Hey guys, welcome to Shama.tv. In today’s episode, I want to talk to you guys about how to promote an event or a get-together, whatever you might be throwing, using online marketing and specifically, I want to talk about how you guys can market your events using social media or new media marketing. So here are my tips for you.
First of all, it’s a really good idea to approach bloggers in the city that you might be hosting an event in, because one, they already have the audience built; and two, their audience probably has trust and rapport with them. So as long as your topic matches something that the blogger talks about or something the blogger’s audience might be interested in, then the first thing to do is to build that blogger relationship. Hopefully you’re already been doing blogger relationships and working on that, but go to the blogger. Tell them you’re hosting the event. Tell them the city, the date, whatnot, and that’s a really good way to leverage an audience that’s already there in a local city to promote your event.
The other thing to do is also look at meetups.com, because meetups.com is, you know, networking but locally in different cities, and there are, especially in a big city like Dallas here, we’ve got so many meet-ups going on, so the idea is to find multiple meet-ups and approach their organizers and see if they would be okay with you promoting your event to their group. Now, these guys make charge affiliate, you know, an income, but that’s not a bad idea. It’s still a great way to get the word out about your event.
The other thing I want to talk about is on social networking sites, so what can you do?
Twitter. Twitter can be so powerful in getting the word out about an event, so what you want to do is of course Tweet about it, but to really build up the buzz, you may even want to have a little Twitter competition where you say, you know, the X person to re-Tweet this information gets a pair of movie tickets. It doesn’t have to be a huge prize, but it gets people involved and it gets your information out there. So that’s one way.
The other thing is to look at Facebook. What you want to do is set up a Facebook note, a note in Facebook about the event you’re having and then tag the people that you think would be a good fit for that event. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to get tagged on Facebook notes or videos or even pictures that have nothing to do with you, so you really want to make sure that when you have an event – so let’s say it’s a local event, like if there was an event in Dallas – I would only tag the people that I thought would benefit from it. So again, you’re providing value. You’re sharing with them something that you think is going to be cool, but you’re not going out there and mass-tagging people. It makes all the difference in the world.
You can also use LinkedIn. Again, same principle. You can set up a LinkedIn event. You can go into LinkedIn groups and, you know, check with a moderator to see if it’s okay, and announce your event.
Brilliant.. you are fab..
Great, to the point video. I’m currently blogging about social media myself and would love to share the video with my readers. I teach online marketing for beginners and I think this would appeal to them.
Great points. I’m learning more and more about social media from you Shama!
Refreshing to know that I can learn something so useful in a couple of minutes – thanks!
Shama
Do you do speak at events for non-profit groups? I am the President of the Detroit Chapter Media Communications Association International and we would love to have you come to an event and speak about Social Media World and how to do it.
Please contact me if you are interested. kmatelic@comcast.net
Shama, nice tips, couple questions.
1. Facebook – You’re assuming someone already has a FB account setup and sends an event via a note, correct? Versus setting up an entirely new FB account just for an event. Not sure I’m a fan of setting up FB accounts for singular events.
2. Twitter – Same thing, certainly push your event out with already established Twitter account, right? Not necessarily setup a new account just for that event. I know the answer could vary depending on the type of event, but I mean something like a yearly 5K event say.
Thanks
Shama, I got 4 of the examples, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Bloggers, but I could not decipher the fifth one, it sounded something like meetups???? Can you clarify. It is fun to watch your little videos. They are a bright spot in my day;-)
Love this Shama-
this makes so much sense and it’s simple too!
thanks so much
Great info
Karen
Sandie – 4th is Meetups.com
Hi Aaron-
1. Yes, I am assuming folks have an FB account. That’s the 1st step.
2. Yes – same on Twitter.
The basis for all these techniques is first have an account!
Hi Karen -
I sure do. Just dropped you a line.
Monica, Liz, Shawne, Napoleon – Thanks!
Shama, this video was very useful and effective. It provides real and relevant information in a simple/no fluff way.
We are organizing an IT event in Chicago, info. at opensourcechicago.com and will use these pointers to market it through social media.
Thanks
Good stuff Shama.
Do check out my article on ‘Top 7 tips to Promote an Event Online using Online Marketing’ – http://tinyurl.com/np86ou
How do I look for blog’s? Just do a google search? Or do i llok for blog’s on the social media site of choice?