No matter if you are a corporate employee or a small business owner, there come times you must learn how to promote a social/business event. Being the organizer for a premier business networking group in New York City, I have the first-hand experience to incorporate my social media marketing skills into what I do with my group. At this point, I must admit that I do enjoy the rapid expansion for this group due to the right utilization of a variety of social media tools. Here I will share some tips regarding how I use social media to promote the NYEBN events.
1. Set Up a Facebook Fan Page or Group
Facebook is the fastest growing social media network today. If you don’t promote your events using Facebook, then you are really selling yourself short. Here are the three primary ways how I would leverage the power of Facebook.
- If you have a sizable number of Facebook friends, you should post every event on your Facebook wall. Every time I post an event on my Facebook, there always will be people taking part in the conversation, which is an eyeball magnet.
- Set up a Facebook group or a fan page. Here is the fan page for NY Entrepreneurs Business Network. Whenever I have an event, I would send out notifications to my current fans and invitations to new people who might be interested.
- Buy ads. If you are really aggressive about promoting your events, you should buy Facebook ads which will be targeting certain demographic groups who fit your event criteria.
2. Build Your Credential on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, you enhance your credibility mainly by two ways: 1) increase your LinkedIn connections & 2) increase your LinkedIn recommendations. If you have both, then it’s time for you to capitalize on your LinkedIn profile. What do I mean by that? If your purpose is to promote your networking group or local events, then join the right LinkedIn groups and surround yourself with like-minded people. Here are the groups that I have joined on LinkedIn: Manhattan Local Networkers Group, New York City Networking Association, NY/NJ Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and Start-Ups, etc. There are many other groups, but you get the point here. Whenever an event comes up, I always share the information in a featured discussion thread or in a news release featuring my group. The purpose here is to attract as many targeted eyeballs as possible. To get a summary of the top 30 LinkedIn Groups, check out a previous post I wrote.
3. Tweet It
Twitter is the second largest social network after Facebook in the US. Using this microblogging tool, you can potentially tap into the biggest pool of your target audience . I usually tweet the same event twice (within 140 characters) both ten days prior to the event and one day before the event as a reminder. This can work amazingly well for you if you are a savvy Twitter user. I have written several posts before about how to leverage the power of Twitter. For a brief overview, check them out.
- How to Grow Your Twitter Followers – 5 Ways That Work for Me
- 30 Ultimate Twitter Tools to Help You Dominate the Twitterverse – Part A
- 30 Ultimate Twitter Tools to Help You Dominate the Twitterverse – Part B
4. Start a Meetup Group
The Meetup platform is getting more and more popular. In fact, my entire networking group is built on this platform. If you are not familiar with Meetup, please read this introductory post. If you already have sufficient knowledge and want to master the secrets about how to run a successful Meetup group, then read this. Meetup.com is really good at sending out event reminders and bringing in extra people to your networking pool.
5. Make Your Message Go Viral
We can go on and on introducing different social media tools. But the philosophy behind all of them is pure and simple, which is to create some sort of viral messages. It is not the TV, or magazine ads that sell in the 21st century, instead it’s the Google and Facebook ads that get the job done. Viral marketing is essentially “word of mouth on steroid.” Take NY Entrepreneurs Business Network as an example, we have a group featured testimonial section where members share positive feelings about our past events. Even better, this section is open to anybody who visits our website (people can even find it by Googling for the right keywords). This is viral marketing in action because I have 1,600 + people helping me spread the word at this moment.
Another example is LinkedIn’s recommendation mechanism. Since I have listed “President of NY Entrepreneurs Business Network” under career segment for my LinkedIn profile, now it has amassed 20 recommendations for this position, which have helped me attract a large number of LinkedIn audience who are interested in my events.
Final word of advice here: always think creatively to make your event a unique and enjoyable experience so your audience not only will come back, but also will recommend it to their friends.
Conclusion
Although I use other social media tools for event promotion purposes, I think covering all of them is simply impossible in just one blog post. But you get my idea. Hope you can implement these methodologies into your event promotional mix soon. I can’t wait to hear your results. What tools would you recommend?
Related posts:
- 20 Tips to Help You Build A Dynamic Online Community Breaking news! One group (NYEBN) that I founded in...
- HOW TO: Become A Better Networker (The Social Media Guide) As the organizer of NY Entrepreneurs Business Network (NYEBN),...
- How to Run a Successful Business/Entrepreneur Meetup Group? Being an entrepreneur myself, I’ve always wanted to build...
- Top 10 Social Networks To Find Local Business Events If you have a small business, you’ve probably realized...
- Part I: 10 Reasons Why Social Media Can Benefit Entrepreneurs Today, I got to brainstorm for more strategies about...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
