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How to Promote an Event Using Social Media

John Jantsch Founder, Duct Tape Marketing Recent Posts

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July 16, 2009

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“These are good points. If it is a repeating ...”

EventsNearHere

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There are dozens of sites and services set-up to help you promote events such as webinars, seminar, workshops, grand openings and product launches. While these tools are indeed online you can get benefit employing them for local offline events as well.

Use MeetUp and create a group surrounding your event – this might turn into something very valuable to do on an ongoing basis and create a nice way for you to build a local community.

Publish your event to some of the bigger online events calendars such as Yahoo's Upcoming or Eventful. These sites have geography built in and help promote events that are near users.

Create multiple Facebook pages or twitter accounts just for the event and post relevant information by building local followings through twitter search and Facebook Groups.

Do a series of interviews with participants in the event or to tease out bits of content that will be presented. Record these interviews as postcasts and post them on your event pages, submit to iTunes and offer them to others to run on their sites. Just make sure it’s great content.

Upload transcripts from the interviews or slides you intend to present to sites such as DocStoc, Scribd, and Slideshare.

Include quick videos and photos of before, during and after the event and host on YouTube and Flickr for added exposure.

Submit press releases before, during and after the event to sites such as PR Web and PitchEngine.

Cross post as much information from all of this activity to all of your social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and twitter as all allow links to videos, audios and photos.

The short-term impact of working a system like this to promote an event or launch is greater exposure and hopefully greater participation, but the long term impact for future events may be the real payoff. As you get better at this kind of social media routine, you’ll find momentum building through search engine traffic too.

Image credit: Andresmh: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amonroy/

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EventsNearHere 3 months ago

These are good points. If it is a repeating event, try sending out a follow up e-mail with photos, and thanks attendees for coming.

Also, if you do record video and photos, be sure to send out an e-mail blast letting everyone know photos or video has been posted. This may help keep attrition low for repeat events, by keeping members more engaged after the event has passed. I like events on Facebook or LinkedIn. You could also reach out to traditional media, too, if it's a big enough event, or a good charity event. Many times radio and TV stations, or local newspapers, are always looking to visit events so they can promote their sponsors. Always contact promotions people to see if they are interested. If you’re looking to promote online, another site you could use is http://www.eventsnearhere.com. You can post free event ads on that site, and I think they get submitted to search engines right away.
EventsNearHere 3 months ago

If you do record video and photos, be sure to send an e-mail blast letting everyone know photos or video has been posted. By keeping members more engaged after the event has passed you may keep attrition low for repeat events. I like events on Facebook or LinkedIn. You could also reach out to traditional media, too, if it's a big enough event, or a good charity event. Many times radio and TV stations, or local newspapers, are always looking to visit events so they can promote their sponsors. Always contact promotions people to see if they are interested. If you’re looking to promote online, another site you could use is eventsnearhere.com. You can post free event ads on that site, and I think they get submitted to search engines right away.
Jordan Chase 1 year 5 months and 6 days ago

another new site you might want to check out is eventtap.com - events in real time kind of like twitter but more focused on events - good alternative if you want to try something new.