promote, engage and connect: how social media can enhance your event

Promote, Engage and Connect:

How social media can enhance your event

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About Kelly Cutler

Kelly Cutler is the CEO of Marcel Media, a Google Certified digital marketing firm specializing in Website design, development and marketing.

Kelly’s achievements include serving as the first woman president of the Chicago Entrepreneurs’ Organization, instructing at the University of Chicago and DePaul University, and speaking on digital marketing at conferences and events across the country.

4/23/2013 2

/in/kellycutler

@kfcutler

Using Social Media For Events

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Social Media Examiner

Growth of Social Media

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General Benefits of Social Media

• Builds an online community

• Establishes credibility in the industry

• Helps community members connect and engage with each other and the

event hosts and sponsors

• Encourages information sharing

• Supports other marketing initiatives

• Creates more live interaction at the event

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Using Social Media For Event Marketing

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Three Phases:

• Promote the event to increase attendance

• Engage during the event to enhance the experience

• Follow up to build connections and maintain relationships

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Promote

Engage

Connect

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Promote

Promote

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Promote: Three Strategies

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As a vehicle to drive people to a registration page

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As the main registration platform

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A tool to increase awareness

The Setup Phase

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Promote:

If driving registrations, create an event landing page or Facebook Application

sign up page

• Include a well written event description

• Include a simple registration form

• Include social sharing widgets

• Use a URL shorten to promote

o E.g.: naus2013.com/registration

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Promote:

Facebook Events & Fan Page:

• If a paid event, include link to official registration page

• Can be used as a registration platform for free events

• Encourage those to share with friends

• Send invite to company fans

• Encourage employees to share with their network

• Use as guest list and to collect information

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Promote:

Using Facebook to drive additional registrations and sign-ups:

• Using Event Brite, coordinators can send automatic updates to attendees

when they click ‘Sign up’.

• After signing-up, Facebook Connect gathers necessary information so

attendees do not need to fill anything out.

• Attendees then can share with their friends via social networks and email.

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Promote:

Create a LinkedIn Group to promote event

• Invite speakers and attendees to connect in advance

• Post links within groups similar to that of the Facebook events/fan pages

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Promote:

Create An Event Twitter Hashtag (#):

• Use URL shortner to add registration or event page links to your tweet

• Always display event hashtag (#) in social communication

• Prepare with topics to tweet about

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Tools & Tactics to

Build Awareness and Drive Registration

Promote: Tools & Tactics Multimedia Distribution

• Distribute videos and pictures of past event presentations/performances

• Create a video promoting the event

• Distribute across all social profiles

• Share company SlideShare so registered attendees can see past presentations

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Promote: Tools & Tactics

Create Contest/Giveaway & Incorporate Sponsors

• Generate buzz

o Promote through blogs and social profiles

o Include event description and how to participate

o Link to the event/registration page

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Promote: Tools & Tactics

5 Great Tools To Promote Your Event:

• EventBrite: Manage tickets sales and increase turnout by giving attendees the

chance to promote the event. (FREE)

• PLANCAST: Lets people search for the event far in advance so they don’t miss

out. (FREE)

• Nutshell Email: Allows you to send an email to company Fans & Followers on

Facebook. (FREE)

• TweetMyEvents: Allows you to post the event to be retweeted to their 7,000+

followers on Twitter. (FREE)

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Engage

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Engage

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What Attendees Expect:

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Check-in Receive & Check

Schedule Posts: Get Updates

Share Highlights & Experiences


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Check-in

FourSquare

Facebook Places

Receive & Check Schedule

Responsive Website

Blog Post with Schedule

Location Information

Posts: Get Updates/Highlights

Event Updates

Schedule Changes

Highlights

Special Deal/Sponsored Events

Videos/Pictures

Share Experiences

Using Hashtag’s (#)

Sharing event media materials, etc

Engage: Check-In

Establish Platform For Attendees to Check-In:

• Allow attendees to notify their social networks of their location and activities

• Help them connect with others that are at the event

• Add tips to event place pages and offer incentives for checking-in

• Add event name as venue name

• Two useful tools: Foursquare and Facebook Places

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Engage: Check-In

For those not on Facebook or Foursquare, Set up a hashtag(#) so they can

tweet upon arrival.

• Use tools such as Hootsuite to monitor their Check-In and engage

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Check-in

FourSquare

Facebook Places




Posts: Get Updates/Highlights

Event Updates

Schedule Changes

Highlights

Special Deal/Sponsored Events

Videos/Pictures

Share Experiences



Engage: Event Schedule

Create a Schedule for Attendees to Access:

• Create landing page with event schedule & map

• Send out in a blog post, across social profiles, and through email

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Check-in

FourSquare

Facebook Places




Posts: Get Updates

Event Updates

Schedule Changes

Deals/Sponsored Events

Share Experiences



Engage: Posting

Event Updates

• Post on:

o Event happenings (Blogs, Videos, Pictures, etc)

o Agenda changes

o Speaker interviews

o Special Deals (Check-In incentives, Restaurant/Food Specials, etc)

• Always respond. Include event hashtag (#).

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#GoodFoodFest

Engage: Posting

Launch Contests for Attendees During the Event

• Make it easy to enter and share with friends

• The prize should be worth their time

• Share across all social profiles

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Check-in

FourSquare

Facebook Places




Posts: Get Updates

Event Updates

Schedule Changes

Deals/Sponsored Events

Share Highlights & Experiences

Multimedia


Event media materials

Engage: Sharing Experiences

Empower Your Attendees to Share

• Make sure there is an event presence across all social profiles

• List attendees Twitter names on their badges to help engagement

• Include social channels on all event materials

Example Content:

• People have opinions. Ask easy questions.

• Use Fill-in-the-Blanks (Facebook)

• Pictures & Videos get most engagement

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Facebook Photos/Videos Generate Higher Engagement

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Post Pictures & Videos

• Let enough time pass before the next post so engagement isn’t lost

• Main Channels: Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter

Examples:

• Post pictures of attendees (Facebook) and ask them to tag themselves

• Post Event Speaker Highlights

• Post blogs to social profiles with interesting images

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Secondary Social Engagement Tactics

Engage: Secondary Tactics

Blog During the Event:

• Create buzz and excitement by live blogging for those unable to attend

• Encourage attendees to share reactions on social profiles

• Include highlights, quotes, and key points as they happen

• Keep live blogs short

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Ustream: Stream live events online to those who cannot attend.

• Ustream integrates with Facebook Timeline to share live videos with Facebook

friends in real-time

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TwitVid:

Take videos at events and

share across social profiles

VisibleTweets:

Display event tweets in a public

space for attendees to see.

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Connect

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Connect

Connect: Post Event

Create stronger relationships beyond the event hashtag (#) and earn long lasting fans and followers.

How to do it? • Post Event Research

o Google Alerts(free)/Social Mentions (free)

• Connect via social profiles

• Direct connection, search hashtag (#), LinkedIn groups, etc

• Get attendees list and set up email programs to follow-up

• Thank you email, survey, SlideShare, YouTube clips, etc.

• Connect with stragglers :

• Continue to use hashtags (#)

• LinkedIn groups to support content related to event

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Connect:

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Connect

Social Channels: Reach out and connect with attendees across all social profiles

• Follow on Twitter, Facebook and connect on LinkedIn

• Create conversation by asking questions and asking them to share experiences

For Example:

• “What about your event got them most excited?”

• “Are they looking forward to attend next year’s event?”

Email: Send a “Thank You” email to all attendees

• Send to all emails on attendee list

• Include highlights

• Remind attendees of deadline for event special offers

• Include presentation/ SlideShare links

Connect:

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SlideShare: Showcase presentations and add a video that auto-plays

when people land on the event profile

• Include link in your “Thank You” email/ across social profiles

Survey/Polls: Create a LinkedIn poll after event to gather feedback quickly

• Distribute across social profiles, email, blog, groups, etc

Connect:

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Blog: Continue to blog on topics related to the event, but not directly about the

event.

• Share posts across social profiles and in online groups (LinkedIn)

• Include link to blog in email signatures

• Use social mention to find popular topics to blog on

LinkedIn Groups: Continue posting to these groups after the event • Keep members up-to-date on next event

• Give members opportunity to register first

Summary

Social Media can help promote an event, boost engagement with attendees

and help in staying connected during and once an event has ended.

Its biggest benefits?

• Assists in getting the word out about the event

• Makes events more personable and interactive

• Allows attendees to share information more effectively

• Makes it easy to interact and keep in touch with attendees

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Promotion

Engagement Beyond

Promote

Engage

Connect

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Case Study: Pivot Conference As a seven-person startup, the Pivot team’s resources were limited, and

traditional forms of communications and marketing were taking enough

effort without much result on enhancing their two day event.

Main Objectives & Goals:

• Build Audience and Follower Engagement

• Convert current Pivot followers into attendees

Secondary Goals:

• Enhance social media relationships with partners & speakers

• Increase followers

• Increase blog following

• Build Brand Attention

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Case Study: Action Plan

Promote

• Produce quality content year round to gather a loyal following, and

eventually acquire them as attendees.

• Craft clear and constant messaging. Send Updates.

• Create groups/communities to get the buzz out

• Promote conference using different tools & apps

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Engage

• Be accessible at all times

• Respond and interact with each and every followers and attendee

• Use HootSuite to listen to social conversations to improve conference, etc.

• Use contests and sweepstakes to engage

• Make sure attendees know hashtag (#) so they can engage

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Connect

• Connect with attendees after, through social media and email

• Share with them links to presentations on SlideShare, etc.

• Keep past attendees up to date on next years event. Offer discount, etc.

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Case Study: Results

Promote

• Increased Followers: 1,000 new followers over the course of one month. More than a

quarter of which attended the conference.

Engage

• Built Engagement: Tracked over 6,000 tweets and hashtag (#) trended on twitter.

Connect

• Enhanced Social Media Relationships: Created lists for each group (sponsors, speakers,

etc) to participate in conversations more effectively.

• Increased Blog Following: 23.5% of referral traffic came from Twitter during the event

month. This percent was 16.04% the month before.

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Case Study: What We Learned?

• Lay Out Goals & Promote in Advance: Social media can be great, but a

campaign with no direction can feel inauthentic.

• Make it Easy To Engage: Clear and constant messaging is key. Be accessible

at all times for everyone.

• Get the Word Out Early: In order for others to plan to attend the event,

they need to know about it far in advance.

• Brand Association

• Opportunity Creation

• Network Growth

• Building Trust

• Innovation

• Reputation

• Client Retention

Thank You! Kelly Cutler

[email protected]

LinkedIn.com/kellycutler

Twitter.com/kfcutler

Questions?

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promote, engage and connect: how social media can enhance your event

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