How You Can Use Instagram’s Explore Page For Better Marketing

Today, we’re going to talk about something a little different. This piece isn’t strictly event management focused – though the advice we’re offering is still inarguably valuable for the profession. We’re going to talk about Instagram. As you’re no doubt aware, modern marketing is a chiefly visual business. Great copy is still important, of course, but great images are now more vital to a brand’s success than ever before. That’s why it’s not terribly surprising that Instagram has gained such a great deal of popularity in recent years – and that use of the platform by businesses has skyrocketed. It…

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Everything You Need To Know About Facebook’s New Live Video Feature

Facebook just recently made a pretty big announcement, though I’ll need to do a bit of explaining if I’m to justify exactly why it’s big. See, as some of you may already know, there’s this application called Facebook Mentions. It’s a celebrity-only application that allows its users to view a stream of posts that mention them, find trending topics relevant to their brand, and hold Q&A sessions with fans. Facebook has been working on it for a little while now – according to The Verge, it was in testing as early as 2013 – and since its launch, it’s only been…

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The Anatomy Of A Great Live Tweeting Campaign: Everything You Need To Know About Live Tweets At Your Events

Twitter and the events industry were practically made for one another. The readily-accessible microblogging social network is one of the best places to share information and updates with your attendees, and one of the best platforms for the promotion of your events. As you may be aware, it’s also an incredibly powerful tool for engagement. Trouble is, not everyone knows how to tap into that last one. “Twitter is the new social water cooler, but you don’t need to wait until the morning after a big event, show, or game to get the conversation started,” reads an article in Twitter’s…

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What A Simple Twitter Chat Can Do For Your Company

Twitter’s a powerful marketing tool – you all know that already. You have already read at length about what it can do for an event organizer, about the volatile power of Hashtags, and about the importance of keeping brand advocates up-to-date. Today, we’re going to talk about another, oft-overlooked feature of the platform: Twitter Chats. What Is A Twitter Chat, Exactly? A Twitter chat is an organized, regularly-scheduled discussion hosted and organized through Twitter’s Hashtag function. According to AWeber, the majority of Twitter chats take the form of a Q&A format: the host asks a question and directs it at…

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Ten Tips For A Successful Twitter Takeover

Today, we’re going to talk about what’s involved in running a takeover on your Twitter account. No, I’m not referring to hacking or hijacking, I’m talking about bringing a third party on-board – like a celebrity, client, or expert – to manage your Twitter presence. Done right, this can be just what you need to increase your following and engagement on Twitter.  We’re here to ensure that you don’t do it wrong. First, Ask Yourself: Why Run A Takeover? At its core, the phrase “twitter takeover” is really just another way of saying you’re hiring a spokesperson to manage your twitter…

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Social Media: A Deeper Look

We have touched on social media tips a few times, but this time, we are going to focus on more in depth marketing ideas to really take your marketing to a whole new level. You already have the basics down, it’s time to use new techniques and technology to really engage people with your brand. We will be covering the following topics: Ten Tips For A Successful Twitter Takeover P.S.- If you missed our series last week covering PR, check it out here.

Yes, 3D Printed Food is as Cool as it Sounds

When you are hungry you head for the refrigerator, pantry, grocery store, or restaurant. In the near future, you may have another option: printing 3D food. This sounds farfetched. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. Despite what you think, this technology is growing by leaps and bounds. We may be far away from printing food at home, but the industry is not slowing down. Nothing Simple About it If printing food was simple, everybody would be doing it. Not only is the process detail oriented and slow, but it is quite expensive. Printers work by slowly adding…

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Crisis Management for Brands: Protecting Image During Disasters

Crisis Management for Brands: Navigate challenges effectively with these tips for maintaining a positive image in difficult situations. It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a person by how they behave in times of crisis. The same is true of businesses, believe it or not. It’s why having a good crisis management plan is so important. See, there’s a pretty good chance that no matter what industry you work in, what demographic you target, and what services you provide, you’re eventually going to face a brand crisis of some sort. Skillfully weathering the storm goes a long…

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DIY PR – How You Can Build Your Reputation Without Hiring A Firm

Building up your business takes more than a few clever marketing campaigns. It also requires the constant, careful cultivation of a public image. What do people think about you? What do they say? How do they feel? And does all of that align with the image you want to convey? Seems a little overwhelming at first, but it’s actually not as difficult as you’d think. Provided you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can actually do a pretty masterful job of handling public relations on your own. Today, we’re going to talk about how. Know Your Media…

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Top Tips for Writing the Perfect Press Release

Until you master the art of creating the perfect press release, your public relations strategy will continue to lag behind the competition. But there is good news: this is not nearly as challenging as it sounds. With the right knowledge and approach, you can create a press release that generates positive results. This leads to a very important question: what does a perfect press release look like? If you are new to this form of writing it can be a challenge to get in the right frame of mind. Creating a press release is not the same as a blog post,…

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Everything You Need To Know About Working With Journalists As An Event Planner

As an event management professional, you’re eventually going to have to work with the press. Whether they’re covering your entire conference or simply showing up to report on a particularly poignant keynote, journalists are an important component of every event bar. It’s important that you know precisely how to communicate with them – and how to deal with them. Journalists play an incredibly important role in event management, like it or not. Depending on your relationship with the press, it can either be one of the most powerful publicity tools in your arsenal, or one of the most damaging threats…

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What To Look For In A PR Firm

In the business world, communication is everything – and the value of being able to communicate effectively cannot be understated. There’s a reason public relations is so valued in enterprise, after all. PR professionals are communicators by trade; they know exactly how to establish a rapport with their audience, and precisely how to handle a given situation, whether it’s a crisis or simply an outreach campaign. Of course, they don’t often come cheap. Hiring a PR firm is usually a pretty hefty investment, so it sort of goes without saying that you want to make sure you aren’t just throwing…

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PR: How Much Do You Know?

As we all know, PR is so important for both your event firm as well as for the individual events that you throw. It may seem simple from a distance, but once you really get to the details, it can be quite a tedious task. What it really comes down to is who you know and how well you really know them. We broke down different parts of how to get the perfect PR team or even do it yourself if you are ready to get to work and have the right contacts. We will be covering the following topics:…

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How Can You Engage Attendees That Aren’t At Your Event?

As an event organizer, it’s your job to keep your attendees entertained and engaged. It’s your job to ensure that everything at your event goes off without a hitch, and that everyone who goes there leaves satisfied. What you may not know is that this process actually starts well before the event itself – and expands well outside the walls of your event venue. After all, being an event planner is only partially about running events. It’s also about effectively marketing them. Today, we’re going to touch on that. How can you keep your attendees engaged before, during, and after…

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How To Run An Event Online

Running events online is a great alternative to a physical event, with plenty of advantages. Here are tips on how to do it right. So, you want to run an event over the Internet, do you? A few years ago, the very idea would have been laughable. Now, however, it’s actually a completely viable way to get your message out. Truth be told, online events actually have a whole host of significant advantages over physical events, including increased attendance (no geographical barriers), lower overhead costs, and access to guests and guest speakers you might otherwise have overlooked or been unable…

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Effective Pre-Conference Information Distribution on Twitter

Twitter is usually a place for breaking news and immediate engagement. It may therefore seem antithetical to use for event build-up; if it’s not recording something happening in real-time, why bother? But Twitter is also great at creating buzz and community, if maintained properly.

Using social media during your conference is important, but engaging your attendees and speakers before your conference creates a hive around your organization that will engage not only during the conference, but before and after as well. This sets you up to have an excellent conference and to mobilize your community for future conferences and organization-related events.

There are three groups you should be considering when developing your pre-conference Twitter strategy:

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Video Recruitment and Interviewing: Technology to Find and Hire the Best Talent

Go back in time 20 years. Do you remember what the hiring process consisted of? As an applicant, you spent a lot of time scanning newspaper classifieds in hopes of finding your next job. On the flipside, companies realized that finding the best talent typically meant doing so locally. It’s now 2015 and things have changed for the better. Video recruitment and interviewing is on the rise, with a growing number of companies turning to the “digital world” to find and hire the best talent. For the sake of this article, let’s take a strong look at how companies are…

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Eight Awesome Up and Coming Companies In Transportation

As an event management professional, part of your job is to make sure attendees can make it safely to and from your events. Of course, sometimes that’s easier said than done – everything from chaotic rental services to confusing infrastructure to poorly-designed transit systems stands in your way. Thankfully, there’s a new camp of startup that’s been popping up of late; a breed of business specifically dedicated to getting people where they need to go as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible. Today, we’re going to go over a few of the most interesting, most popular, and most promising. Recommend…

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Event Technology: Are You Up To Date?

I know that we have touched on event technology before, but this week we are going to dive event deeper into technology that can up your tech game, making you a better event planner, attendee, or speaker. When people attend an event, it is a big letdown to see tech that is “so 2010”. Even if the event is not technology based, you want to give attendees the best experience possible. Don’t forget to follow these tips to present your event in the best way possible. We will cover the following topics: Eight Awesome Up and Coming  Companies In Transportation…

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Ten Tips For Planning The Perfect Wedding

Weddings are an incredibly special – and important – occasion. They’re a celebration of the love between a couple; a love intense enough that they’re willing to swear their lives to one another. Not surprisingly, this means that planning them can be an incredibly nerve-wracking affair. But it doesn’t need to be. At the end of the day, how stressed you get about your wedding ultimately depends on you. If you go in with the right mindset – and the proper knowledge – you’ll be able to put together a top-notch ceremony in no time at all. That, in turn,…

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