Aside from the general abundance of reasons to get your business involved with social media, these various channels are also a brilliant resource for generating a buzz for your company’s events. When an event has been decided upon, social media channels offer an immediate opportunity to start marketing. The sooner you get the word out, the more people that will attend, and ultimately make the event a bigger success.
If there is a limitation on attendance for the event, social media platforms are an excellent way to get registration started early. There are a few specific benefits with pre-registration and the most obvious is gathering a general head count ahead of time. It also is positive enforcement to get people to commit to attending the event rather than having several “maybes.” When registration come close to filling up, you can post messages from your company’s social pages to inform people that space is limited and create a sense of urgency.
Business pages on social media channels also encourage attendees to share the event with their friends on the social network to generate more buzz about the event. Any and all information can be included in regards to the event. That way, people have more to talk about and contribute to the general buzz. In addition to sharing informative posts, social networks like Facebook actually have an “Events” feature that allows you to create an “Event Page,” with an RSVP, where you can invite people or opt for a public event where anyone on the network can see the page and attend the event.
For conferences, seminars, charities, and other similar events where there may be multiple speakers, companies, or contributors, social media is a great place to keep all of the featured speakers or VIP’s blogs and information in one place so perspective attendees can discover and learn information about them before the event occurs. This is an effort to build excitement and may encourage more people to attend the event when they’re enthused about specific people that will be a part of it. It generates more of a buzz when there are people talking about the features of the event, and encourages discussion on the social network.
Photos are one of the most popular items throughout social networks. For reoccurring events, such as annual charities, awards, networking, etc., it’s a great idea to create and share photo albums from all of the previous events. When new people (i.e. fans and followers) see the previous turnout at events, or how much fun people have in the pictures, it’s more appealing for them to attend the upcoming event. Also, as the event is going on you can post pictures to Twitter and Facebook feeds, and also encourage attendees to do the same.
Social media allows you to create quite a buzz for your company event, and if you have the resources and budget to offer a gift or some sort of incentive to participate in the social media activity, it will increase the overall success of the event. During the event, this incentive or gift can be offered in return for “Checking in” on Facebook or Foursquare, or even for posting pictures on the social pages and tagging the company or event in the posts.
All of these social media ideas are beneficial to the event as well as your company because the more people “talk” about it, the more people that will get involved or become aware of your business. Social media goes much further than just engaging customers, networking, product information, customer service, etc. Most companies partake in at least one event each year, and the social media channels are a valuable resource to making those events much more impressive and successful for your company.
