Why you should build social media into your event management plan
A study conducted during the recent Sochi Winter Olympics by Vision Critical on behalf of Twitter, found that 54% of Twitter users planned on tweeting about the Games.
According to the survey, two thirds of those on Twitter were of the opinion that the social media platform made live sporting events more exciting. Even though the majority of people followed the games primarily on TV, the fact that they had the ability to engage with it on social media made it more appealing. Of those surveyed, 8 in 10 people read tweets while watching the event on TV.
What these findings demonstrate is that people enjoy sharing experiences – and social media channels like Twitter allow them to do just that.
In order to make your events as memorable as possible, when planning your event management strategy, find ways that will encourage guests to shares their experience while at your event.
No matter how big or small an event is, there will always be a finite amount of guests. By incorporating the use of social media during your event, you’re able to reach a much wider audience – ultimately making a much bigger impact than if you hadn’t incorporated the use of social media into your event management approach.
The options are endless when it comes to including social media into your event management schedule.
You could use a dedicated hashtag for your event or have a photo booth at the venue and then get people to upload their photos to Instagram. Another way to encourage the active use of social media in order to give your brand as much exposure as possible, is by creating a dedicated event page on Facebook. You can then upload photos from the day, and get people to tag themselves and like your page after the event. Not only does this facilitate additional interaction with guests, it provides you with a chance to communicate further marketing messages to them after the event.
British snowboarder and bronze medallist, Jenny Jones, saw her Twitter followers jump from 7000 to 64 000 in the week the Games began.
This perfectly demonstrates how incorporating social media in event management strategies is a powerful tool for building client engagement.
It’s vital that you make your invitations as “shareable” as possible.
If you’re hosting an event where you want to engage as many people as possible, (for example, an open event not limited to a specified guest list) like a conference, exhibition or product launch – it’s important that you include ways that encourage the sharing of your invitation and registration page via social media.
You can do this by inviting a set of initial guests, who’ve been chosen strategically due to their influence. These people are bound to know other like-minded people, and by sharing your invitation on social media, your event will grow exponentially.
You’ll need to ensure that your event registration pages and invitation contain all the necessary information – if they’re going to be shared on social media which has a limit on the characters you can use – important information about your event can get lost in translation.
Ensure your event management plans cater for an influx in registrations via social media.
If your social media invitation goes viral and you get a huge amount of people trying to register, you need to ensure that the online event registration tool that you’re using can handle the huge amount of people trying to register without crashing under the pressure. In addition, if you have limited spaces available, your event management software should prevent people from registering once the event is at capacity by displaying a friendly message informing guests that unfortunately, there is no more space available. 
Image Credit: flickr
