ETIP #106
Creating Real-World Events for Your Social Channels
Social media channels allow for conversational engagement. As we’ve outlined in Understanding your Hierarchy of Social Media Needs, different social services provide opportunity to reach out to unique audiences, interests and disciplines. But nothing beats an opportunity to meet your customer, client, friend or follower face-to-face. Your social media campaign should include real-time events and “meet ups.”
Driven by the popularity of leads groups, organizations, conventions, and seminars, meetup.com got its start by putting like-minded individuals with an interest together in real-time and provided a tool in order to make that happen. Since the inception of Twitter, these life meetings have been referred to as “Tweet-ups.”
Think about what drives your social audience. If they are led by incentives, you may want to create a contest or giveaway around the event. Inform all of your attendees who, what, where, and why they would want to attend. If they are led by education, make sure your event is seminar–like, or tied to an engaging speaker with a robust topic that would be beneficial for your group.
You’ve established your audience within a digital community. That’s where you have your own voice, tone, manner and culture. All these elements need to resonate within your live event as well in order to maintain the consistency of your brand.
During the event it is important to construct user generated content (UGC) in order to recap the highlights of the event back within your social channel. This is a great opportunity to invite guests to capture photos and video and tweet and post throughout the event. Soliciting honest feedback will only make future events better. Since your audience is socially savvy, they will be comfortable with this type of communication.
Now more than ever it’s easy to construct live events even with e-commerce-based ticketing and registration with channels such as EventBrite.com, Eventful.com, and others. Other digital ticket services for your event could include: