how to leverage social media throughout your event life cycle

How to Leverage Social Media Throughout Your Event Life Cycle

Hosted by EventRebelsAnne Sigman, Pacer Consulting

What Social Media Can Do

• Promote your event to a wider audience• Increase event sponsorship• Discover member preferences• Create excitement and broaden participation• Add authenticity via “real” interaction• Establish your authority in your field• Extend the value of your event before and

after

Website Centralizes

Content: Blogs, Newsletters,

Events, Campaigns, Articles, etc.

Organization: Facebook Page, LinkedIn Group,

Twitter

People: Facebook, LinkedIn,

Twitter, EmailPromotePromote

Social Media Basics

Organization FB Page

Organization Twitter Page

Organization LinkedIn Page

Management Tool

TIME!

Questions to Ask

• What do you want to achieve?• What are you going to say?• Who is going to own social media activity?• How are you going to handle criticism?• Are you prepared to invest the time?• How are you going to manage it?• How are you going to define success?

Social Media Planning

• Audience• Social Networks• Content• Sharing • Engagement• Management• Measurement

Social Media Planning

• Hashtags– Simple, short, memorable – most obvious is best– Use on all event materials

• Web pages• Social pages• Event materials: badges, slides, posters, brochures

– Choose a few other related hashtags to use• Tools– Content, monitoring, engagement, measurement

• Mobile App?• Paid Promotions?

Social Media Tools

Awareness•Radian 6•SproutSocial•Crimson Hexagon

Social Channel Management (Passive)•Hootsuite•Sendible•SproutSocial•Sprinklr•Shoutlet•Spredfast

Active Engagement•Buddy Media•CrowdTwist•Influitive•Zuberance•SocialToaster

Locations•Foursquare / Swarm•Facebook Places•Instagram

Lifecycle

Planning

Promotion

Execution

Follow Up

Planning

“I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper and strategic compass ...”

- Paul Barron, CEO Foodable

Planning

• Use social media to: – Investigate audience preferences• Choose hashtags for topics of interest• Post to social channels and ask questions• Follow and measure conversations around these topics

– Determine sponsor preferences• Follow potential sponsors on social networks• Engage in conversations with sponsors to grow visibility

– Announce news and updates to create awareness

Planning

Promotion

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

- Tony Robbins, Author, “Re-awaken the Giant Within”

• Inspire– WOM marketing– Use highlights on social from past events: videos, photos

• Announce– Hashtags, use links to events

• Community– Facebook Event, LinkedIn Event, Google+ Event Page

• Paid Promotions– New Facebook paradigm, targeted demographics

• Social Media Contests– Shortstack, Woobox, Offerpop

Promotion

Promotion

Execution

“Engage, Enlighten, Encourage and especially…just be yourself! Social media is a community effort, everyone is an asset.”

- Susan Cooper, Buzzedition

Execution: Live Social Sharing

• Promote event hashtags EVERYWHERE• Slideshare, Slidedog

– Everyone is on their tablet or smartphone• Tagboard, Zoomph, Tint, Eventstagr.am

– Live social media feeds• Monitor and manage the social channels

– Seed social conversations and answer questions• Encourage sharing on multiple networks

– Twitter: Tips and Take-aways– Instagram: Photo challenges– Foursquare: Check-in locations

Execution: Live Social Sharing

• Promote event hashtags EVERYWHERE• Slideshare, Slidedog

– Everyone is on their tablet or smartphone• Tagboard, Zoomph, Tint, Eventstagr.am

– Live social media feeds• Monitor and manage the social channels

– Seed social conversations and answer questions• Encourage sharing on multiple networks

– Twitter: Tips and Take-aways– Instagram: Photo challenges– Foursquare: Check-in locations

Execution: Where and How

• Social Channels– Twitter & Facebook: Encourage photo uploads– Twitter: Encourage attendees to tweet in their

questions– Instagram, Flikr• Incentivize – best event photo contest

– Youtube• Create videos for post-event engagement

Execution: Where and How

Follow-Up

“Engaging with your fans and building a community are not the same thing”

- Mitch Joel, Journalist, Publicist, President of Twist Image

Follow-Up

• Be Thankful• Get Feedback• Share Insights– Create an online newspaper: paper.li

• Continue Conversations– Storify: create a story about the event from user

generated content• Grow Community

Follow-Up

Conclusion

• Start Small (Not Big) Do a few things well (not a lot of things poorly)

• Make it easy for attendees to use social media• Engage in two-way conversation• Welcome honest feedback • Use a review process to debrief and improve

Anne SigmanPacer Consulting

www.pacerconsulting.comasigman@pacerconsulting.com

@annesigLinkedin.com/in/annesigman