How to Market an Offline Event Online

October 20, 2009 · Comments

SummitUp Conference

On Friday, I’ll be in New York City, with Julien Smith , David Maister, and Charlie Green, to hold the Trust Summit at the Harvard Club in Manhattan (proper dress requested, please- no jeans or sneakers). In getting ready for this, I realized that things have changed in the world of inviting folks to an event. I thought this might prove useful in understanding how social tools can come together to bring the physical experience onto the web, and back again.

One note of caution: go gently when promoting. In the new world, that line between “hey, good to know” and “man, you’re annoying” is pretty thin and easy to step over.

How to Market a Real Time Event

Always a URL. Always

If you’re going to wire up people and connect them to an event in the real world, you need a web page of some kind or another. People need all the details. They need some kind of intangible tangible that they can pass around to point out what’s what. Give them a web page.

If it’s just a one-off, use an event system like Eventbrite. If you’re going to do this over and over, consider setting up pages on your own website of choice, and then maybe double-up with an Eventbrite to manage the signup.

Extend onto Event Sites

Here’s where you can really get things moving. If you want this event to really spread, use sites like Upcoming.org and Eventful, to name a few. If you’ve got a Facebook group, put up an event notification there. If you’ve got a LinkedIn group, and the event matches, put it up there, too.

Status, Status, Status

Without being “that guy” (and never forget, I mean this for either gender), mentioning your event is easy across your Twitter, your Facebook, your LinkedIn status, and all the other social sites that make sense to promote. A word of caution: this gets close to what feels like carpet-bombing, so go gently. In fact, out in front of such a promotional effort, make sure you’re doing your good deeds and promoting others, and sharing other good information. People don’t like a tireless self-promoter, but they don’t mind someone who shares the good stuff, even when some of it’s their own.

Email Marketing

Do you maintain an email list? Don’t forget to drop a gentle note of your event into there, too. Again, the goal is subtlety and just a gentle pointer to your URL.

Flickr and YouTube

Want to amp up your event’s pre-buzz as well as give it some love on the day of the event? Here are two things: use photos and videos for pre-event invites and promos. Then, encourage people to take photos and videos AT the event. If at all possible, make it easy for the folks who might be into making media to have something to take photos and make movies about. (A side note: if you’re bothering to throw an event with a lot of web presence, use a tag – metadata – to denote the event, for people’s blog posts, for Flickr and YouTube, and for Twitter. For instance, we’ll use #trustsummit for our event in NYC.)

Blog Posts Matter

You can do much worse than to find local bloggers and bloggers who care about the subject matter to cover the event, should they find it useful. If you’ve a budget to do so, invite some to attend in exchange for blogging anything that might be of interest to them. Realize that in the new world, bloggers are rarely obligated to do whatever you ask, and yet, if you make it interesting and worthwhile, folks love to tell a story.

Getting a few posts out about the event ahead of time, and/or after give you a lot more traction and appreciation before and after. Again, make sure the event’s worthy of coverage. If it’s just a straight product pitch or the like, that’s tricky to justify.

Twitter on the Day Of the Event

To me, Twitter’s the magic sauce in making your NEXT event really light up. It’s too late for your event by the time folks start tweeting about it, but it’s a great way to really warm up your future events. If people are tweeting that they’re having a fun time, that they’re learning, that there are still a few hours to get down to the event and have fun, magic can happy. That’s why Twitter’s the Serendipity Engine.

What else? How else are you promoting offline events in the online world? Share your best ideas here.

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  • An extension of posting on 'Event' sites is to find local umbrella organisations relevant to the topic, and see if they have event listings.

    E.g. in London there are several creative industries support organisations with training/event listings on their sites, where I posted details of my summer workshops and picked up some really great attendees who I'd never have connected with otherwise.
  • I'd also add that planning and promoting well AHEAD of the event is key too. I'm amazed at the number of last minute invitations that are still sent out for fairly sizable events. A few days is not enough notice - "slow and steady wins the race" on this one. Incorporating all social media channels is definitely helpful, but be mindful that when interacting with people on multiple outlets, the line between effective marketing and overkill is, indeed, very fine.
  • That's so true. I think however one consideration if the event is in the medium to long terms is that there must be a balance of "building" the marketing towards it, but not overwhelming people and having them satiated before they are ready to signup.

    Needs to build interest, build energy, reward the early birds, then build interest again, continue to build energy, and close then repeat with a new audience or from a new angle
  • Hay Alicia. Looking at your website I saw your birthday wish. I made a donation. Happy birthday. Great cause and keep up the great work.
  • Chris, I have been thinking a lot about events lately. I have been doing Social Media for Business Lunch & Learns for organizations here in the Buffalo area. I tend to charge for these and relatively few of the attendees are on twitter and most are coming to learn more about the space. Maybe you could cover a bit about audiences and how to cater to events that often times have a real mixed bag.

    Today, I announced that I too would possibly be coming to NYC on the 19th for a Lunch and Learn event and many folks on twitter expressed interested in coming. My usual target audience is business and folks outside the fishbowl (In need of Education) . Do you have any suggestions on how I might reach those needing more info but not reading blogs or on twitter? And maybe how I might incorporate those that are more advanced without boring them? This seems to be my struggle. It is very hard to plan an event when there is such a mix of different experience levels.
  • Encourage your presenters, exhibitors,sponsors to also drive awareness of their participation in the event via their own channels, and speaking about aspects that are unique to them. Arm them with logos, texts, banners, programs (people still ask for PDFs surprisingly) to make their online promotion as easy for them as possible.
  • mymelodie
    Great tips Chris! Many event producers have identified me as being a social media socialite and request me to help promote their events. They always offer me complimentary access and provide me with additional passes/tickets to give away through my social networks. This works well because I'm given resources to create viral contests such as RT Contests, Contests rewarding my Facebook fans etc. If the event makes sense for my audience and I truly support their efforts, I will create a blog post around it. Example here: http://www.marketingmelodie.com/index.php/2009/... I have gotten positive feedback from event producers for doing this so definitely recommend you identify key people you'd like to attend each event and create a similar offer.
  • Gina Kay Landis
    For our recent lunch event in the Dayton, Ohio area, I used both Twitter (DM and @ messages) and Facebook. FB's event function is pretty ok. No emails at all, since most attendees are on Twitter and we rarely, if ever, email one another (except via DM's which come to my Yahoo account).

    I have an EventBrite set up, but many people aren't yet familiar with it. Will likely use it next time if the crowd is larger than the 18 we had at this lunch! Sweet!
  • jeffcutler
    We just did this with our @garyvee event in Boston at the Estate. See http://nomx3.com/nomx3-with-garyvee-wining-dini... for details and the video.

    But our mix was Twitter heavy because that's where the audience for Gary was. We tweeted incessantly and had people around the country mention it as well.

    Our traditional approach was to reach out to food publications and media. We invited local luminaries to the event and made it clear through our sponsors - Ace Ticket and PerkettPR - that this wasn't a tech event, but a wine event.

    Timing, as @stales says in her comment, is key. We only had a week to pull it together and still got 150+ people to show up. Had we 14 days or more of promotion we would have jammed the room with 300+ people.

    Even so, our handicaps were the local event calendars missing the event (I think @BostonTweetup overlooked it), other competing events (same weekend as Blog World Expo which drew tons of tech people away from the area who likely would helped promote NomX3 and Gary Vaynerchuk), and regional offline challenges (the crappy and cold Boston weather and the annual Head of the Charles Regatta).

    Nevertheless, in seven days and with the tools people have been using for eons and mere minutes (word of mouth all the way up to Retweets and #fb tagged updates) we got it to work.

    Essentially you need to know your event, know your audience, and manage your expectations. Then go out there and use that knowledge the best way you can. It's all learning.

    Great post Chris. Hope to have you on NomX3 sometime in 2010.

    Best,

    Jeff
  • Chris,
    This is such a good post, and I sincerely thank you for sharing such great information. I've sent a link to this post out to my social network, as it applies so well to their businesses. Hoping to make it to the event in NY too. Keep doing great work!

    Jennifer Fong
  • Chris,

    Another great read. I have no need to promote any event but I like to help others promote their event via Twitter. I find Twitter reaches so far that it is so effective in marketing events. Your other ideas are awesome and I like the hashtag and metatag which were cool during IZEA and BEW09. Thanks for sharing these great tips.
  • iancleary
    Another way is to use purpose built social networking software for events such as pathable, crowdvine etc. This type of software generally has twitter integration built in. This encourages conversation amongst people going to the event. If people know who else is going that will generally make them wonder if they are going to miss out!
  • Thanks, Chris. It's also great to use social media to involve your brand community in planning the event. Blog posts can ask people what they would like to see in the event, how they would like to contribute, etc. It's a great way to continue to build relationships with online networking contacts.

    Best.
    William
    www.williamarruda.com
  • It's not necessarily too late for people to attend your events if they see some tweets about it early on. We were pleased that Andy Kaufman attended BarCampBank SF 1 in the afternoon because he was alerted to it by some of his friends' tweets that morning.
  • I cant say enough about live Tweeting an event. Whether for professional gain (great content = great and plentiful followers) or organizational promotion, I've seen awesome returns on this simple investment. More people should do this. Kudos on the post. Great integrated strategy that digitali take for granted....
  • When something is so dead on and full of thought fodder, there's nothing to say except "thank you." @ChrisBrogan (http://www.soulati.com)
  • fischer510
    Great article. Thanks for sharing- as an event marketer- all of your suggestions are important for presenting to those who think a website or Twitter post will be enough. The 'carpet bombing' you refer to has been a common thought among company marketing departments who don't realize the necessity to develop a presence first and then promote the event.
  • edw3rd
    Using the Call For Speakers is a great way to get on the radar as it generates a lot of RT'ing. Discount codes and free tickets via exhibitors or sponsors also helps.

    And using tools like http://tradeshowmetrics.com you can help people that can't attend see an integration of tagged SM items, whether pics, tweets, or vids.
  • Chris - I think extending the event info into Facebook and LinkedIn also helps prior to the event. For SummitUp, David Bowman did podcasts with speakers to create anticipation for some of the content.

    During the event? In addition to tweeting you might ustream some of the content. Some might consider this cannibalizing your next event. If people know you ustream, they might tune in from their desk instead of coming. But we all know it's NOT the same as being there.

    This content can then be used to promote next year's event and it adds to the tweeting that takes place around the event. We do this for Cincinnati Social Media events and it works very well. We've even fielded questions from Twitter for the speakers.

    Great to finally meet you in person yesterday btw. Will shoot you a link when the Bad Pitch Blog video is up.
  • The pleasure was mine, Kevin. And I like your points.
  • the balance between being subtle and proactive is a really difficult one to muster. You're right that if you're promoting from the right place and continue to wholeheartedly promote the work of others, self promotion will seem more like sharing useful information than self serving bull.
  • Great post. Love the idea of using video on website and/or blog!
    Thanks!
  • timbete
    We built an online community for the 2008 Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop (www.humorwriters.org) and with one e-mail it sold out in just 72 hours (300 attendees from 45 states and more than 200 people on the waiting list.) The registration cost was $325. The key was to already have the community built long before it was time to promote the event. If you have the community, they will come. (We're hoping the 2010 workshop will sell out in 24 hours.)
  • If you're going to be doing a series of events over time, it also might be a good idea to create a branded meetup.com group, for example:
    http://meetup.com/SocialBootstrap

    It's been a really great way to build an offline community.
    Now I'm going to try out all these other ideas!
  • matthewparente
    This is really helpful stuff and a great to-do list. In fact, I'm part of a team that is developing a new solution to help answer this question (how do i promote my events?). We're working hard to integrate much of what is mentioned in this post into a single tool, thus making it easier to promote (and find) events.

    I'm really excited that there is conversation around this topic and look forward to contributing and helping out in any way I can.
  • ianmcgonnigal
    Hi Chris,

    These are some great ideas. Please check out "13 Ways Linkedin Supports Event Marketing", "5 Powerful Ideas for using Facebook for Events" and "Who are the People in your Neighborhood? Using Twitter to Build a Community around Your Events" posts on http://www.experientialmarketing20.com for deeper dives on promoting events using social media.

    Thanks!
  • Excellent ideas. Thanks for sharing.
  • And give lots of play to your star speaker or topic. People don't attend events for the scrambled eggs and coffee or the wine and cheese. They come for content.

    Too often events are promoted as a collection of equally weighted speakers, panels, breakout groups, etc. Emphasize the event's strengths, even if Steve Jobs isn't your keynote speaker.

    And too often the event's promotional material doesn't say WHO should attend and WHY. List the benefits. And have a good time.
  • “Thanks Chris for this post. Not only have you given us some great tactical pointers for promoting a live event, you’ve also shown, indirectly, that social media are just weapons in our larger PR arsenal. Like the printed page, or telephone call, social media will just be something else we use to promote our brand, sell our product, and get our message out. If you look closely, all other folks that are being recognized for their social media acumen are also masters of traditional media PR. You, Brian Solis, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba, Gary Vaynerchuk and the like are doing live events, appearing on TV shows, being quoted by the traditional press, writing books, and giving lectures that help build your brand as much as the social media work that you do. All of these elements be they ancient or recently invented use the magic of “Out of Control Marketing” where you hand your message over to connectors who, in turn, pass your message along via media mentions or word-of-mouth. Those who practice this are risk takers because they let their message be reshaped by those who pass it on, but, wow, does it pack credibility. So, thanks again for encouraging people to look beyond the hot topic and to dig deeper in to all aspects of marketing public relations.”
  • Jeff Benanto
    Hey Chris,

    Another spot-on post. I think this is an area, the promotion of events through online means, that is going to get a lot of attention in the near term. One of my clients is incredibly interested in throwing together a workshop and seeing what type of auidence we can generate through online outreach.

    One other tool that you touched upon that I think is, and will be key for our workshop, is the LinkedIn events app. The app allows you to create an event (similiar to how you would on Facebook), and post to the site. When users indicate that they are planning to attend the event, it will then be visible to their entire network of connections, generating further awareness and (potentially) attendance.

    Of course, I still agree that Twitter is still the best tool for both pre and post-event buzz. Good stuff all around!

    Jeff
  • I am far more likely to pay attention to someone's event if they are someone I see genuinely interacting with others on a regular basis. If announcing your events is all you do, your audience is going to grow annoyed and ignore you. And it's true, I love to see people helping others by mentioning their projects as well.
  • Great list there. We do a lot of online marketing for my classes. Our Facebook group has provided us with in-class students as well.
  • christine_perkett
    Hi Chris,

    As always, a great post. I'd like to add that offering something unique at the offline event and creating incentive for people to talk about it can help generate buzz online from the people who are there - who want to share what they're experiencing with others who cannot be in attendance. This can be a great way to avoid being "that guy" and let others do the promotion for you because they like what you're doing.

    This can be done even if you're just attending - not the host - of an event. For example, I was pretty proud of what we (PerkettPR) pulled off at your recent event, IMS09. We created a fun booth and then gave attendees a reason to come visit (come take a fun quiz), a reason to share online (share the results of the quiz; in this case "what social media personality you are") and a reason to visit our site (in this case a landing page where we posted everyone's photos: http://www.perkettprsuasion.com/ims09). We had fun, we created a lot of buzz and we were successful in standing out both at the offline event and online as people - both those in attendance and those tracking it from afar - were talking about our efforts.

    In fact, this approach - which integrated several of our social networks - including Twitter, Flickr, Whrrl and our blog - led to some great new business (always a goal!) and interest from others such as MarketingProfs, who hired us to create a similar promotion for their Digital Marketing Mixer event this week: http://www.marketingprofs.com/events/8/conference

    They're integrating live streaming, Flickr and Twitter for a great, aggregated page for anyone to keep up with the action.

    Thanks again for the post - you always provide great advice.

    Christine
    http://www.twitter.com@missusP
    http://www.twitter.com/PerkettPR
  • raptureimage
    If you have an organization that has events you should defiantly be on Meetup.com! It has been so effective in not only keeping track of my events but also the attendees and getting me new people to join the event! I have worked a lot with the Meetup team and they are truly a great company.
  • Thanks, I will keep these tips in mind.
  • marryroy01
    A few days is not enough notice - "slow and steady wins the race" on this one. Incorporating all social media channels is definitely helpful, but be mindful that when interacting with people on multiple outlets, the line between effective marketing and overkill is, indeed, very fine.

    vitamines
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