Perfect partnership: event management and social media
Social media provides a cost-effective and accessible way for event planners to promote their services and the events they organise. Far from simply being about promotion, however, social media has become virtually essential in event planning, due to its slew of capabilities including location services, virtual guest lists and automated event reminders.
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Integrate social media throughout an event’s lifecycle
With social media, event planners can engage with attendees during all stages of event planning – keeping them informed, answering questions and highlighting all the reasons for attending the event. Sharing photos and videos can help generate buzz about an event and encourage sharing of ticketed events, which could drive up sales.
Extend engagement beyond conversation and content, with Twitter and Facebook competitions, as a way to create further interest in events and inspire attendance. Social media’s crowdsourcing features mean that planners can also connect with attendees by soliciting their views on a range of event specifics including speakers, sponsors and topics.
Hashtags make it easy to track the growth of the audience for your events, and during events they provide a way for attendees to communicate about what is working and not working on the ground.
Reach attendees where they are with geo-location
When promotions are geographically-specific, click-through rates are higher and geo-targeting can even double the conversion rates of email and paid search.
According to one Local Search Association study, 70 percent of consumers are willing to share their location as a trade for something valuable.
Planners can incentivise attendee check-ins at events for a clearer view of who showed up and can also facilitate networking by creating ‘sub-venues’ at events. If you use a venue hire in Taunton like county ground Taunton, for instance, you can facilitate social engagement by creating separate locations for the Colin Atkinson Pavillion, the Somerset Stand and for each of the different food outlets. This is also a great way to promote sponsors.
Beyond events, build a reputation
It makes sense as an event planner to also use social media for self-promotion. A way to connect and help you maintain relationships with a range of suppliers and clients, social media means you can build trust and engagement between events so people are more likely to take notice when you send out the next invite.
