Why I Love Doing Social Media for Events

I love working on events. From the nerve-wracking months of planning to the excitement of the day itself, I love it! I love events - whether they be a charity fundraiser, concert, seminar, party or even tradeshow are projects that I like being a part of! I enjoy seeing how ideas become a reality, how people gel into a team to pull off one magical afternoon, evening or sometimes three days of fun. I also enjoy the finite aspect of it - the fact that months of work culminate in one big event. There is no room for error, you only get one shot at such an event.

Recently, I have been a part of three high-profile events -- and my involvement has mainly been in social media. When working on a project, I prefer to work at least 3 months in advance of an event. In my opinion, three months is good enough lead time to build a community around an event, create online buzz by mobilizing the event participants and promote an event. More lead time would be better, of course, but with a good plan, and a small budget for digital advertising and some good old guerilla marketing, three months before an event and a month or two after would suffice.

I recently worked on these three events, which shared a similar timeline for social media objectives and action items. As a community volunteer and former Friends of the Children's library member, I directed social media and PR efforts for The Taste of Huntington Beach, a charity fundraiser in April.  And then in May, I created a social media campaign for the prestigious motorcycle event "The Quail Motorcycle Gathering" and the following month, I managed social media and sponsor outreach for yet another fundraiser, "The MotoDoffo Event for the Benefit of the Kurt Caselli Foundation," at Doffo Winery in Temecula. The latter two were part of my job as Social Media Manager at Acorn Woods Communications. 

Photo below from The Quail Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel, CA.

Below is a Flipagram I created for the MotoDoffo Caselli event.

The three events may seem very different -- a foodie fest, a motorcycle gathering and a moto-related fundraiser at a winery - but the truth is, they had many similarities. Because of these, utilizing social media to achieve each event's specific goals was pretty straightforward.

Here's a timeline that I used to implement social media tactics in order to sell more tickets; and acknowledge sponsors' and vendors' contributions.

Three Months Before

Started creating content for the social media channels

Two Months Before
Connect with sponsors, vendors, and other participants
Provide them with promotional materials that they could use
Started accepting applications for media/influencers and vetting them out

One month before
Follow up with participants and sponsors and engage with content they post regarding the event.
Repost and share pre-event posts, images created by bloggers and influencers.
Countdown to the event and emphasize a call to action for attendees i.e. get your tickets, tag us in your photos  etc.

Final thoughts:

Events are increasingly becoming more important in the world of marketing. People prefer to "experience" things in real life.

It used to be that when working on an event, your focus was on the people who attended. But these days, you don't just work on the people present, you use them to reach out to those who aren't even present. You leverage them in order to reach their friends and followers, to amplify the event and consequently, the experience.