The event season is in full swing. With a month to go before we get a bit of a break before Christmas it’s all hands to the pumps as we get stuck into our end of year events. All that hard work throughout the year coming to a crescendo as our events take place in front of our guests, delegates and stakeholders.
We’ve done everything! A great venue, fantastic speakers, cracking catering and a brilliant atmosphere. Everyone who attendees will love it! But what about those who can’t make it? What about those possible attendees next year? What can we do to attract them to our next event?
Amplifying your event
The final piece in the event management process is to ensure that you have a strategy for amplifying your event. And the first and easiest place to start is to have a dedicated person at your event amplifying that content.
@thebuzzbay amplifying the content at Tech Fest 2014
Using various social media platforms that person can be a member of your team or someone else in your organisation or you can use a specialist amplifier. No matter who does your amplifying there are several things that you – the event manager / marketing manager – should do to ensure that this amplification will have as big and as positive an impact as possible.
So if you are thinking about having a dedicated person amplifying your event you can use this as a guide to ensure that you put the right foundations in place.
What you can do to ensure a successful amplification of your event:
1. Allow the content amplifier to use your official channels. Give them access to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest ect. Give them control.
2. Don’t just leave it to them. They are there to add a massive injection to your content sharing but you can still drop in and out of the feed with your own view on things and your own updates.
3. Don’t forget to encourage your other stakeholders to get involved in amplifying as well. You should still be doing all those best practice things to encourage amplification from as many people as possible.
4. Make sure you brief them fully. An internal person will probably understand your style better than an external person but in both cases make sure they know the style of updates you are expecting.
5. Do some hashtag research. A great idea is to find half a dozen hashtags that are used by the community you are trying to attract. Don’t just use your event hashtag. Get the messages out as widely as possible.
6. Think about the fun and interesting visual images your amplifier can share. Do you have funky badges, fun packs, interesting table setups, cool features within your event space? If you do you will make their job easier and you are likely to encourage sharing.
Funky badges
7. Tell your speakers and your exhibitors what is happening and crucially how they can make the most of the online engagement. For example ask your speakers to think about a few very quotable phrases in their presentation.
8. If you use an external person make sure they have a good base to start from. A few thousand followers on Twitter or connections on LinkedIn will help get that message out to a wider audience.
9. Set some targets. Have an idea of how many updates you would like your amplifier to make and brief them on which particular bits of content you want to share. You should also have an idea of how many impressions or views you want for your content.
10. Measure the success. There are various on line tools you can use to measure and track the success of the amplification. Here’s what we managed to achieve at Tech Fest in June using Lumi Catch to measure our online impact.
It is such a competitive market for events and every year more and more events come on the market. Having a dedicated amplifier ready to boost your profile online by sharing interesting content will help you stand out above the crowd. It’s likely to be a resource that has a very positive impact on your next events.
