Cameron SoojianWhen organizing a large scale event for your company like a conference, you have to both build the event and market the event. There are numerous ways to market a conference, even if you have a small budget. Before you decide which marketing channel to use, you have to specifically articulate your primary audience and their demographic makeup, buying patterns, and professional and business needs. Based on your findings, you can determine the most effective communication strategy.
The Role of Social Media
Social media can, and should, play a huge part when it comes to marketing your next event. Social media is a great tool to use because it’s (generally) a free way to get the word out about your event, sell tickets, and create the buzz that keeps people looking forward to your event every year. If you use it effectively, social media can generate great results. By way of example, here are some tips for marketing and promoting your event with Twitter.
The micro-blogging site allows you to publish news and updates about your conference in real time. Twitter has roughly 288 million monthly active users. Don’t neglect this channel because it is a chance for you to reach millions of people with your message.
You should begin promoting your event in advance by creating an event-specific hashtag. Make sure you use this same hashtag with every post before, during, and after your event. This helps tie your posts together and makes it easy for people to find all of the information about your event in one place.
There’s no such thing as tweeting too much during the event. You can tweet about everything from informative speakers to interesting presentation takeaways. You can even tweet about something as trivial as how good the coffee was, and it would still add value by engaging your audience in the conference. It’s also a good idea to have your attendees tweet as a way to ask questions. Make sure everyone uses the established hashtag that you originally created so people know what to search for to find information.
After the event, continue to tweet stats, facts, and statements about the event. You might consider thanking sponsors, attendees, or asking for feedback. You can engage with your audience by asking them questions, like which speakers they enjoyed the most or how you might improve next year’s conference. Throughout all your tweeting, you should mention others and use that brilliant hashtag you created.
Takeaway
Consistency is the name of the game with social media. You should post about your event at least once each day, but I would suggest posting two or three times each day if possible. To an extent, the more your post, the better your chances to inform people about your event.
Keep in mind, Twitter is only one platform; you should take advantage of multiple social media platforms to maximize the impact of your message. Whichever platform(s) you use, make sure to post, share, or tweet interesting things that are shareable. The overall point is to have a conversation with your audience. By engaging with them and making sure your posts are memorable, informative, or add value to your audience in some way, you create a buzz that makes people want to attend your event.
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