Social Media Marketing for Special Events

One of the topics near and dear to our hearts here at Tenth Muse Creative is Social Media Marketing for Special Events.  Our next series on this blog is on why social media marketing is important and how it can help you stretch your event marketing dollars.

Events are a shared spectacle, a form of social entertainment - a group of people comes together to experience a unique social opportunity. Using social media within this social setting is almost a no-brainer!  Because understanding how powerful social media can be is so important, we really want to focus on sharing and what makes social media social.

The actual origins of the Internet was as a space for users to exchange information, and that is still true today. The Internet is more than just a place to prop up your online brochure (website), it is where your event attendees socialize and exchange information.  The point of using social media for event marketing is for event producers to participate in the exchange – before the event – during the event - and after the event.

Social media for event marketing is NOT about blasting out a link to your website and reminding people about your event date. Social media marketing is about engaging your audience and making them a part of your marketing efforts through User Generated Content and information sharing.  When you use social media correctly, your event fans become a part of your marketing strategy, not just a digital audience who is already awash in marketing messages, most of which they are ignoring in favor of user generated social marketing.

People who engage in social media are going to drive the “conversation” about your event, they are going to blog it, tweet it, post it, and share their impressions with other social media users. Social media users are the PR department you didn’t know that you had! If you work with your social users and engage them, they will deliver your messaging far more effectively and to more people than traditional advertising. When you engage social users, you are joining in the dialog, you are providing them with content that can be shared with other users and you are building relationships with people who like to share – and there are no better relationships to build than those.

 Our next series of posts is going to look at social media platforms and how to engage your event attendees to create dynamic pre-event social interaction and during-event social opportunities that will vastly increase your event attendee enthusiasm and create a long tail marketing buzz.

Don’t forget to bookmark us as we dive into the pool of social media marketing for your special event!