Social Media is an integral part of most internet users’ lives.
In fact, it has almost developed into a life of its own. You’ve got your social media life, and your real life. The very fact that we’ve come up with an acronym for In Real Life (IRL) is a testament to that.
For anyone organising an event, it is super important that they realise the magnitude of the possibilities that social media presents. Whether it be through pre-event marketing, or adding to the event experience, social media should play a huge role in modern day events.
It simply offers too huge an opportunity to pass up.
So how do you squeeze the social media sponge effectively when it comes to your next event? Inspiration is everywhere, so let’s have a look at a few examples that hit social media out of the park.
1) X Music Festival
Scotland’s X Music Festival provides a stunning example of what can be accomplished with social media, particularly in terms of pre-event marketing. They have brilliantly used their social media to run an incentive based campaign in order to grow both their visibility and ticket sales.
In order to announce their line-up, the organisers posted pixelated images of the acts and artists. They then challenged their followers to guess the identity of said performers, for the chance to win VIP passes to the event.
In another example, followers had to like, comment and share a post 300 times before the organisers would reveal the act that was playing. There was an added incentive of £5 off of the ticket price for anyone who got involved. Punters were also given the option of becoming ‘X Music Ambassadors’, selling a predetermined amount of tickets to acquaintances in order to earn a free ticket themselves.
2) The London Gin Festival
The London Gin festival shows the value of being on the pulse when it comes to using social media for your event.
They firstly used a very topical style when it came to their promotional material. The 50 Shades of Grey movie had just been released, so The London Gin Festival created a poster in the same style reading ‘100 shades of gin’. They also put a fake error message on their site that would pop up on arrival, asking the visitor ‘would you like to have a Gin and Tonic instead? [Yes/No]’.
And they continued their edgy social media efforts at the event. Off the back of ‘International Kiss a Ginger Day’ (yes, that’s a thing), they created ‘International Kiss a Gin Day’, and asked guests to take photos of themselves kissing a bottle of gin and upload it to Twitter with a specific hashtag. They then used a social media wall featuring live tweets to display the fun for everyone to see.
3) Play Blackpool
This gaming festival used social media to announce its first annual Replay Gamer Awards, with fields including Best Game, Best Console and Best Soundtrack. They then asked their followers to vote on each category, with the winners to be announced at the event.
At the event, Play Blackpool announced the winners and simultaneously uploaded the voting results to their social media channels, displaying the posts on a live social media wall. The results were accompanied by graphic illustrations of the voting breakdown, and added to the feel of the announcements amazingly!
4) Sherlocked: The Official Sherlock Convention
Fans of the TV show Sherlock are renowned for being die-hard. The Sherlock convention organisers played on this by drip-feeding their followers event info in the months leading up to it. Feeling like Sherlock themselves, fans had to piece together a series of clues to figure out what was happening.
At the event, a live tweet wall was utilised in a way that allowed fans to ask their favourite cast members questions. This took out often risky proposition of handing a screaming fan a microphone at Q & A sessions, and gave everyone an equal chance to get to know their favourite star.
So there are just a few ways that events have utilised the seemingly unlimited potential of social media. How will you do it at your event? Will you craftily market your soiree on social media? Will you utilise a tweet wall from socialwall.me on the day? The options are endless.
There’s one thing that’s for sure – if you don’t use social media at your next event, you’re missing out.
