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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How to Handle Negative Social Media Feedback During and After an Event

Putting on an event is a big deal. From a one day get-together to a multi-day trade show, you are well aware of the challenges. Let’s be honest: it is hard to make it through an event without at least one person getting angry. Many years ago, dealing with such a situation was simple. You would wait for the issue to be presented, and then deal with it one-on-one. The matter was kept rather hush and taken care of in person. In today’s world, where social media is in charge, things are not nearly as clear. Rather than take up […]

The Modern Rules of Seeking Your Voice on Social Media

The most important thing about social marketing is your voice – the attitude and language you use to communicate. This is true regardless of industry. If you fail to cultivate a social personality, then it will be impossible for your followers and fans to have genuine discussions with you. And if they cannot have authentic conversations, they’re not going to engage with your brand. What’s an event planner do to? How can you seek out a voice that both fits your firm and makes your brand more appealing to clients? What can you do to ensure that customers see you […]

Ten Guaranteed Ways to Make Yourself Unpopular on Social Media

If you’re not really sure what you’re doing, social media can be difficult. Gaining followers is something of a delicate art – retaining them even more so. There are plenty of mistakes you can make; plenty of areas in which you can misstep and send your social efforts down the drain. Thankfully, they’re actually pretty easy to avoid – provided you’re aware of them. That’s where we come in. We’re going to go over some tactics, blunders, and foibles that are pretty much guaranteed to get you on your community’s bad side. Avoid running into any of the pitfalls mentioned […]

Seven Steps For Snapchatting At Your Next Event

In the past, I’ve rather frequently drilled home the importance of brevity. People today don’t have time for lengthy marketing pitches or deep, thorough explanations of a brand. They want to know right out the door whether or not something’s worth their time – and if you can’t keep things brief, then they’ll eventually tune out. Case in point, the average human attention span is currently 8.25 seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. On some level, this isn’t surprising. Today, we’re bombarded with information from all sides, and we’ve less time to devote to each individual message that comes […]

Inside Look: Social Media

We all know that social media is important for the professional growth of your brand, but in order for it really to work it’s magic it must be used correctly. Plenty of “experts” throw around their idea of what will grow your engagements or rapidly increase followers, but it’s difficult to sift through it all to identify fact or fiction. This week we have a great series that identifies key things you can be doing on different platforms. We will be covering the following topics: Seven Steps For Snapchatting At Your Next Event Ten Guaranteed Ways to Make Yourself Unpopular […]

How to Run an Effective Social Media Contest

Are you looking for a creative way to boost event registration numbers? Are you hoping to get your audience excited about an upcoming event? While there are many ways to make this happen, here is one that you may have overlooked: a social media contest. Social media is hot. Just how hot, you wonder? Here is what Social Times has to say: “Did you know that there are more than two billion active social media users worldwide, representing a global penetration rate of 28 percent?” This statistic alone proves that you are missing the boat if you aren’t using social media to […]

Meerkat or Periscope for Your Next Event?

As an event planner, you should always be looking for new ways to bring fresh ideas to your audience. In today’s day and age, this often means the implementation the newest forms of social media. Meerkat and Periscope don’t receive nearly as much attention as they should in the event space. Both these services have been proven effective in an event environment, prompting more and more planners to take a closer look. What is Meerkat? As a live video streaming app, it is easy to see why Meerkat has become so popular with the event crowd. It gained initial popularity on […]

How You Can Use Facebook To Make Your Virtual Events Shine

You already know how powerful Facebook is from an event management perspective (and how important), and what it can do for event marketing and promotion. Social media is probably one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. This is true regardless of what type of event you’re running. That said; Facebook’s got a few features that make it uniquely-suited for virtual events. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. How can you use Facebook to supercharge your virtual events, and make them better than ever before? Look For Inspiration Online According to Adrianne Mellen Ramstack, Facebook is more […]

Tips For The Best Event Hashtag

Now that you’re in the marketing stage for your upcoming event, you’re probably facing the hard fact that event marketing isn’t cheap. It rarely is– there are dozens of print mediums and online presences to consider advertising through, all of which require quite a bit of cash to kick off. Most marketing techniques also require an additional chunk money to get anywhere beyond the starting line.

Luckily, if you still have some time and creative juices left for your marketing campaign, you can get pretty impressive results from just one, simple (and totally free, by the way) event hashtag. If you can effectively utilize a hashtag that represents your event well, you can increase your outreach significantly and create the kind of buzz that money just can’t buy.

Sound appealing? Give the following tips a try as a part of your current social media strategy, and watch the traction from your hashtag do wonders for your event.

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Snapchat: Storifying Your Brand

It seems that with each new year comes a new big boom in social media marketing. Last year, the marketing world was engulfed with real-time advertising induced from the famous Oreo Super Bowl tweet.

This real time advertising phenomena created a storm of over saturation and under satisfaction, and left many marketing managers losing their hair trying to latch on to every social trend they could. This became a tiring endeavor and not as effective as once imagined.

This year’s big boom has been Snapchat, a peer-to-peer photo/video messaging application that allows its users to temporarily share pictures and videos.  Many brands were quick to follow the gust of Snapchat trendiness and a few quickly found success, including Taco Bell, Mashable, Sour Patch Kids, and GE.

These brands were doing something different than many other brands on Snapchat, they found a way to stick out and connect with their audience. A more unique persona of their brand than ever before was created. They found the secret.

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How To Have Social Media Work For You

Social media, we all love it but are not always sure of the best way to use it to our advantage. This week we are going to really dive into it and take a closer look at how you can use the latest techniques and platforms to really work for you. As with any social media advice, you need to focus on what really works for your audience as well as brand. We are going to offer lots of tips and tricks that you can use to engage & get more followers and use social media to your advantage. Try them […]

Social Media Hiring: Maximize Benefits, Reduce Risk

Gone are the days when social media was in its infancy. This is mainstream in today’s world, with hundreds of millions of people using platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate with others. From a hiring perspective, the use of social media is on the rise. In a 2013 study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 77 percent of respondents admitted to using social networking sites to recruit candidates. While there are many benefits of using social media from a recruiting and hiring point of view, it is essential to become familiar with the risks. […]

Social Marketing versus Public Relations: What’s The Difference, Really?

There was a time not so long ago when marketing and public relations were two very distinct – if closely-related – fields. The former was primarily concerned with selling the products and services of a brand; the latter was entirely focused on maintaining relationships. Then social media came along, and thoroughly muddied the waters. With the advent of social media, an entirely new marketing paradigm was born – relationship marketing. “The days of traditional marketing, such as running ads, commercials, and other one-way forms of promotion are rapidly fading because the rise of relationship marketing is taking a front seat,” […]

What Should You Write About In Your Event Management Blog

Having an active blog is great for your event management business in many ways. First of all it helps with SEO, which will make you more visible on the internet to people searching for services you offer. Also, it’s important to have a social media presence, which is all about content! This provides relevant content for you to share and grows a community around what your company is about. Here are some ideas on what you should do as far as content. Take A Look At Your Industry As with any blog, your most important consideration is what you’re trying […]

Everything Your LinkedIn Should Have

No all event planners operate independent. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the vast majority of event management professionals either work for a management firm or in a specialized department of an enterprise organization.  In truth, I’d actually recommend this as the starting point for novice event planners, as it helps them to learn the skills and experience they might eventually use to set off on their own. Unfortunately, searching for a job carries its own pitfalls, particularly in the current market. In order to land yourself a spot anywhere noteworthy, you’re going to have to use […]

3 Ways to Get Likes on Your Facebook Event Page

You’ve created a Facebook Event Page and now you need ‘likes.’ The only problem is that likes don’t magically appear by themselves (at least not usually). It’s starting to feel like a party where nobody is showing up. Every new ‘like’ is a promotion for your event by someone other than you! This type of authentic support is priceless, but you may need to work for it.  There are many different ways of getting people to like your Facebook Event Page, but here are the 3 most tried and true methods on how to get more likes on Facebook. Promote […]

How Can Reddit Help You As An Event Planner?

If you aren’t yet on Reddit, maybe you should be. Although Reddit’s community is somewhat small compared to Facebook or Twitter, it’s nevertheless a teeming hub of Internet culture. Reddit doesn’t call itself “the front page of the Internet” without reason; some of the most popular viral content on the web either originated on Reddit or was promoted through the social media site. Used properly, it can be the perfect platform for event promotion.

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Leveraging Facebook Page for Event Management Firms

As I’m certain you’ve been told time and time again, your event management firm should have a Facebook page. As the world’s leading social network, it’s generally one of the best places to connect with your clientele, and an even better place to promote your events. Why would you ignore Facebook? Certainly, people offer some general advice on how to use Facebook – post funny, relevant, interesting content; be active and approachable, tease your potential atendees with content well in advance of an event…you get the idea. This advice is largely true, but we offer a bit of practical, tactical […]

Five Event Volunteer Tools You Need Access To

As an event management professional, you aren’t simply managing events – you’re also managing people. In order to run a conference and ensure that things are going smoothly, you need a team. You need vendors, partners and speakers. You need venue owners and security. Perhaps most importantly you need volunteers. To help them excel, it’s crucial they have access to the right event volunteer tools. 1. Robust Communication Systems Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful event. Ensuring that your volunteers can communicate swiftly and clearly is paramount. Providing reliable communication tools such as two-way radios or dedicated messaging […]