Having recently had the opportunity of working on a hugely successful event, we watched first hand as LittleVoice Media’s use of Social Media as a distribution platform for content supported the PR and Marketing and helped take the event to new levels of success.  I wanted to identify what stood out for us as the key benefits of Social Media being used and discuss them in a broader context.

Word of mouth/word of mouse marketing

"Many language theorists argue that written words are more powerful than spoken words. However, most marketers (academics and practitioners alike) believe that ‘word of mouth' is the most powerful means of communication.  This has now morphed into ‘Word of mouse' in the domain of blogs, social network sites, public forums and comparison websites" (Develop your PR Skills, N.Richardson and Lucy Laville 2009).

Conversations and buzz around an event start from the moment planning begins and continue long after the event is over.  Social Media opens up several platforms for conversations to be sparked on and the wonderful thing is the marketing is done for you by the community surrounding the event.  Organisers, attendees, exhibitors, sponsors will all have something to share about their activities.  Social Media is fantastically effective at spreading the word and because it is being done by genuine advocates there is a much greater authenticity to it.  People looking to find out what the event is like to exhibit at for example are much more likely to be drawn in if a previous exhibitor has talked about what a success it was for them.

Listen and Learn

A key point to note in relation to this is that you must optimise your event for social media.  By this I mean your event and content surrounding must be easy to share, search friendly and easy to monitor.  Some of the ways this can be achieved for events is by setting up a twitter page for your event and encouraging attendees to follow this and use it to get updates and discuss the event, create unique hash tags on twitter to track key conversations and make information on the event search friendly, set up several platforms for sharing to enable different user types to share .i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, flickr, YouTube.  Branding, synchronisation and content management are vital across your social platforms.  LittleVoice Media understand this and specialise in providing this service.

Once you have optimised the event for social media, the organisers must practice what they preach by driving conversations around the event and by building hype through regular updates of multimedia content.  Most important though for the current event and future is to listen and respond to what you see and hear.  This is the particularly useful aspect of social media.  It is a fantastic research tool and can help you plan even bigger and better events in the future.

Enhanced Experience

Social Media gets your attendees interacting with your event on a whole new level and it gives them an enhanced experience which is a great selling point for organisers when marketing the event.  By offering Social Media updates of news, highlights and content attendees can catch up on any parts they missed or can share with a friend or colleague who wasn’t able to attend.  Organisers can stream out key portions of events.  "You don’t have to stream everything – just the good stuff. If you can’t stream, upload videos to YouTube afterwards."  (Mashable:http://bit.ly/i56vbd)

For exhibitors too social media platforms such as twitter pages and YouTube can offer a place for them to have their products and services promoted, and this all comes as part of the event package.  This will create an enticing prospect to most and again they can share content as part of their own marketing and PR campaigns.  We have seen our multimedia content from the event spread across the web, with companies incorporating it in their online press releases, social network platforms and websites.

Social Media works beautifully for events.  Events are social and about bringing people together as part of a shared experience. Social Media is about bringing people together to share their experiences.  When you put two together you have a winning combination.

Thinking about socialising your next event?  Get in touch with LittleVoice Media at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or visit www.littlevoicemedia.com to get in touch via our social links.