Ali Sabkar presented "Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing" at the #ECME12 #SMMF2012 #Bahrain

1. Utilizing Social Media
for Events Marketing
Presented by:
@AliSABKAR

2. Social media enables event attendees
to connect in powerful ways.
Social media can help promote
events and empower attendees
to share.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

3. Though small organizations still
rely heavily on traditional
marketing channels to promote
their events, social media is also
an important outreach tool:
77% of event marketers who
work for a small business or
nonprofit say they use social
media to promote their events,
and another 14% say they plan to
do so in the next year, according
to a survey from Constant
Contact.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

4. When in the Event Life Cycle Do Marketers
Promote?
Event marketers who use social media were asked
to rank their level of social media activity (lightest
to heaviest) leading up to a planned event.
Most (60.3%) marketers cite the days just prior to
an event as their heaviest social media marketing
phase, 26.7% cite one month before the event, and
14.9% cite one to two months prior to the event.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

5. Most Popular Channels:
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Facebook is the most
popular channel for
event promotion:
Among those who use
social media to
promote their events,
88.8% say they use
Facebook, followed by
Twitter (66.0%) and
LinkedIn (53.8%).
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

6. Goals of Promoting via Social Media
The top reason event marketers are currently
using social media is:
• educating & informing prospects about
upcoming events (55.9%),
• driving word of mouth (40.3%),
• attracting event attendees (38.7%), and
growing email lists (38.2%).
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

7. Event marketers' goals for future social media use
are loftier:
• 66.1% want to use social media to reach more
people,
• 65.0% would like to gather feedback from past
event attendees,
• 62.9% would like to attract more event
attendees,
• 61.9% would like to remain engaged with past
event attendees.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

8. Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

9. About the survey:
The Constant Contact-sponsored survey was
fielded in October 2011 to small businesses (50
or fewer employees) that use Constant Contact's
event marketing product. Results include
responses from 474 marketers across a range of
B2B (26%), B2C (26%), and nonprofit (48%)
organizations.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

10. 15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events
By: Ekaterina Walter
Ekaterina Walter is a social
media strategist at Intel.
She is a part of Intel’s
Social Media Center of
Excellence and is
responsible for social
networking strategy and
social media enablement.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

11. #1: Registration Buzz
You don’t have to wait until the day of your event
to create a buzz—it can start at the registration
stage.
Services such as Eventbrite, twtvite and the
Events Pages on Facebook & LinkedIn let your
attendees share the event with their networks as
they register.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

12. #2: Sharing Buzz
Encourage your
attendees to share
details of your event
early by offering
incentives for
spreading the word.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

13. Make sure all your event promotions include pre-
agreed hashtags (#EVENT) in prominent
positions to encourage people to start using them
early when they talk about your event. You don’t
want two or three variations getting coined as it
will be much harder to follow conversation threads.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

14. Once you’ve got your
speakers lined up you
can include their profiles—
and Twitter handles—on
your website and other
promotions, which will help
your audience get to know
them if they don’t already
and even start suggesting
questions and topics that
might help your speakers
gauge the audience better.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

15. #3: Event-Shaping Buzz
SXSW has always been active in asking attendees
for their views to help shape events, with 30% of
their programming chosen by attendees. Without
going to these lengths, you can conduct simple
polls before your event.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

16. #4: Rumor Buzz
In 2009 a rumor flew around Twitter that comedian Dave
Chappell would be playing a secret midnight show at
Portland’s Pioneer Square. No-one was able to confirm or
deny the rumor, so it just kept running until 5,000 people
had showed up. Midnight came and went, and no Dave
Chappell. At 1 am, just as everyone was starting to think
they’d been victims of a Twitter, Dave Chappell walked on
stage and rewarded the crowd with an impromptu gig.
Rumors of surprise special guests or exciting prizes
can help to invigorate your event and get people
talking.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

17. #5: Use QR Codes for Ad-Hoc Presentations
Nowadays it doesn’t matter how ad-hoc your
event is. Even if it’s being held outside with no
traditional conference facilities, you can use QR
codes to share your presentation without a
projector by uploading your presentation to
Slideshare, then creating a QR code that points to
the presentation. Print an image of the code and
anyone with a smartphone can scan it and go
straight to the presentation.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

18. #6: Collect All of Your Speakers’ Blogs in One
Place
How do you keep your attendees up to date
with all your speakers’ news, whether before,
during or after the event? With Netvibes, you can
use the RSS feeds from blogs to create a
dashboard of all their latest posts.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

19. #7: Twitter Backchannels
There’s no need to stick to the rigid format of
talking, then opening up to questions from the
audience. With a Twitter backchannel run on
something like Tweetwally, not only can the
audience provide commentary on the talks, but
also non-attendees can follow along on Twitter.
A good solution is to have a screen up in a
communal area away from the live events, with
marshals collecting comments and feedback to put
to the speaker at an appropriate time.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

20. #8: Sharing Images
By setting up an
official Flickr page and
using small prizes and
incentives to encourage
participants to upload
their own photos, you can
quickly build a great
unofficial photo record of
the event, which you can
use again in future
promotions.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

21. #9: Sharing Locations
Encourage attendees to check
in using Foursquare at
different locations around the
venue by rewarding them with
discounts, special offers and
other incentives. Not only can
everyone see which booths are
popular, but also you can
encourage them to explore
locations that they might
otherwise have missed.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

22. #10: Open Up Your Event to Virtual Attendees
If you don’t want space to limit your attendance,
consider opening your event up to virtual
attendees.
Some events, go one step further and are entirely
virtual, with speakers recording sessions miles
apart, cutting the need for a conference venue,
travel or accommodation. Virtual attendees can ask
questions via Twitter or Facebook, or comment on
events using hashtags to create what is potentially
a global conversation.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

23. #11: Video Streaming
Live recording is the keystone to a virtual event.
UStream, Facebook or a dedicated YouTube channel
can enable you to stream events live, either in
whole or in part. This is particularly valuable at
large events where attendees are never going to get
around to all the talks. If you’re going to do this on
a large scale, it’s worth investing in dedicated
recording equipment and a separate Internet
connection, as you’ll be using a lot of bandwidth.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

24. #12: QR Code Hunts
How can you make visiting your booth more
fun and stand out in a busy venue? You can use
QR codes to create a theme hunts for fans to win
prizes.
Reward your attendees for sharing blog posts,
weblogs and photo galleries at your event with
prizes and discounts.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

25. #13: Publish Your Twitter Wall
If you have a whole lot of media you don’t know
what to do with, try using Storify to collect Tweets,
videos and photos and embed them in your
website or share them through social media.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

26. #14: Give Access to All of Your Talks With Links to
Videos
You can make your website the main place for
post-event catch-up by using Ustream and
YouTube to embed video of your biggest events.
This can also serve as a great marketing tool for
next year’s event. Make sure you have an email
sign-up on the same page to capture interest, and
you can even get ahead of the game by offering
incentives for early interest.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

27. #15: Publish Your Presentations
You can use Slideshare to reach a whole new
audience beyond your own website and help
convince new audiences to sign up for next year’s
event.
Utilizing Social Media for Events Marketing @AliSABKAR

28. Thank you
If you get it, share it
@AliSABKAR