social Kent where we had a Facebook Selfie Frame. We asked attendees to take their photo and share via twitter! People loved doing this it was a great novelty to the event and build the buzz.
Think of a creative way to build buzz at your event.
Pre Event Campaign
How can you spread the word as much as you can before your event?
Who are you trying to target and what are their daily activities? How can you get your event in front of them and get them to talk about it?
We recently did a pre event campaign at Get Social Kent which was a Vlogging Challenge called #GSKVlog where we passed around an iPhone to Kent businesses and got them to capture a video! Our target was 30 Vlogs and we exceeded and achieved 43! The vlogs were shared via social media.
Brainstorm your ideas on how you can get your event spoken about and build the buzz!
We know these ways work as we have the proof in the pudding with our last event Get Social Kent.
With using both Social Media, Email Marketing and our Vlogging Challenge “Get Social Kent” was a great success!
We had over 450 attendees attend the event, we ranked 5th in the UK Trending on Twitter, over 2,429 tweets were sent out by attendees with 1,004,361 unique impressions and 7,904,002 total impressions!
Need help filling your event, building the buzz or require an onsite social media angel at your event!
We can help! ZC Tweet Angels!
Ask us about our ZC Event Packages email info@zcsocialmedia.com or view them here