How to use Social media to promote and Event

When putting on an Event it can be tough choosing how to promote it. Whether your planning a small event or a large festival, social media can be used to get the word out in a powerful way. 

Michael Stelzner has 10 ways to promote using social media. And so i decided to tell you which ones I liked. 

Create video that people will share, this is fantastic idea but the video has to be quality it has to have any chance of creating hype. also if the video has great sound and visual they are more likely to share it. Also you want to upload your video to as many platforms as possible like Facebook, Youtube etc.

A great example is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC4OPKAtd4I

Give away free tickets to create a buzz. People love free things and some hot tickets will encourage people talk about it and hopefully get their jealous friends to buy tickets. 

Create a twitter account with a special hashtag (#event ) where people can join in and Tweet. Also create a Facebook event and interact with people with videos and posts to get them excited and inform them of the details. 

Another great way to promote is to interview your special guests to give people a little taste and get excited for the event. 

 

Facebook and Twitter increases Television viewing

According to Yahoo!7’s Social TV Survey, Australians tune into television shows that have a wide social media presence. 

“The number of participants who watched a TV show because of a recommendation a friend made on social media has rocketed from 16% in 2011 to 42%.” from B&T article. 

This is encouraging to social media marketers to keep on using these mediums for marketing. 

In 2011, only 12% of surveyed people were made aware of a show through Facebook or Twitter but that figure increased to 38% last year Yahoo!7’s second annual survey found.

“Almost half (43%) of the 7,741 survey participants said they use social media while watching television.” This is particularly interesting for some as it makes you think now should we have a small TV advertisement to direct people to our social media page for quick special offer, get them to like and share something for a chance to win or whatever your goal is. 

You could even combine this idea with Shazam to make it even easier for people to click and direct them straight to your page. This is due to the fact that the number of people watching TV via tablets has doubled to 10% since 2011.

 

Make your Facebook contests stand out!

Many companies are utilising Facebook contests to get their audience engaged and excited about their brand. Rachel Sprung writes about how you can best make your Facebook Contest stand out from others. 

Simply giving away something for free is an easy way to get people to like and share a post however, users will not return to your page to see whats happening. 

One of Rachel Sprung’s tips is to use location-Based services in your contest”

This is a great idea to get people active and to actually get involved, but a question i raise is what are you going to offer to get them to be bothered to go that extra step? Possibly combining a discount offer may provide some extra incentive. 

Another tip is to include your followers when choosing a winner. This tip is great because this will get followers checking back on your page and talking to friends to get them involved. One problem is that people want to win the prize and not vote for someone else. You could offer a prize for voting as well to encourage people to get involved and vote. 

 

Tweets shrink again

 

Twitter has again decreased the amount of space marketers can use in tweets. Twitter introduced a new link wrapping code last month. For marketers this meant that tweeting out a link would leave them two characters out. Including condensed links this change shortened tweets. 

It is hard enough to write tweets in 140 characters. Well now, if you minus 20 characters for the link plus the 2 for link wrapping code, this will leave you with 118 characters for commentary or tagging. 

It’s only getting tougher for marketers as well, according to the Wall Street Journal its said that tweets will be getting even shorter. “A new Federal Trade Commission decision requires tweets containing “short term ads” will he be held to the same requirements of other ads. in other words this means that tweets containing links to a product will be considered ads, and they will have to include a disclaimer identifying the tweet as an advertisement”

The FTC said disclosures should be unmistakably clear. it suggested proceeding posts with ‘Ad” or tagging tweets with “#sponsored”. But no body is going to read a post that is blatantly  an advertisement. 

It seems like marketers may have to switch platforms to market products or become experts on selling in very few words. Samantha Rupert has some great ideas on how to get around this problem. Samantha says that marketers should reword tweets  so they are not necessarily promoting a specific product. 

Another idea from Samantha is for Twitter to sell more characters to advertisers.

in my opinion this idea could benefit Twitter with revenue but it may force regular users off if became crowded with advertisements.