5 ways to use social media sites to promote your events

By Joan Stewart

The next time you sponsor a live or a virtual event, don’t forget all the ways you can use social media sites to promote them. Here are five, which I’ll discuss in more detail when I present the webinar “50+ Places Online to Promote Your Live &  Virtual Events to Reach Your Target Market & Pull Sell-out Crowds” at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, Oct. 19:

1.  On Facebook — Create an event on Facebook and tag people who would be interested in attending.

2.  At your blog — Write a blog post about the event and ask people to comment about what they’d like to see happen there.

3.  On LinkedIn — Create an event on LinkedIn and invite connections who you think are in the best position to attend. But go one step further. If your event is local, you can join several business networking groups in your city and post the event to their discussion boards. If the event is virtual or live, look at all the existing groups you belong to and share news about your event with fellow members.

4. On location-based social networks. Use sites like Yelp.com and AmericanTowns.com, two high-traffic sites where people are looking for interesting things to do in their cities, towns and even neighborhoods.

Yelp is an online urban guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the know. It lets you talk about what’s great—and not so great—in your world. Started in San Francisco, Yelp is now throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and France.

You can search by topic, location, city, zip and neighborhood. Post your event, and encourage people who attend it to review it on Yelp.

American TownsThis is a virtual “town square” that delivers information about specific cities, towns and even neighborhoods. It’s perfect for events about arts and entertainment, clubs, organizations, government and politics, health and fitness, religion, spirituality, schools, libraries, sports and recreation, community activism and nonprofits. Share your press releases, create your own events calendar,  upload photos, share articles and take donations.

5. On Flickr — Flickr makes it easy to share photos or video from one person to another in whatever way you wish. If you’re an artist attending an art show, for example, and you want people to visit your booth, upload several photos of your artwork, and let people watching them know how to find you at the show.

Before you plan your event, however, read my list of  27 questions designed to spark creative ideas that will help you generate better publicity for the event.