People who are promoting events are starting to realize that promoting an event online is very different to dealing with print media.

Even the least tech-aware promoters are starting to wake up to the fact that sending a flyer image or pdf to a website contact email address is mostly a waste of time (there are no writers or editors there to read, retype and republish it!) and are gradually getting more used to the idea of entering their own events using online forms and some are starting to look for and use data sharing/import/export tools to reduce the time spent on entering the same data on different sites.

Expect many more sites in the future to provide more and better tools for sharing event data with other sites and applications and expect lots of interesting event-related applications to emerge!

SWEET!

Holding an event? Wondering how to best promote it? There is certainly one thing you that cannot afford to ignore – Social media. Social media is an amazingly powerful tool to promote your events. It can be used to increase registration, increase buzz, and ultimately increase attendance. It enables you to reach a wide audience. It also enables invitees to connect with each other and share information.
However, remember social media is a channel, not a strategy. The optimum way of utilising this medium will depend on your target audience and how they interact online. So chose your platforms carefully and ensure it matches these needs. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are often very good options for most.

How can you use social media for your event?

• Promote your registration page on the wall on your fan page. If you provide great content, you can promote the direct link to your event intermittently.
• Create a Facebook event. This should contain all the lowdown on the event. The page means you can easily invite your fans and make it easy for them to share with their friends. You can create a Facebook Event from your fan Page for any business-related events. Alternatively, creating an Event from your personal profile enables you to message all invitees directly into their inbox.
• Generate traffic to your event pages by hosting giveaways for individuals who use the pages to register their attendance. Offer larger giveaways to attendees who post links to the event page.
• Create a dedicated Facebook page for larger events. Exploit this opportunity fully by getting attendees involved in the event by asking them questions that influence the content/ agenda for the event.
• Have your own event sales/registration page outside of your social media pages.
Add social share buttons to your event registration page including TweetMeme Retweet Button,Facebook Like Button and LinkedIn Share Button. This will increase your popularity perception, encouraging others to share. Capitalise on this by positioning your social share buttons at the top right “above the fold”.
• Location based services such as FOURSQUARE
• Offer live micro events on your fan Page. Your Facebook fans will relish the opportunity to interact with you live. You can use this engagement as an outlet to add value and to seed your upcoming event.
• Encourage your attendees to engage with each other and share with others once they have signed up for an event. e.g. encourage them to write on your Facebook event wall and engage through other social channels.
• Use images and video to entice, such as photos or videos of previous events.
• Record and post record of events via Facebook, blogs, video, and photo sharing.

Useful tools to help you manage your event

Plancast – lets you know about the events your friends plan to attend as well as other cool events coming up in your area.

Upcoming Yahoo, great for adding your event for people looking for local events and get more exposure

Lanyrd - Great site that has some cool features including: see what events your friends are attending or even speaking at. Find conferences near you. Track what’s going on during the conference, even if you aren’t there including who is tweeting what. If you’ve missed out on a event you can easily catch up on slides, video or podcasts.

TweetBubbles is a tool which can make your presentation more exciting by live feeding Twitter during events or seminars. If you use TweetBubbles, opinions and questions posted by the participants of the events will be over-layed on top of the presentation as tweets in bubbles.

Pathable is an online community and social network that helps your attendees meet, connect and stay in touch – before, during and after your event.

Thrillcall Nucleus is a social media marketing tool that enables bands, venues, and live music promoters to create events and publish content all in one place.

Eventbrite is a simple and popular powerful tool to manage, promote and sell your event. Promotes your events on Facebook too

Bizzabo A free location based mobile app for networking at business events. Bizzabo lets you know exactly who the professional attendees are and allows you to get in touch with them.

Minglestream is a tweetwall on crack! The next generation tweetwall… a real-time social multimedia display with live streaming & image/video support for your event or venue.

myupcoming.com Everything to make your event a success. Free full-service ticket sale and visitors registration, inclusive seating, scanning, online sale and pre-sale. Free promotion-tools, collect data from your visitors, send mailings and much more.

Moving forward into 2012, businesses that embrace the waves of social media will gain competitive advantage. To sail to success you must stay abreast of the swift changes, differentiate and embrace the risks, continually developing your online tactics as online marketing evolves.

How your company will adjust and respond to social media is the most important question of all. The businesses that sit back quietly waiting to follow the pack, will do exactly that; follow the pack. If you want to make your business known in cyber world, you’ve got to be a leader, or at least try to be. Make your mark before someone else does.

Due to the emergence of our ‘social world’, brands now succeed based upon the experiences that they provide online. These experiences are no longer created for people, but alongside them; with them. And if the experiences are not managed effectively, brands can be either damaged or strengthened in the waves of social media.

Get clued up, do your research, understand what is happening out there and why. Stay up to date with the trends and become tech-savvy. Simply put, if you can’t utilize social media tools, employ someone who can. Don’t get left behind, or your business will suffer.
Social media isn’t just an idea to brighten up your marketing strategy, or to try something new and innovative. In order to use marketing effectively, you must fully understand and work with your consumer.

This is life today; this is how your consumer communicates, gathers information, creates relationships and expresses their opinions. To be a modern marketer, you must enter and emerge yourself in this world.

Don’t be web-anxious, it doesn’t take long to grasp. In fact, it is exciting. You can begin to engage with your consumers in ways previously unheard of before. Soon you will be able to monitor, respond to, and play a part in social media experiences that massively impact your brand value.

With first-rate online marketing and clever social media your brand can become a global phenomenon. Understand the tools, use them effectively and be smart. Be a leader and get the success you deserve.

I have been seriously following many of the Social Media “Gurus” “Experts” “Bigs” (now to be referred to as the Social Media BIGS) for the last year or so.

Can I be honest here?

I am a little gal in your big big social media world. I am little Miss SocialSweetSpot. At first I revered the SM BIGS knowledge and experience and CLIENTS…And, I was awed by your 10K+ followers, your beautiful websites, your speaking engagements and endless blogs…

But then I started thinking, man, these Social Media BIGS seem to spend more time on their own marketing than their clients. I put my clients first and found I didn’t have enough time and money in my day to do it for myself and my clients…

And then I found out about the “secret world” of outsourcing…

And then I started really following you Social Media BIGS on Twitter…

Here is the best thing about Twitter in my small time social media opinion…

I can compare you Social Media BIGS to each other within minutes.

And BIGS, you ALL are saying the same things, doing the same things, quoting the same articles, and boring the same people all at the same time.

Where’s the innovation? Are you all to BIG, and afraid of a legal slam, that you refuse to try something new? Sigh, sadly you have lost my respect. Gone are the BIGS of the advertising world that took crazy risks and threw a really attention-getting ad into their portfolio mix for their clients. They came up with those fabulous commercials that weren’t even allowed to be played on TV and that they would slip into the public forum via the Addy Awards TV presentations. I watched that awards show every year just to see the irreverent commercials – the ones that lit my creative brain on fire – that drove me to rethink and make the ad that was socially acceptable yet still cutting edge and attention-getting for my clients. Those daring innovators had all my awe and respect.

I follow you Social Media BIGS to see how you are going to surprise me, shock me, amaze me with your new thoughts, knowledge, wisdom…

yet day after day…I get Nada.

If social media is on the cutting edge of innovation in society, shouldn’t those at the top be the stellar examples of innovative thinking? I am starting to assume that you Social Media BIGS are really just techies that caught a wave that the creative thinkers couldn’t catch as quickly. PLEASE, tell me something new, show me how to shock and amaze my clients with some way to get the attention of their followers that isn’t being done by all those in their industry.

If I can’t get it from the Social Media BIGS, I may have to do it myself…Please BIGS, come back to the American way and be an innovator…boredom is not your friend…stable though it might be.

INNOVATION RULES in Social Media.

PS. Blog written 100% by Miss SocialSweetSpot, no outsourcing needed

I believe that there will always be an on going intellectual use of SEO (StumbleUpon, Wikipedia), but I also feel that SEO is going to go the way of the dinosaur, not so much because of the white and black hat aspect of it, but more because of the overwhelming nature of online searches in general.

What I hear more than anything else from people is that they are tired of being online, and suffering from TMI. They miss face-to-face communication and find that the online world of SM and searches, etc is starting to bore and overwhelm them.

At the end of the day, we are all still “alive” and prefer to interact with the living. The tech geeks will always prefer a machine to a man but most of us do not. And even the geeks have not figured out how to create a warm smile online, and that is what people are missing.

SEO is going to roll null because the most powerful use of social media is the pull of commonality. Gone is the controlling rule of the corporate world. The power has been returned to the people and they are very wise after years of brain-numbing manipulative advertising. NICHE marketing is going to rise to the top – friends and neighbors the influencers – recommandations coming from those you know and trust – information gained from those you know care about you.

A desire for the living to bond to each other, will overcome the marketing manipulations of SEO experts. In other words, we will stop searching and ask a friend what they like the best and where they go to find a great golf course, a awesome restaurant, a great online shoe store that gives you an awesome pair of shoes for a great deal.

Sure there are always going to be the online versions of the cheesy coupon fliers in the snail mail world or spam SEO (which I NEVER read anymore – they all go straight in the trash) or Google or Facebook paid ads (which my mind totally blanks out of my vision unless I am absolutely desperate and force my eyes to see them) BUT people will start using SM programs like Foursquare more because they get to see what their friends like, feel that they have something in common with them ( “…a golfer who loves pizza just like me!…I’ll go where he suggests!” ), ask a questions, and get a real deal from those they believe truly get them.

Yep, SEO is gonna die, unless the creators recognize that the human touch always wins out. When it comes to those “living in the real-world”, niche marketing will RULE online.