BUILD CROWD FOR AN EVENT USING SOCIAL MEDIA
Recently, me and my friend who works at an NGO were discussing about their events and the ways to spread awareness about the event and gather crowd. I put up some ideas of using social media channels as effective methods to do that. I would like to share the ideas on this post.
Basically, it’s promotion of the event using social media to make people discover and grab their attention and interest.
It is obviously part of the whole marketing of the event. But in this new world, new age marketers have to see where the crowd lives: Online (Social media). It has great weightage and the power of “word of mouth”.
When shared in Facebook, twitter, blogs, forums, Q&A sites and if people like it, they share amongst their friends and followers. It has more power than traditional medium to create more buzz or viral awareness and opens up a platform for discussion
So let’s continue on how we should go about the process of social media event promotions in a methodological way:
Effective available social tools being
Create Facebook page and Event:
Facebook page: Creating a separate Facebook pages for the event
Post updates almost regularly (maybe daily and frequent when the event is near). This gives fans a window into the planning process of the event.
Give sneak peek: Sneak peek on what is to be offers and presented. Show what is it in for the audience.
The venue, the Area, Artists, Speakers etc
Multimedia: pics, videos related
Create conversations: Ignite crowd/fans/followers to ask questions, doubts, queries and engage continuously.
Create a Landing pages and other tabs which can lead fans to pages in the official sites on the event websites.
Facebook Events : Creating a separate Facebook event activity
It allows you to easily invite your friends and fans and it makes it easy for them to share with their friends. It creates a central location for attendees to begin to connect and share their excitement for the event.
Open official Twitter account :
Tweet out information regularly and spread awareness like the facebook page by sharing videos, pics, sneak peek of the event.
Its very important to create official hashtags. For example: #smcmumbai #tweetupmumabi etc. It avoid confusion of multiple hastags about the event used by the crowd
Create and designate what the event hashtags will be as early as possible
Put it on registration page, website, and use it in every single Twitter posts about the event
Encourage dialogue with specific hashtags
Request to all followers that all responses contain the Twitter hashtags
The hashtag will aggregate all Twitter conversation around the event and help attendees connect and spread the word.
Pre-event twitter contest and sneak peek activites: Start conversations and trivia questions related to the event topic with the offcial hastag. This helps in getting a firm grip on the use of official hashtags early on.
**Different social media platform have varied audience and it’s important to be present accordingly.
Create Linkedin event and community:
Create with full information and specifics. Send across to all the friends.
Search for relevant LinkedIn groups which are similar to your event and share them about the event with specific contacts.
If enough people respond that they are interested or attending, your event will bubble up to the top of the Events area and drive additional traffic.
Create linkedin community:
Creating linkedin community for the event again create another platform for more engagement, pre-events suggestions and helps in building foundation for future events
IDENTIFY AND KNOW THE AUDIENCE:
Knowing and pulling the target segment crowd which will be your audience. Knowing where to put the efforts.
For example, Ngo events like for education, poverty, cancer, AIDS , company events, Conferences, celebrity involved events etc.
Identify and understand where your target audience is already engaging.
Identify existing pages, groups, communities by searching on LinkedIn, Facebook, or forums
Monitor Twitter conversation with topics and hashtags which are relevant. This can be done through number of free tools. Check Here.
Also locate other platforms that have the most activity (Quora, tweetup search etc)
CONTINUOUS NEW CONTENT AND ENGAGEMENT:
Most important factor in social media succes is effective content creation and engagement. The Facebook pages, Twitter accounts etc won’t self sustain on its own.
The conversation in this networks should be informative, exciting and produce contents which the crowd can consume
GATHER FANS, FOLLOWERS AND FRIENDS TO ATTEND AND SPREAD THE WORD:
Facebook: Search other facebook pages with relevant topics or events. Share and Post your event specifics there. Try not to be make the content like a spam. Send out professionally crafted messages with details and organizational links. And start engagement with the people in the pages or events.
Twitter: Search for Twitter influencers who tweets or tweeted about related topics using twitter search tools mentioned in previous blogs. Ask them to retweets. Ignite them to tweet and share their thoughts on the event.
Linkedin: Cherry-pick people or friends who are related to the events or topic. Send them personal inbox message (don’t be spam) that you think would be interested. Keep it short and always include a link. Share and engage the event specifics with others relevant groups and events in linkedin.
Result: Liking Page, posts, attending and domino effects of the whole network seeing and spreading the word.
