Know-How Exchange : Social Media

If you had a blog page about the event, how would you expect people to find it? What would your marketing plan be?

It seems to me that you'd be better off commenting/posting on other relevant blogs or using your existing communications channels (including social media), unless you have a large marketing budget for promotion ... in which case a blog as part of a major website/landing experience would be fine.

Is this a local event, or is it regional, national or international? Are you looking to generate attendance at the event, or simply awareness (on the web)? It would probably help if you could share the objective of your marketing effort. That would certainly impact our recommendation(s).

A blog (or website) can serve a purpose that you haven't mentioned - awareness measurement. Right now it sounds like you're blasting a message, but you don't (yet) know if anyone is receiving the message (or even, acting on it). If the website/blog had something special (a coupon, contest entry form, etc.) you'd get more information about interest (and possibly, get people's contact information to get them into the VIP area of the event, etc.).

Dear Colette,

Two thoughts:

1. A blog page is only going to benefit you if people already know about your event.

2. One blog page isn't enough.

As your question's in the social media section of this forum I'm going to address it from the SM viewpoint.

Your ideal promotional framework here is to use your event-based Twitter account (you do have one of these, don't you?) to drive traffic to Facebook, where you can give more detail and have fans and friends. You use Facebook to build traffic to a series of YouTube-based videos that you post on your regularly updated blog, or to a static page that's updated pretty frequently—which in this case probably ought to be daily, so that the event remains in people's minds.

Daily updates to any site, whether it's blog based or not provide offer more reasons to take notice, more so when your daily entries tell people "Check back tomorrow when we'll be looking at XY and Z". You then use e-mail and Twitter blasts to drive traffic and to promote the new content on your blog or static site.

News-style snippets on Facebook and Twitter help break new happenings and can include links to sponsor websites, which in turn have links back to your main site or blog, so that the whole message is interconnected.

You might also want to connect all these things to a countdown clock on your blog, which shows the number of weeks, day, hours and minutes until your big event. This simple tool helps build anticipation and gives sponsors something to tell their customers:
"Only two weeks until our involvement with the big fashion show!"

Short, two minute video diary-style entries with major sponsors, with models, with event organizers and all posted to your blog or static site can help build additional buzz.

And by including links to these videos in your social media blasts you encourage people to pass your message on for you. Which means your event takes on elements of viral marketing.

And when you fold social media into with your print and word of mouth promotion and you build a bigger banner for people to carry and for them to gather under. The whole message then becomes a flag to rally around, a set of colours to be associated with. This creates a tribal feeling, a sense of belonging, and a feeling of involvement.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA