12 Ways to Promote Your Upcoming Event with Social Media

I just returned from a great week in the mountains of North Georgia with the 2014 SPIN Academy South (see photos here). I lead a session on “12 Ways to Promote Your Event with Social Media”. You can view the  presentation via the Prezi image above or here. You can also read an outline of what I recommend:

1. Determine Your Goals and How to Measure Them, i.e. use a Google Drive spreadsheet
2. Follow the Social Media Golden Rule: Share and Share-Alike or Share Others Content Like You Want Your Content Shared. Find content to share through Facebook Notifications of great Facebook pages, Google Alerts, RSS readers like Feedly and Twitter hashtags through Tweetdeck or Hootsuite
3. Commission or create Images, like thumbnail images or text overlay quote images. Use this great new tool: Canva. For mobile-based images, try out meme-generating apps like Make a Meme or InstaMeme.
4. Create text-based event listings. Use different sites depending on whether or not you need a head count or you’re selling tickets, i.e. for exact counts use, Eventbrite, Salsa/Democracy in Action, Nationbuilder vs.”Flood the zone” with multiple posts on Facebook event listings, Eventful, Yelp events, community calendars, etc.
5. Use URL shorteners to create easy-to-remember-and-measure links, i.e. bit.ly
6. Tell Facebook friends and fans about event preparation to build momentum, i.e. share photos via Facebook and/or Instagram.
7. Tweet multiple times with different hashtags including the event hashtag.
8. Outreach to local bloggers. Google to find them, check if the site was recently updated, if they have lots of social media followers and then connect with them via Twitter AND email.
9. Consider paying for Facebook boosts or ads. There’s some debate about this. 
10. Producer micro-videos on Vine and/or Instagram, i.e. this video. You can upload edited video to Instagram. I’ve found that using Dropbox and its iphone app are the easiest way to get these videos onto your phone and then Instagram.
11. Crowdsource event documentation. Hire professional photographers and/or videographers. Publish your event hashtag and speaker handle in the event program. Compile results with Storify, i.e. this.
12. Thank everyone involved, i.e. shout outs online, handwritten thank you notes, share video/photos within first week after the event.

Let me know what you think. What has worked for your organization? What did I miss?

Check out more photos from the conference here.