See You At The Show

Imagine a world where every attendee, vendor, performer, and volunteer posts about your event months before the doors open. This is within reach if you proactively ask for participation. Don’t wait until people are at your event to encourage them to start sharing content.  

“See You At The Show” is a simple way to create a single set of attendee assets and take advantage of people’s excitement the moment they buy tickets. 

Modern ticketing platforms have countless integrations and ways to connect with marketing tools. As people buy tickets, they should be fed a drip of content that shares information about the event, upsells add-on experiences, and create opportunities for people to get involved on social media. 

Make it easier by automating the process. Create the social assets and make them available for download on a landing page. Then, automatically email “See You At The Show” after people purchase tickets. Send the first email soon after they buy to capture that post-purchase enthusiasm. Then send reminder emails later. 

You should also create social asset sets for performers, vendors, volunteers, and exhibitors to let people know they’re attending. Create an email workflow that begins once they enroll or commit to the event. Encourage them to post “See You at the Show” on their websites, newsletters, and social media. 

Sweet Memories

Events are temporary activations that create meaningful moments in time. Nostalgia evokes powerful memories. Use this psychological phenomenon to generate social engagement during the off-season. 

Launch a contest or submission form for people to submit their best festival or event memory. Ask for details and elaboration. Make sure to include a media release in the terms of service so your teams can use the asset beyond this Sweet Memories campaign.  As people submit, share great photos to drive additional participation. 

This is not only a way to stay active when an event is between seasons but also an excellent source of content that can be used in marketing efforts. An attendee may have snapped a perfect picture of a serendipitous moment. You never know what photos have been living in the deep archive of your attendee’s phones. With permission, these dynamic pieces of content can be used on social, digital, or even print placements. 

You can take it a step further and turn the photos into a museum or memory wall at the next event. Print out the pictures and create a programming area where people can see images, newspaper clippings, and old merchandise and watch videos submitted by past volunteers and staff.

TINT contests and media submission forms have powered campaigns across the world for leading brands. Talk to a social expert today and learn how you can launch a digital contest experience in less than 20 minutes with no coding required. 

Obligatory Consumption

Music, performance, or literary talent are significant draws for events of all types. Their celebrity status or renown will bring in people who want to see them in person. But what about people who may need to become more familiar with their works? 

Don’t discount this crowd. Create ways for them to consume media and provide feedback. 

Booking musical talent? Curate a Spotify playlist with their greatest hits. Asks fans to share their favorite song or memory. Intentionally leave off a fan favorite or deep cut. Fans will quickly point out the “error” and provide engaging social commentary. 

Booking acting talent for events like anime or comic cons? Create a movie or appearance playlist. IMDB is your friend for assembling a list of titles or episodes quickly. Include links or recommendations to where people can legally watch the actors’ performances. Ask for fan favorites. 

Literary talent is slowly becoming more popular at events. People want to meet the writers of their favorite novels, comic books, or poems. Make a list of recommended readings for that literary star. If they have a limited body of work, consider adding related works. 

Work with your local public library to make copies of their work available as part of a sponsored display. This display could also become a social contest, encouraging library visitors to take a picture with a book and use a hashtag. 

Pro Tips

There can be a learning curve when attending a new event, particularly one with a long history. There is an opportunity to generate and distribute content using the perspectives of your most seasoned attendees. 

Start with the question, “What advice would you give new attendees?” 

You can pre-seed responses with pro tips from staff and experienced volunteers. Then add in perspectives from your “power” attendees. 

This is also an opportunity to reinforce behaviors or expectations. If event elements are cash-only, this would be a great place to make that reminder. If attendees are expected to bring their own seat or umbrella, use this content style to reiterate that. By framing these helpful pointers as pro tips from experienced attendees, you can guide expectations without seeming aggressive or patronizing. 

You can also do research by looking back at posts from the previous year. A good event hashtag makes this search easier. Learn how to design a good event hashtag. 

Teaser with Reveal

Social content announcing annual themes, headliner talent, and unique programming often cause major strikes in traffic. Think about how you can build up to those announcements to increase your engagement and reach when you make the final announcement. 

Teaser with reveal is an easy way to get people excited and talking about your announcement. Start with a photo that encapsulates your announcement. This could be a picture of a band or performer, an illustration that alludes to a theme, or a blurred image of the unique programming area. 

Over the course of a week, upload a new version of the content with a little more revealed. This will let your audience guess the final announcement. Those comments and guesses will increase as you get closer to the final announcement. 

Use this in combination with a ticket tier increase. Earlybird sales can be difficult, especially if you have a new event or audience. Programming teasers show that you have major announcements on the way and encourage people to grab tickets early rather than waiting to see who is performing or exhibiting at the event. 

Always clear the teaser with the talent manager or booking agent to ensure you’re not violating their announcement terms or embargo on public communications. 

Canva is one of the easiest ways to design these teasers. With TINT and Canva, you can create stunning graphics using your rights-approved user-generated content. Learn more and connect your Canva to TINT today. 

Attendee Affiliate Codes

A recent favorite technique to generate pre-event engagement is automatically generating affiliate codes for every attendee who buys tickets. By designing and gamifying an affiliate referral program, you can turn even the most casual attendee into a ticket-selling machine. 

Provide a basic set of assets to empower your attendee affiliates to post their codes on their social feeds. Be sure to create assets of all sizes. While your organization may not be active on every platform, it is possible that you have attendees who are power-users or influencers on secondary or newly launched social networks. 

First spotted with ticketing tools like TIXR, attendee affiliate codes have been spotted on product roadmaps across the event technology ecosystem. Large-scale events require a technological solution to optimize the operation of the codes. 

Gamification should be meaningful and provide good prizes. Start small with things like tchotchkes, souvenirs, and event merchandise. As your attendee affiliate sells more tickets, then reimburse them for their own tickets, offer them a hotel stay, or give them additional VIP access.  

An additional benefit of this sort of program is that you can roll it out to your influencer and creator audiences.  If you do not have the staff capacity or the time to administer a separate influencer program, allow them to participate in this affiliate program to test the waters and see how well they perform as a traffic source. 

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Whether you’re driving pre-event social engagement or encouraging on-site participation, TINT is the event social technology company. From social walls to attendee engagement to social listening, TINT works with the world’s top events to enhance their activations.  Schedule time to talk to a TINT event specialist today. 

The post 6 Ways to Drive Pre-Event Social Engagement appeared first on TINT.

When it comes to content marketing for events, many marketers usually start with save-the-dates, press releases, guest announcements, and “buy now” posts. However, there are other types of content that you should be leveraging to drive ticket sales, increase online engagement, and grow your events. Let’s explore seven types of content that event marketers need to use to achieve their goals.

Ticket Types

As audiences diversify, events are increasingly adding new ways to participate. Some attendees seek specific experiences related to food, music, and art. Some attendees want to experience the community by connecting with local partners, shopping small businesses, and discovering local flavors. Others may seek knowledge, wanting to learn from and connect with content experts through classes, lectures, or other educational content.  

Different ticket types, including exclusive VIP experiences, can drive participation and attract new audiences. Developing these experiences is only half the battle. Event professionals need to market them. Social media is a great place to do it.

Create a social graphic for each ticket type at your event. Create posts for VIP experiences and every add-on, including items like food tickets and parking. Not only are you building awareness, but it also provides a consistent source of content that can be shared week after week. Ticket-type Thursday, or some similar posting tactic, sets an expectation with your audience to check in and see what new experiences are in the spotlight.

Not sure if a ticket type or VIP experience will work? Create a limited run and offer it as a social media-only promotion. Your followers will likely provide immediate feedback and offer perspective on your experiment. 

TV and Radio Spots

Many events pay or trade to get TV and Radio spots. These 15- and 30-second bumps use amazing event footage to capture people’s attention. Whether made externally or produced in-house, they still require significant time and effort to create. 

Be creative in how you use these spots. They can live in more places than just their intended medium.  

TV spots can be reformatted to become TikTok or Instagram content. You could use the video as paid advertising on Facebook or Twitter. 15-30 seconds is an ideal social advertisement length.

Even radio spots can be repurposed and used. Overlaying radio audio on b-roll from an event can quickly turn audio content into a video ready for social media. Tools like descript can quickly add visualization to audio to create an eye-catching micro-video. 

Maximize the mileage you get from any produced media by sharing it on social. 

Ratings and Reviews

Almost every organization conducts a post-event survey. The information collected is invaluable to improving the quality of your event year after year. These responses can also provide useful content.

Social proof is one of the most potent forms of influence. 80% of consumers check ratings and reviews before making a purchase. Make their research easy by having ratings and reviews readily available. Testimonials should be on more than just the home page. Experiment with putting reviews on pages that are part of the ticket purchase process, particularly for high-value tickets or VIP experiences.

These ratings and reviews can also be converted into social content. Overlay a review on an event photo, and you quickly have an engaging social asset. 

Be mindful of the source of the review. Third-party platforms like Google Reviews and TripAdvisor often have specific limitations on how reviews from their sites can be displayed. These review sites usually require a live web embed, which is impossible when moving digital reviews to static social or print media. Event-generated reviews from attendee surveys have fewer restrictions and are the best source for some marketing placements. 

Wayfinding

It may seem odd to share wayfinding content when everyone has a GPS on their phone. But events often cause street closures, traffic jams, and general disruption to the usual way people move around a space. Multiple entrance locations, special parking situations, and separate entry processes for staff, vendors, and talent can further exacerbate this. 

Review Google Maps and Apple Maps to see what is shown to attendees. Then create wayfinding content to help them get to the event.

This is also an opportunity to work with community partners. If you have rideshare or public transit, they can provide content to encourage the usage of those services. Police or public works can help provide maps showing closures and recommendations for how traffic should flow. This can all be used as digital content. 

Exhibitor and vendor spotlights

Events always have exhibitors, vendors, and service providers that help create the event experience. Spotlighting these individuals can help provide social content and encourages them to share it with their networks. 

Make it easier by requiring vendors to submit product photos and social handles as part of their application to participate. Sharing this type of content will show the variety of exhibitors at the event. It also gives attendees an idea of what products, foods, and services will be available at the event. 

Be sure to tag a vendor’s social handles or preferred hashtags when posting their content. This will encourage them to reshare the post, allowing events to borrow reach from that vendor’s audience. A frequent cadence of vendor content provides consistent fodder for a social media calendar. 

Volunteer & Staff Content

Event marketing and communications teams are always outnumbered by other event staff and volunteers. It takes an army of people to execute an event of any scale. Almost everyone has a smartphone, making every staffer or volunteer a possible content creator.  The event team traverses the entire event, giving them opportunities to see unique perspectives or serendipitous moments… and capture them on camera.

Allow everyone to contribute their best photos or videos by creating multiple channels to submit content. Let contributors text, email, upload, or otherwise share as easily as possible. Hashtags and social handle mentions can be easy, but make sure to create submission methods available to people without specific social accounts or who are hesitant to use their personal social media. 

Take it a step further and gamify it. Create a photo contest with prizes. Include a short training on how to submit content as part of the pre-event meeting or onboarding. Also, let the public know when someone on the team has shared a piece of content. People love their fifteen seconds of fame, and FOMO could drive additional staff participation. 

UGC

One of the most valuable but least used types of content event marketers should use is user-generated content. UGC for events is going to come from attendees and community members. People love to take photos at events, giving them a natural advantage in content creation. Utilizing attendee-created content turns every person into a photographer, creating new opportunities to capture each special event moment. 

People love posting photos of themselves at events without any sort of prompting. Make sure that event hashtags and handles are simple and highly visible.  Implement a social listening process (whether manual or technology-enabled) to look for the best mentions, photos, videos, and feedback. Add selfie stations or other visual placemaking to encourage additional content creation.

A popular way to gamify attendee content creation is through a scavenger hunt. Even the smallest events can start with a low-tech version using a paper guide, and events of all sizes can use hashtags, direct upload, and SMS to allow for a scalable digital version.

An attendee photo scavenger hunt supports content creation and can drive event participation. Add missions or stops to more remote parts of the event. This will encourage attendees to travel across entire venues to complete their hunt. This directed traffic is especially helpful if parts of the event are difficult to find or new additions that attendees do not widely know.

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Excited people buy tickets. The key to building that excitement is showcasing all aspects of an event. The event industry is back in full force, and competition for attendee dollars is increasing. Effective marketing strategy and the intentional use of powerful, engaging content can be a competitive advantage that makes an event flourish. TINT works with events to discover, display, and use content at scale. Talk to a TINT event content expert to launch your new strategy today. 

The post Seven Types of Content Event Marketers Need to Use appeared first on TINT.

Innovators have room to be creative. Hub and Spoke is more than disparate groups held together by bad powerpoints and virtual branding. This is the dawn of a new era of events. Smart facilitation techniques will intersect with collaboration tech to bring together large groups of people across distances. Short-term growing pains in hub and spoke events methodology will result in great new events and a new organizational paradigm for those practicing event or field marketing.

A version of this article was published in the International Festival and Events Association’s “i.e.: the business of international events” quarterly magazine. IFEA is the premier association supporting and enabling festivals and events worldwide. TINT is a proud IFEA member. For more information on IFEA, go to www.ifea.com.”

What are Hub and Spoke Events?

Hub and spoke is one of several event formats that experts anticipate will gain popularity as the events industry recovers from the pandemic. The hub and spoke method consists of a central main event, “the hub’, where keynotes and other face-to-face programming take place. There can be any number of smaller “spokes” that are regional face-to-face offshoots, or satellite locations, of the main event happening simultaneously. All associated events are branded, themed, and marketed as part of the same activation.

Why a Hub and Spoke Event?

We’re not sure how long COVID will remain a part of our lives and industry. Some experts have gone so far as to speculate that we may have seasonal outbreaks of covid, much like we do with our cold and flu seasons. The Hub and Spoke format allows event organizers to replace the mega-conferences of yesteryear with several smaller regional events, reducing the possibility of having attendees spreading sickness across geographies while still providing an event experience.

This format also speaks to consumer confidence. It may be years before tourism fully bounces back. H&S reduces the ask on attendees, who are more likely to participate in a program in their local markets than travel across the country to participate.

Example Hub and Spoke

One of the most widely known Hub and Spoke format events can be seen annually on New Year’s Eve. Various broadcasts will have simultaneous activations in multiple cities, all stemming from a primary production focused in New York for the Ball Drop. Each activation has separate hosts and unique schedules, but the events are co-marketed as part of the same activation. Content like headline performances is shared to spoke locations as well as telecasted to remote audiences. Some elements, like the ball drop, may be recorded and rebroadcast to better suit local timezones.

Six Considerations before launching a hub and spoke event.

Staffing Capacity

The first challenge is always whether you have enough warm bodies to execute the event. Each individual event will need its own technical team, customer-facing team, volunteers, exhibitors, and leadership. Those requirements are exponential as you add additional spokes. While a hub and spoke format may seem exciting, some event organizations may find that established formats with smaller staffing footprints like Roadshows, are more appropriate.

Attendee Base

If you build it, they will come… right? Spokes should be placed with great intentionality. There should be a great enough distance between the hub and spokes to justify the costs associated with simultaneous activation.

Questions to ask:

• What is the maximum distance attendees will travel to participate in an event?
• What is the minimum distance allowable before the activations start to cannibalize attendance from each other?
• What is the greatest distance at which sharing content or engagement is impeded? (Time zones should play a part in this discussion.)

Placemaking

A danger of the format is the unequal distribution of placemaking. The Hub should get plenty of love, particularly if the majority of the cornerstone content is coming from that central location. But be sure to share decorating budget with all the spokes, especially if attendees are paying the same price for admission.

Make each local activation feel like part of the whole. This starts with basic placemaking practices like signage, swag, and atmospheric branding. Create opportunities for people to have similar experiences by deploying the same (or visually similar) photo ops like step and repeats or other branded backdrops. Take it a step further and serve the same food at meals or snack breaks. Include the same swag and conference materials in each attendee, vendor, and speaker kit.

Venue and Vendors

Perhaps the greatest difficulty of creating a hub and spoke event is wrangling logistics. All venues have their quirks, preferred and exclusive providers, and on-site event teams.

Consider tapping into venue networks or corporate-owned venues. You may find that your sales executive has deep connections to other hotels. This tends to be easier with corporate hotel chains. You could also look at venue management networks or event state-wide tourism organizations to help to decide on a venue. Find a champion early and save the headache.

Technology

Technology for Hub and Spoke should be broken into two main categories. First, consider the technology required in each venue for a standard activation. These are the usual suspects for special events; projection, amplification, display, lighting, etc.

Now consider how you’ll transmit information between the two venues. There are different challenges between displaying synchronous and asynchronous content. Do some things need to be recorded? Does the lag between livestream and remote audiences mean it isn’t viable for them to participate in Q&A? Do things like timezones, local cultures, and regional weather affect the way content is presented or otherwise engaged with?

Social Media

Social media has become one of the most powerful tools in an event organizer’s arsenal. It is a way to sell tickets, recruit volunteers, source exhibitors, and build community.

Hub and Spoke events require a sense of unity across activations. Placemaking, programming, and design elements are physical methods of creating this unity. Social unity builds a vital connection between locations and remote participants. We recommend social walls. They’re easy to set up, flexible in size, and don’t require constant monitoring. Pushing social content to the event website, mobile app, and media partners also makes social engagement tools, like social walls, particularly useful since they serve a variety of purposes.

Other social tactics to deploy include a strong hashtag, a local (spoke) hashtag variant if your secondary events will have a significantly unique presence, and the implementation of social livestreaming to entice impulse attendees and future volunteers.

Spend a Day, Do the Planning Exercise

Try to imagine your flagship event as a hub and spoke. It is a useful exercise for the team.  We may still be years away from a fully refined methodology, but hub and spoke events are part of the future of the industry. Lean in and discover what this new event planning paradigm means for you.

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TINT helps the world’s top brands with digital and social placemaking for events of all types. From hub and spoke, virtual, hybrid, and traditional events, TINT provides attendee engagement tools that allow event marketers to discover, curate, and capture engaging content, no matter where those attendees may be. Schedule time with our event specialists to learn more. 

The post Hub and Spoke Events appeared first on TINT.

As published in the International Festivals & Events Association’s “i.e.: the business of
international events” quarterly magazine. The premier association supporting and
enabling festivals and events worldwide. For more information on the IFEA, go to:
www.ifea.com.

1. No More Crutch Language

2020 was rough. It was rough for everyone. We’ve commiserated, mourned, and drank copiously to honor our comrades. Now let’s leave the negativity and crutch language in 2020. We must enter 2021 excited about the brave new world dawning on the events industry. Cast aside the melancholy and be cheerful. 

I’m challenging all event organizers to stop using quarantine crutch language:

• Now more than ever
• Uncertain or Never before Seen Times
• Can You Believe It Is Already [Month]?
• 2020, Am I Right?
• Joke about Lockdown

The jokes have been played out, and consumers are over it. It is also lazy. Don’t get caught in the trap. Turn your copywriting towards optimism, and your customers will appreciate you. Seek to bring enthusiasm to your communities and stakeholders. Isn’t that the purpose of events; to celebrate the cultures and practices that make us unique? 

2.Stop Being Shy about Pricing

I learned at the IFEA Conference in Williamsburg that I was undercharging for my event. I was shocked. We had done across-the-board increases year over year, the event was making money, but we were still undercharging compared to similar shows. We’re blessed to be part of IFEA since there are so many resources within our organization to help with pricing and understanding the bottom line. 

With the vaccine on the way, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Rumors are swirling around a new round of EIDL and PPP, this time with a friendlier attitude towards the events, hospitality, and culinary industries. But that is not enough to greenlight a full return to large-scale events. 

We know that there will need to be significant modifications to layouts, exhibitor spaces, performance spaces, and really anything that has a human element. These new activations will also require additional technology and support to ensure their success. You can practically hear the cash register ring as all the costs add up. 

Take COVID as an opportunity to play with new pricing structures. Explore new ticketing paradigms. Consider shifting to exclusively multi-day passes or changing to membership-driven access. 2021 will be the one year where you can blame everything on the ‘Rona. If your experiments fail, let them fail fast, fall forward, and leap into the next ticketing scheme. 

3. Stop Being Afraid of Technology

You likely entered 2020 without knowing what ZoomBomb, Twitch, IGTV, or Teams was. We’ve all experienced a 10-month crash course on remote work. I keep hearing in my event circles, “soon, we’ll be back to normal.” Normal isn’t coming back. Even after we’ve immunized everyone, there will remain a significant shift in understanding technology possibilities. 

2020 showed that, if forced, people will swiftly adopt technology. 2021 will be about using these technologies in interesting ways. IFEA members have produced remote parades, beer tastings, happy hours, boat shows, and more. These incredible activations happened out of necessity. How will these events grow and improve when they happen strictly out of intention? What new audiences will discover your event? How far will your event brand travel now that geographic borders don’t mean anything? 

Still scared of the technology? Join an IFEA affinity group! Take an online class at your local economic development organization. Ask me! Seriously, I (and many more members of this organization) are happy to talk you through our knowledge. The only dumb question is the one that remains unasked. 

4. Think Hybridization, not Translation

In line with technology, the future is about hybrid events. We will drift from physical-only and digital-only, where simultaneous activations are the norm. 

2020 found many event organizers asking, “how do I translate this event into cyberspace?”

2021 will be about designing events with one foot in the digital and one in the physical. Planning will require all the wisdom of established festival planners to combine their efforts with the world’s digital strategists.  

Why wouldn’t you think hybrid? IFEA members produce some of the most amazing events on the planet. This is your chance to take your event global to new audiences. It will help you connect to younger audiences that seek digital elements in all their activity. 

And let’s be frank. New audiences equal new revenue. We still need to make money, right? 

But don’t overthink it. If you were already going to produce a free and open event, why not stream it? Even established media organizations, like Texas Public Radio, have figured it out. They were hosting a telethon and decided to stream it through their social and a virtual event site. Their kickoff event raised over $5k, and the social streamlet new people access their content. 

5.No More Mr. Nice Guy

The events industry has a long history. This has entrenched some operators in ways that other industries would find ridiculous. I learned early in my events career that you must humor these people to succeed. No more!

I’ll start. We want to have more digital, streaming, and virtual content at my flagship event. The exclusive internet provider for our venue, SmartCity, charges $35k to wire a single room with enough internet to meet our needs. Previously, we did our best to work around the situation. We deployed hotspots and colluded to create mesh internet with another provider. 

In 2021, technology is about enabling possibilities, not limiting opportunities. That’s long been our philosophy at TINT, seeking to understand our event customers’ goals and do everything within our power to make sure their event is successful. If you can’t align values and expectations with your vendors, then kick them to the curb. 

No more Mr. Nice Guy. Apply pressure to these vendors. Get your governments involved if necessary. Turn mountains into molehills. Nothing should stop you from succeeding.

6. Don’t Pawn Social on the Intern

We all know social media is one of the top places to connect with people. 2020 proved that having a strong social media strategy is vital to any organization’s success and continuity. 

Yet time and time again, we find that social media management has been pawned off on the intern or added to a junior marketer’s job description. I see event organizers asking for the cheapest social posting tool rather than the one that does the most. 

It is time to make social a priority. This means having a full-funnel strategy to build awareness, sell tickets, recruit influencers, and turn your customers into brand ambassadors. This requires the same amount, if not more, of planning that any other marketing activity would need. 

This should also be an opportunity to explore new platforms. You’ve mastered Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, start on Snap or TikTok. Drop any assumptions that only specific audiences are on certain platforms. COVID has driven audiences of all ages to new platforms. 

Gen Z is getting older, and they’ve been drinking legally for several years now. Do not discount younger audiences. Use your social to build for the future.

7. Make Everyone a Marketer

Marketing is everyone’s responsibility. From the lowliest volunteer intern to the top leadership, everyone should be driving toward marketing goals. Beyond internals, even your customers should become part of your marketing programs. People inherently don’t trust marketers, but more than 92% of consumers trust a recommendation, even from people they don’t know. 

Consider the ways that you let people contribute, staff or otherwise. Are you running focus groups? Do you have a ticket sales affiliate program? Are you capturing user-generated content from volunteers? Do you use testimonials and social proof? Are your hashtags and social handles easy for people to find? Developing a user-generated content strategy with the help of a platform like TINT can help you reach your event goals.  

The only way forward is to democratize the marketing process. You don’t need to release all control, but you should empower your fiercest fans to advocate on your behalf. 

8. Kick Darwin to the Curb

As event organizations struggle, I’ve heard plenty of language from analysts are the media that make it seem like this is a Darwinian struggle. “Survival of the fittest”. Those events that survive this pandemic are the fittest ones to lead us into the future. 

I completely disagree.

It isn’t the strongest, the wealthiest, or the biggest events that will survive and flourish. It is the ones with the biggest hearts, the openest minds, and the most creative souls. 

Painter Henri Matisse said, “There are always flowers for those who want to see them. Creativity takes courage.” 

Be courageous, design great events, and have a great 2021. 

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Need help getting started? Schedule time to chat with one of the TINT events experts and let’s move your event into the future. 

The post 8 Resolutions for Event Organizers appeared first on TINT.

Why Event Marketing? Now?

Since 2017, event marketing opportunities have grown exponentially. Bizzabo, an event management software suite, estimates that 3.2 million global professional events are slated to take place during 2020. They cite Forrester Research’s findings that, on average, 24% of B2B marketing budgets are earmarked for event activations. Given that large organizations are generally more insulated from a recession and global disruptions (HBR), this is an apparent opportunity to continue to provide events to these companies. 

On the consumer side, an Eventbrite study of 10,000 events found that the “casual” event-goer spends $81 per person, per event, twice a week. These events included everything from film to live music to cultural festivals. 

Total Average Spend: $81

• $34 Tickets / Admission
• $36 Food and Beverage
• $11 Transportation

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 Study of Average Income and Expenditures shows that, on average, Americans allocate $3,200 a year for entertainment. That spending trend has a positive rate of growth of almost 1% year over year.

Event Planning Framework

For our basic event planning framework, we turn back to our friends at Bizzabo for inspiration. They recommend these topics be completely covered before spending any additional resources on a planned activation. Many event organizers will cover these steps mentally or intuitively due to their years of experience. But, if it is your first time creating a digital-only event, we recommend committing this to paper to ensure that all the steps are completed. 

Digital Event Planning Framework:

1. Event Objective
2. Event Metrics
3. Event Budget
4. Event Marketing Plan

1. Event Objective

The difference between an event and a gathering is a goal. You should have a specific primary goal for your event. We’re fans of the SMART goal outline. All additional planning efforts build on this, making goal planning a great place to start. 

SMART Goals

• Specific – Revenue, Attendance, Engagement, Survey Results, or other specific criteria.
• Measurable – Your specific goal should be quantifiable, not just qualitative. 
• Achievable – A goal within reach, but you should also have a stretch goal.
• Relevant – Tied in to staff or departmental performance metrics. Revenue and Lead Generation are common relevant goals. 
• Timely – A deadline for completion.

Sample SMART Goal for Digital Events

We want our first digital event to have 12 paid attendees by August 4th. 

SMART

• Specific – 12 Attendees (Attendance Goal)
• Measurable – 12 Attendees (Measurable Attendance) 
• Achievable – It is plausible that this event can have 12 paid attendees. 
• Relevant – Paid Attendees, leading to both an attendance and a departmental revenue goal.
• Timely – By August 4 (Established Deadline). 

2. Event Metrics

After establishing the objective, the next step is creating additional metrics or measurables to track. These performance metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), will act as a pulse check on your event. Marketo recommends 6 KPIs.

Recommended KPIs:

1. Sales Revenue – Tickets or Sponsorships sales vs. expenses. (If revenue is a goal.)
2. Cost Per Lead – How much does it cost to get someone to buy a ticket or sponsorship?
3. Site Traffic – Are people visiting your site to learn about the event?
4. Conversion Rate – Are the people visiting your site buying tickets? 
5. Organic Search – Can people find your event through search engines?
6. Social Media Reach – Can people find your event through social media?

When is revenue not a goal?

Sometimes direct revenue is not a goal. Organizations may host events to establish thought leadership authority, generate leads, or increase community goodwill. Your “revenue” KPI should reflect something measurable that ties directly to your event objective. 

3. Event Budget and Logistics

Event planners may feel a sense of relief when they realize that digital-only events remove many of the headaches of a “normal” activation. There are no longer venues with peculiar rules and exclusive (expensive) vendors. There are fewer, if any, print materials to order. Drayage is not necessary. Travel costs are nonexistent. 

But there are other costs to consider. Here’s a basic list of digital-only event costs that you’ll encounter and specific logistical considerations for each. 

Digital-Only Event Costs

• Digital “Venue,” including Streaming and Facilitation Software
• Graphic Design (Decor)
• Staffing
• Programming
• Marketing
• Swag and Merchandise
• Music Rights

Venue

After creating goals and metrics, the Venue is typically the next step for an event organizer. This step remains the same, even in digital spaces. You’ll need to “build” your venue from a variety of tools. Consider what an organizer would look at in a physical location; Is the venue accessible? Is the venue the right size for this group? Is the venue easy to find and navigate?  You should ask the same questions of your digital event software. 

Registration

The foyer or lobby is where your attendee’s check-in. Consider questions or materials you would normally have at check-in.

Questions to ask:

• How do attendees purchase and gain access to the event?
• How do attendees see the schedule and program of events?
• How do speakers and special guests gain access to the event?
• How are guidelines and engagement rules distributed?
  • Can they ask questions during a session? 
  • Should they only submit questions via the platform?
  • Will mics be automatically muted, or should attendees do this?

Exhibitor and Sponsors

Special events will always have sponsors and exhibitors. Think about creative ways to have attendees engage with these folks between sessions. The International Festival and Events Association (IFEA) has a phenomenal “Virtual Trade Show” that allows attendees to engage with vendors at their convenience. 

As events move into digital-only activations, event organizers will need to show value to people who pay to exhibit or sponsor an event. This is a great time to brush up on your analytics, tracking, and UTM codes. 

Sessions

There are a variety of event platforms that support a digital-only event format. Streaming services like Vimeo, Zoom, and Hangouts are sensible first options for simple digital events. Gaming, Tech, and younger audiences may also have familiarity with Twitch, Mixer, and Discord. Free or impromptu streaming can happen on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. There’s a cornucopia of digital event platforms like CrowdCast and Push. Every day, new players in the space like hopin seek to move from digital-only to a digital-first event experience.

In short, there are lots of options out there. We’d love to hear what worked for you.

Attendee Interaction (Hallways)

A major draw of conferences is the ability to connect with like-minded people. Digital Event Organizers should seek to create opportunities for people to network. This could be using “hallways”, a series of Zoom rooms available for people to drop into and chat in. This could also be accomplished by creating well-designed Facebook Groups. Some mobile apps, like Whova, have native audience engagement and discussion tools. Some events may even find themselves returning to the forums and bulletin board systems of yesteryear. 

Do I need venue or special event insurance for an online event? 

There are few, if any, vendors that offer specific event insurance for digital-only events. The space is new enough that insurance brokers may need to do some research before offering coverage. There are some riders that can be purchased if you’re concerned about specific interruptions like acts of terrorism, civil unrest, or inclimate weather. There are also cyber-insurance products that protect against digital interruptions like hackers or cyberwarfare activities. Cancellation insurance is generally prohibitively expensive and you’ll likely need to find a very specialized vendor to find coverage. (Thank you to Kaliff Insurance for assistance on this section.)

Graphic Design (Decor)

Rather than working with a decorator to customize the space, you’ll need to work with a graphic designer (or team of designers) to customize assets for your digital event. You should have a specific production calendar in place to ensure that all your visual assets are delivered when needed. This will also help the designer/s to allocate their time. 

Necessary Digital Assets

• Website Assets
• Mobile App or Software Assets
• Social Media Assets
• Paid Ads Assets
• Advertorial or Blog Content
• Slides or Slide Templates

Staffing

In-person events are built on their staff, and digital events are no different. 

Tasks:

• Showrunner: This person is the keeper of the keys and owner of the timetable. The showrunner is the ringleader keeping the circus going. They should have multiple ways to contact all staff, contractors, vendors, and speakers. They should also have a fully-developed run of show prepared. Showrunners live and die by their spreadsheets. This is not a role for the faint of heart.
  
• IT Support / Helpdesk: In addition to directing attendees to documentation, your helpdesk should be ready to troubleshoot problems with the streaming software. You’ll want to staff this area based on the technical capabilities of your core audience. This role is particularly important if your event is held during the evening or on a weekend when product customer support is sometimes not available.
• Speaker Wrangling: The speaker wranglers will check-in speakers, do technical tests to ensure that their hardware is compatible with the streaming software, and make sure they’re in their session on time. Speaker wranglers should also have backup plans in case things break. This could be dial-in lines for speakers to use in case of a microphone failure. This could also be a copy of the speaker slides in case their screenshare is disrupted. Wranglers should be able to think on their feet and not panic in the face of problems.
• Moderators: Moderators wrangle the crowds. They will take questions, provide spot assistance with technical issues, and generally monitor the rooms. They should be quick with the mute button on open calls and judicious in their use of kicks or bans of disruptive attendees. They should also provide feedback to the speaker or speaker wrangler if there are any technical issues, such as sound quality, on the audience side.
• Social Media: Social Media never stops. Assume that most attendees will have a social platform (or three) open in their other tabs. Think about how you can drive activity on social during the event. Make sure you have a clear hashtag and a team that is monitoring social for feedback. 
  
  TINT natively integrates with digital events and drives social engagement. Learn more about how TINT can support your digital event with one of our event specialist.
• Graphic Design On-The-Fly: There will always be a last-minute graphic design need. It could be a speaker cancellation. Or maybe a speaker made a particularly masterful statement that you want to share on social channels? The on-the-fly person should be equipped with basic assets and templates to quickly spin up content for distribution. This is where a user-friendly web-based tool like Canva is invaluable.

Programming

There are many speakers out there. Some are great for in-person trainings or keynotes, but sometimes their enthusiasm doesn’t translate into digital. Online events can be rough for presenters who gauge the room based on audience feedback. You should seek to find speakers and presenters who can bring a degree of energy and enthusiasm even from their home office. Don’t be afraid to ask for a speaker reel or “audition” them during an exploratory call.

You should also have your speakers and moderators use the “venue” software to maximum benefit. Take live polls and get immediate feedback. Answer questions as they come, not just during Q&A at the end. If your software doesn’t do it, there are tools like Liveslides that lets you embed live attendee polling directly into your Powerpoint or Keynote presentation. 

Marketing

Marketing is often one of the most expensive categories in an event budget. Eventbrite found that event organizers spend 43% of their budget on marketing. 9 out of 10 of those organizers felt their budget was insufficient for their needs. Just because an event is online-only doesn’t mean that organizers can skip out on committing to a robust marketing budget. 

We’ll touch on marketing specifics further in this blog. 

Swag and Merchandise

Switching to digital does not mean the death of swag. We’ve written about great event swag being meaningful and useful. This is an opportunity to design one or two meaningful pieces for your attendees. Distribution can be its own challenge, but there are many companies that will package, ship, and customize notes to speakers and attendees on your behalf. 

This is also a chance for event organizers to upsell. Short runs of shirts or other merchandise can do amazing things at these events. Some organizers are even using print on demand services to only create enough items to fulfill orders. 

Music Rights

It may be tempting to connect a Spotify playlist or Apple Music radio station to act as your “hold music” but even digital events have a responsibility to acquire licensing for any “public performance” of copyrighted music. We haven’t seen any significant enforcement action by license-holders in the space but it is just a matter of time before they do. 

Before you get a nasty-gram from BMI or ASCAP, make sure you’re on the right side of licensing. 

4. Event Marketing Plan

To round out our special events guide to going digital, we look back to Bizzabo for a special event marketing framework. They recommend 10 elements for creating a great event marketing plan that we’ve reworked specifically for digital-only events. We elaborate further on bolded elements. 

Elements of a Great Online-Only Event Marketing Plan

1. Website
2. Content Marketing
3. Email Nurture Campaign
4. Cohort-specific Messaging
5. Decision-maker Event Messaging
6. Advocacy and Affiliate Marketing
7. Show, don’t tell
8. Co-Marketing with Sponsors or Exhibitors
9. Targeted Social
10. Measure, Analyze, Repeat

Website

The website should be extremely clear that an event is digital-only. You want to set expectations among stakeholders that the event takes place online. Otherwise, your website can still fit the standard template for a special event. 

Preempt questions by also sharing if any specialty software is required. Attendees and speaker alike have preferences for streaming technology and this could guide decisions. 

Content Marketing

The rule for special event content marketing is that you’re always building towards the event. Bizzabo recommends “episodic” content. This sort of serialized marketing piece works well because it sequentially leads towards conversion. It also makes it easy to drop in announcements like speaker, sponsors, or media mentions without interrupting the flow. 

Email Nurture Campaign

Email nurture drips or sequences is about slowly pushing customers down a sales funnel. They require a variety of content and shouldn’t be solely sales-focused. Hubspot suggests “Pick Your Own Adventure” email nurtures that put customers in the driver’s seat. Digital events are a great place to experiment with this nurture format and replicate at future events. 

Show, don’t tell

It can be difficult to “show” a digital event. There are several possible ways to obtain or create this content. One is to create a user generated content campaign where attendees and/or speakers take selfies during an event. These photos can be used for future events to show that people are engaged, even if attending from home. (This assumes you’ve obtained the rights to the content.)

Testimonials, reviews, or even pre-testimonials are options as well. Don’t solely rely on brand-generated content, let the constituents of the event guide the conversation.

—–

We expect to see the events industry diversity offerings and create more digital-only events. Best practices from in-person events are still relevant and there will always be a place for these sorts of activations. 

We’d love to hear your experiences, successes, and challenges of hosting digital-only events. As always, Team TINT is here to help along the way. Talk with one of our specialists. 

The post Special Events Guide to Going Digital appeared first on TINT.

This guide is created with “events of scale” (15,000 attendees+) in mind. Many of the best practices translate to events of all sizes. Regardless of the size of your activation, having a special events social team (even if that is not a staffer’s/volunteer’s full-time role) is still incredibly important.

1. Assemble The Team

It isn’t uncommon to have a single staffer “own” social media throughout the year. In many instances, social is the partial responsibility of a mixed team of marketing and communications professionals. During a major special event, it is best to define roles and clearly mark out duties. There can be a lot of functional overlap, but we recommend identifying these five roles on your special events social team.

The Triage Person

Triage comes to us from the field of medicine. It is the practice of assigning priority when dealing with large numbers of patients. The triage person should identify the type of incoming social interaction and flag anything that requires immediate attention. Your triage person should be looking for the following:

• Customer complaints or issues
• Problematic content or behavior
• Outside brands or organizations trying to steal engagement
• Misinformation

The triage person works beyond the social team. They should have processes in place to alert other teams or departments to issues identified through social media. For example, if a featured speaker mentions on Twitter that they’re unable to attend, the triage person should ensure that the programming team is aware of the cancellation.

The triage person should also be responsible for logging complaints or issues to present as part of the post-event debrief.

The Q&A Person

People love to ask questions through social media. There can be logistical questions like directions to the venue, the location of registration, and how to get to panel rooms. There can be destination questions like food and lodging recommendations. There can also be programming questions like panel times and speaker sessions. The Q&A person should be equipped with all the information necessary to become a human FAQ sheet. This person, or persons, should be ready to turn around information quickly. A Search Engine Watch study found that more than half of your attendees will expect a response within an hour. 

The Content Person

In a perfect world, all of your content will be scheduled and prepared before the event. The reality is that there will always need to be content created on the fly. Speakers or sessions will cancel. There may be room or venue changes because of rain. You might need to make a last-minute appeal to get people to buy merchandise or participate in the charity auction. 

The Content Person should also be equipped with the tools necessary to get their job done. These can be basic assets like logos, frames, and templates in a variety of sizes.  

The Community Manager

Many events, particularly recurring events, have a strong community behind them. Your community manager should be monitoring any significant community channel for chatter. 

Channels Include:

• Facebook Groups
• Sub-Reddits
• LinkedIn Groups
• Forums or BBS
• Membership Sites
• Other relevant community sites

They should alert the Triage person of anything that may require cross-department action. They should also coordinate efforts with content and Q&A to ensure that any “off-main” conversations are still having information disseminated to them.

Pay special attention should be paid to the number of channels being served. Once you start engaging your audience on a specific platform, they will expect that platform to remain actionable throughout the year. Don’t open a can of worms if you can avoid it!

The Hotline Bling

During an event, particularly those that occur on a weekend or holiday, people will still expect an organization to be responsive to inquiries. This person is the catch-all for all social adjacent communications. This is especially important if you don’t have a team that will remain at the home office to support the event from afar. 

The Hotline Bling should have a variety of messages forwarded:

• Voicemails to the front desk or main line of the organization
• Emails from general accounts like info@ or hello@
• Direct Messages from sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

This person will either be extremely bored or completely inundated with messages. Regardless, it is still an important role to assign. If people are struggling to find information on a site, they will often reach out through traditional channels like phone and email. Don’t lose ticket sales or attendee clout because the phone or email was left unattended. 

Decide On Your Tools

The perfect special events social team needs to have the right tools. Most social media managers have a digital utility belt of tools and toys that support their efforts. Use a tool, or tools, that you’re comfortable with for the best results. There are many social media management tools out there, but when starting from scratch, you’re looking for three specific functionalities:

1. Social Listening
2. Social Posting
3. Content Creation

Social Listening

Social Media is all about the conversation. While it is great to monitor chatter that tags your brand’s accounts, it is also important to look for engagement beyond the central feed. A good social listening tool should be able to pick up mentions, hashtags, and keywords. Ideally, this tool would operate across multiple platforms in a centralized interface.

Social Posting

Social Media is a full-contact sport. Listening is not enough. You should be engaging at every opportunity. The more you engage, the more the audience engages. Reply, retweet, and tag as much as possible and/or viable.

Content Creation

Visual content, like photos and videos, not only drives engagement but also supports attendees’ memory. Information paired with a relevant piece of visual content increases information retention from 10% to 65%. 

Your special events social team should be outfitted with a tool that helps them create interesting visuals. Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry benchmark for creativity tools but requires skilled operators to use them. Open-source tools like GIMP and Inkscape are great alternatives for the budget-conscious marketer. Online tools like Canva and RelayThat are powerful SaaS products with intuitive designs, but they may not be appropriate if you need to do some heavy lifting or if your venue has internet connectivity issues.

Looking for a tool that does all of it? We’re fans of Hootsuite’s all-in-one listening, posting, and content platform. 

Not sure what other tools you’ll need? We’ve rounded up 11 mobile apps event marketers can’t live without to get you started.

Create Assets Ahead of Time

The best practice is to always create a library of event assets ahead of time. This will save your special events social team from having to spin up graphics when they’re in the middle of a show. It’ll also ensure a consistent quality of assets. 

Each special event will be different, but the basic elements of the asset library are:

• Logo and Logo Variants
  • Don’t make your team hunt for logos in various colors, sizes, layouts, and formats. 
• Frames and photo overlays
• Venue and area maps
  • Including layouts of rooms like breakout spaces or exhibitor halls
• Photos of speakers, presenters, performers, or other special guests
• Programming schedules

Pre-Plan your responses

A special event social team should prepare as much as possible. Ideally, the website and social strategy leading up to the event will preempt questions, but attendees always ask more. Preparing canned responses that any member of the team can use will improve the efficiency of the team. They’re also instrumental in ensuring the Q&A person can do their job effectively.

Responses to prepare in advance:

1. Questions about registration times, session times, exhibitor times, etc. 
2. Hospitality questions about hotels, restaurants, and attendee amenities.
3. Transportation questions about shuttles, taxis, parking, rideshares, and micro-mobility. 
4. Anticipated complaints, e.g., registration wait times, parking challenges, and weather.

Have a UGC Strategy

User- or attendee-generated content is a powerful tool in the special event social media staffer’s toolkit. Attendees are everywhere. Even if your event has the luxury of hiring a hoard of photographers, you’ll still miss moments that attendees will capture. There are a variety of legalities around reposting content on Instagram. Having a strategy to properly obtain rights to attendee content on social media will save you from an extended legal battle over intellectual property on the back end. 

Having a fully fleshed-out UGC strategy will ensure that your event’s reach, engagement, and excitement will transcend the activation and continue throughout the year.

You’ve built your event. You’ve assembled your perfect special events social team. Now ensure that your attendees and stakeholders can see the action. TINT powers beautiful, engaging social walls that aggregate content from across platforms. Use existing projections, screens, and displays to add an interactive element. Curate content with our mobile app to ensure that only the best photos make the screen. Drive participation with exciting social tools like contests, sweepstakes, countdown timers, and hashtag wars.  Chat with one of our event social specialists and TINT up your event. 

The post Assemble the Perfect Special Events Social Team appeared first on TINT.

Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a graphic design tool with a powerful mobile version. It has a free edition to get started, making it accessible to most special event social media managers.

Quickly and easily make standout content from thousands of beautiful templates with Adobe Express.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite remains the quintessential mobile (and desktop) application for scheduling content and social listening. The mobile app has much of the functionality of the desktop application. It also centralizes your social streams, reducing the amount of time you would spend jumping from native application to native application. The analytics and advertising tools make it indispensable when monitoring the traction that posts or ads are getting.

For larger-scale events, they have team management tools that let multiple marketing and communications staff participate in the process. The team plan also has a message assignment feature to ensure that multiple people are not replying to the same message. The message assignment coding system of “waiting,” “replied but not resolved,” and “resolved” are so straightforward that even new team members will intuitively understand it. 

Canva

Sometimes you need a quick graphic or sign. Enters Canva. Canva is a drag-and-drop publishing platform with thousands of assets, fonts, and templates. The tool already has standard design sizes like Facebook posts and Twitter banners. It can also export to PDF for quick emailing and printing. The professional version can set defaults for your brand guide, ensuring that your color palette and typefaces are appropriately represented. You can also start on the desktop version and finish on mobile, making the leap seamless when you’re moving through an event venue. 

We particularly appreciate the non-profit edition that provides professional functionality to 501(C)(3) organizations for free. Unfortunately, other types of 501 non-profits do not qualify for the free professional version. But with a price point of around $12 a month, most organizations can afford it, at least for the duration of an event. 

Compass

Marketing a special event can be like traversing the wilderness. In either case, you should always have a compass. We’ve found it useful when placing directional signage. It also is helpful when navigating the often labyrinthine bowels of convention centers. Most of the premium compass applications will also work when GPS is down. WIFI bandwidth invariably suffers when you have thousands of people trying to access it. Trust us, pay once for a good compass app, and keep it forever. 

Discord and Slack

Communication is key in special events. There are a variety of messaging tools that help organize teams, but Discord and Slack are preferred in many event-focused organizations.

Discord is an all-in-one voice and text chat. It gained notoriety among online gamers but has recently been used as an alternative to Skype. It works on a desktop application, in the browser, and on mobile, making it useful regardless of the environment. There is certainly a maximum useful size for the team chat before it becomes unmanageable. It is a great way to have running commentary from staff throughout an event, though off-topic chatter tends to take over during lulls.

Slack, the Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge, is an asynchronous alternative to Discord. The search and file management features are limited in the free version but, generally, free is sufficient for most organizations. The paid version gives a little more variety in the number of channels, access control, and file management. You’ll pay per user, making it less cost-effective for larger organizations. That said, it is a worthwhile investment if you are working on multiple events or activations throughout the year. 

TINT

TINT is the world’s most powerful and trusted UGC platform. Attendees expect engaging social content to be shown on rotation, signage, and projection. TINT’s mobile app allows you to populate beautiful, fresh content with the swipe of a finger. You can have multiple TINTs controlled from the same app making it easy to have a variety of content showcased in various places. The native integrations with signage and DOOH technology mean that it has never been easier to have social displays around a venue. 

Perhaps the best part of TINT is obtaining rights to content to repurpose in other marketing. You can never have enough photographers at a special event. With TINT, anyone with a smartphone and a social media account is now supporting your content creation efforts. 

Facebook Pages Manager & Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook is a powerhouse platform for event marketers. The Events listing is helping in marketing. People expect events of all sizes to have some sort of Facebook presence. With the vast number of people on the platform, Facebook is fertile ground to cultivate new audiences using advertising. We’ve discussed Facebook tools endlessly in other blogs, but we still need to give mention the specialized mobile applications that Facebook has released to manage brand pages and advertising.

Protip: Stop trying to make the native (basic) Facebook application function as a business tool. Download the special tools and appreciate the efficiency. 

GroupMe

Three words summarize why this tool makes the list: Free Group Messaging. There are countless native and specialized group messaging apps. SMS applications have proliferated in recent years. Event Marketers know that venues, particularly large convention centers, will always suffer from internet connectivity issues and dead spots. Text messaging is an effective tool for sending alerts to your team. GroupMe keeps messages organized in a simple, clean interface. It has high message deliverability regardless of the original sending carrier (Verizon, ATT, Sprint, etc.). It is also less sensitive to disruptions in internet service when messages are sent by text instead of SMS. 

Honorable Mention

Aviary

Aviary is a graphics editor app that Adobe acquired. It is currently not supported, and Adobe announced its end of life in December 2018. But it still remains a powerful tool for those who still have the app. The tool is quick, easy to use, and incredibly useful for minor touch-ups like color balancing and cropping. It was replaced by Adobe Spark and PhotoShop Express (now Adobe Express), which has more muscle. There are still some sites offering third-party downloads of it, but we’re keeping the app on our phones until we have to upgrade. 

Ready to learn how we can help with your next event? Schedule a call with our events specialist. 

The post 11 Mobile Apps Event Marketers Can’t Live Without appeared first on TINT.

How Do I Create a Hashtag Contest?

To create a successful hashtag contest on Instagram or another social channel, you need to generate a unique hashtag that embodies your brand or the goal you’re trying to achieve. Then, offer a prize to a randomly selected winner from the pool of social users who used the hashtag.

The venue is booked, the run of show is in beta, and now your attention shifts to social engagement. Creating any new hashtag can be difficult, but to create an event hashtag is especially daunting. It should be something simple, memorable, and easy to implement. We’ve distilled the knowledge we’ve collected over the past decade and created a simple methodology to help you create an event hashtag in four easy steps.

1. Design
2. Research
3. Test
4. Deploy

1. Designing Your Event Hashtag

To help create an event hashtag we’ve turned to the elements of newsworthiness. These elements have guided headlines, articles, and journalism for almost a century. Like headlines, hashtags are meant to help users quickly identify content and connect with it. For any news junkies out there, we’re using the Shoemaker elements instead of the Gatlunt for clarity and ease of use.

Elements

1. Location (Proximity)
2. Time
3. Interest

Location

Location is a great differentiator among similar hashtags. There may be many digital marketing boot camps (#digitalmarketingbootcamp) throughout the world but yours may be the only one in Oklahoma City (#digitalmarketingbootcampOKC).

The WordCamp (WordPress) Conference Series is a great example. There are hundreds of WordCamps throughout the world. They consistently use the same hashtag naming convention from conference to conference. Each WordCamp’s tag starts with WC and ends with the city where the camp is held.

• #WCSAC – WordCamp Sacramento
• #WCMTL – WordCamp Montreal.
• #WCBNE – WordCamp Brisbane
• #WCCDMX – WordCamp Ciudad Mexico (Mexico City)
• #WCLDZ – WordCamp Łódź

Time

Time is one of the most important elements when you create an event hashtag, particularly if your event will be recurring. The standard practice is to add the year to the end of the tag. Example: #conference2020 #conference20 #event2020

Organizers will often have a master hashtag and derivative year-specific hashtags for each conference. The master tag provides continuity to the event over the years while the years-specific tag makes it easier for attendees to engage with specific content.

Returning to our WordCamp example, some of their organizers may add the year to their tags to make specific content stand out.

#WCSAC > #WCSAC20

Some events will enumerate their years instead of using the actual year at the end of their tag. San Japan, an anime convention, uses the master tag #sanjapan but will also release year-specific content by adding roman numerals to represent the iteration of the event.

Here, San Japan is coming up on their 12th conference. They are using #sanjapanxii to indicate that this tweet is specific to this conference.

This week will be the last of our guest announcements for #sanjapanxii pic.twitter.com/FpukQsbWwv

— San Japan – South TX Anime & Gaming Con 8/30 – 9/1 (@SanJapan) July 15, 2019

Novelty

Hashtags are generally not case sensitive. There are many opportunities to shorten or play with your event name to create an event hashtag. Be creative!

One of our favorite treatments is from the now-defunct Social Media Tourism Conference. #SoMeT is simple, easy to remember, and short enough to avoid eating up character space in a tweet. (The conference was before the Twitter character count expansion.)

#FBF Who is this valued and mysterious #SoMeT attendee and which destination does she represent? pic.twitter.com/ddSBeh8Wvv

— Social Media Tourism (@SoMeTourism) February 19, 2016

2. Research

You’ve created an event hashtag, now onward to research.

The simplest way to conduct hashtag research is to use each site’s native search feature. Type in your hashtag and look at the results.

• Facebook is best searched from the homepage.
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

When you create an event hashtag, you should also Google it. Even if it is “clean” on social sites, there may be some baggage on legacy sites like online forums or IRC communities.

Finding some use of a hashtag does not necessarily exclude it from use. Consider how recently the tag was used, where in the world it was used, and how “strong” the tag was. We have a guide to reusing hashtags available on the TINT blog.

3. Test

Testing is an often skipped stepped when organizers create an event hashtag. We encourage 3 types of testing.

1. Pronounceability & Spelling
   1. How pronounceable or easy to articulate is the hashtag?  Having a difficult to verbalize tag can result in misspellings, misunderstandings, and potentially pointing attendees to an inappropriate tag.
   2. Pronounceability can also affect hashtags for events serving an international audience. Some organizers will attempt to include a pun in their hashtags but variations in language or dialect can prevent the pun from working.
2. Obscenity
   1. Can your hashtag be confused or associated with something profane? The folks over at Miappi have some hashtag fails that should have been caught by the obscenity test.
   2. Protip: Do you have a teenage child or relative? Show the tag to them. If it passes the kid test, it’ll be hard for adults to turn into something gross.
3. Aesthetic
   1. How does the hashtag look on the page? How does the tag look when printed on materials? Does the look of it fit your brand’s aesthetic. A jumbled hashtag will be viewed as disjointed if your brand is dedicated to a clean, minimalist aesthetic. Always consider how the tag plays against your current brand when you create an event hashtag.

4. Deploy

Make your hashtag accessible. Most attendees will only look briefly for a tag before either making one up or not including it in their posting. Ensure that your social handles and hashtags are easy to find and reference. Event organizers usually include hashtags them in signage and program books but events have a variety of places that are great to build awareness of your tags.

1. Presentation Slides
   1. Rotaters, sponsor recognition, slideshows, and even event slide templates are great places to showcase your newly created hashtag. This is a useful way to engage attendees if there is any downtime between sessions or activities.
2. Clings
   1. Walls, floors, escalators, and other branded cling placements should also include social tags. Take every opportunity to build awareness.
3. Badges
   1. The front or back of attendee credentials are now expected to have hashtags. Your attendees will be wearing the badge, wristband, or other identifier for the duration of the event. What better place to make a hashtag available?
4. Swag
   1. Branded merchandise or other conference swag (chum in certain parts of the world) are great for showcasing hashtags. This is particularly true if you have a recurring event. The hashtag can serve as a reminder to re-engage with the conference during the next year.
5. Staff Shirts
   1. Your staff, particularly those attendee facing, should always have some sort of branded shirt or item to set them apart. This makes them walking billboard for  your event. Many organizations use staff shirts to include not only hashtags but also things like QR codes and links to the convention mobile app.

In four easy steps you’ve learned how to create an event hashtag.TINT helps events drive engagement with beautiful social walls, multimedia TINTmix displays, and robust analytics. With an entire suite of curation tools, including mobile moderation, events of all sizes can connect with attendees while ensuring only authentic and quality content makes it to the display. Learn how TINT makes event social walls easy.

The post How to Create An Event Hashtag appeared first on TINT.

If you manage social media for your brand’s upcoming events, you may be feeling overwhelmed with all the details you need to plan for. Whether it’s an event, a product launch, or a contest, there’s a lot that goes into planning for a social wall. You may have already evaluated your What, Why, and How questions behind using a social wall solution, and decided this is the interactive experience you’d like to create for your event attendees.

Once you’ve decided to host an interactive social wall experience for your event, how do you plan out the preparations? Not to worry—we’ve put together a handy downloadable checklist so you can debut a stunning social wall at your event without missing a beat.

Download the Marketer’s Checklist for Stunning Social Walls

3 weeks before the event

◊ Choose a hashtag for your event and start posting

If you want to use different hashtags per social outlet, now’s the time to choose which to prioritize on which social networks.

◊ Begin promotion of the hashtag across all your social media and printed materials.

Consider an incentive to help drive activity on the hashtag. This might be a contest, a meme, or a challenge. The potential for your reach to grow is incredible. Think about each person who actively engages with your brand and then consider their own followers, and so on; this is influencer marketing you can’t just buy.

◊ Check your TINT account to make sure your plan fits your event needs.

Will you need to handle both event and web use-cases for your social wall? Do you want to use the content on a website or microsite? What kind of support will you need? What level of moderation are you anticipating as the content is posted in real-time? Your social wall plan should fit your budget and it should be able to scale if you need it to.

2 weeks before the event

◊ Create your TINT for your event social wall – now’s the time to personalize.

Test the social wall display on your screen to ensure optimal resolution.
The look of your social wall makes a huge impression with your audience and communicates your brand aesthetic. You should be able to create consistent branding for your event, so it’s important to ensure you can add your own logo and unique branding. Consider leveraging TINTmix to optimize your digital screen display and leverage customized themes.

◊ Check your equipment, troubleshoot any inconsistencies.

Check the screen for your display.
Does the screen you’ll use suit the resolution you’ll need for your social wall? Do the dimensions work for your needs? If displaying outside, does the projector/screen have sufficient lumens to be seen?

Do you have all the electrical connections needed?


Check hookups. Do you have the HDMI/Lightning connectors needed?
How does your content get to the screen? Are you a Mac user or do you use PCs? Consider hookups to the hardware at your event venue or with the digital signage software installed on the screens. Your venue technicians may also have these details.

Check Wi-Fi/internet connection.
What internet is available?  If you plan to use Wi-Fi, is the connection sufficient when crowded with users?

To ensure a smooth event, tell your Customer Success team how you plan to use your social wall feed.
Which hashtags are you promoting, and on which social networks? What format of social posts do you expect from your audience during the event—photo, video, text? Are you planning to moderate social wall posts on mobile or on a connected desktop?

◊ Check your hashtag engagement. Do you have the activity you need? If not, adjust promotion.

Engage influencers to post to your hashtag.
If you considered an incentive to boost social engagement, now is the time to remind your audience about the details.

Week of the event

◊ Create guidelines for your event hashtag(s) moderation.

Outline what type of posts you’ll push to your social wall and share with your audience.

◊ Assign moderators and have them download the TINT mobile app.

Simply swipe left or right to moderate.

Day before the event

◊ Set up your physical screen(s) for a dry run.

◊ Connect your electrical and internet.

◊ Check your hookups and display connections. Troubleshoot if needed.

Day of the event

◊ Post to your hashtag! Encourage everyone you interact with to do the same.

◊ Log in to the TINT mobile app for easy moderation.

◊ Recognize top or most interesting hashtag contributors.

This might be a prize, a thank-you post, or simply exposure to your brand audience.

After the event

◊ Log in to the TINT dashboard to evaluate User-Generated Content (UGC) from the event and hashtags.

◊ Check analytics to see how your hashtag(s) performed.

◊ Consider requesting rights to any content you’d like to use for post-event marketing and website.

TINT helps you redistribute UGC content from your social wall back to your website or to your digital ads across the web.
TINT UGC Rights helps you manage all your requests and make sure you’re not infringing any copyrights.

Download the Marketer’s Checklist for Stunning Social Walls

Get ready to stun

Social walls are the perfect way to introduce immediate interest for your brand promotions and encourage people to contribute their own opinions, insights, and visual stories at any event. Social walls have proven themselves as an authentic, effective way to capture the imagination of event-goers and engage an audience in real-time. Now that we’ve detailed all the preparations you should consider when using a social wall solution for your event, you can focus on doing what you do best—creating beautiful, engaging campaigns to drive authentic audience experiences.

We’re excited to see how your creative ideas elevate your event and foster a memorable experience for your audience! Snap a photo of your stunning social wall in action and post to #TINTlove.

A multi-faceted digital marketing platform, TINT offers a range of plans and engagement options for both project-based and long-term use to suit your unique needs. Get started on your own stunning social wall and see how a social wall can enhance your event audience’s experience. We can’t wait to see your stunning work in action!

The post The Marketer’s Checklist for Stunning Social Walls appeared first on TINT.

A social wall creates a buzz that can’t be ignored by showcasing user-generated content in curated, rotating displays that prominently feature event-specific hashtags. Customers are encouraged to share their own content, becoming active participants in your marketing efforts.

In addition to boosting brand exposure, the social wall fosters a sense of community and excitement among event-goers. By leveraging the power of visually striking and easily digestible content, the social wall sparks emotional responses that drive deeper engagement on multiple social media platforms. Ready to take your events to the next level? Let’s explore the endless possibilities of the social wall together.

Social walls: where to start

With so many social wall products on the market, choosing the right one can be daunting. Beyond simply selecting a tool, there is a multitude of factors to consider before making a purchase.

First and foremost, you’ll need to determine how the social wall will be displayed at your venue. Will it be projected onto a screen or integrated into a digital signage display? Once you have a clear picture of how the social wall will be presented, you can begin crafting a creative campaign that leverages its full potential.

It’s also important to keep an open mind and explore all the possible use cases for your social wall. From corporate events and trade shows to weddings and parties, there are countless ways to use this technology to engage with your audience and create unforgettable experiences. By carefully considering all of your options, you can ensure that you choose a social wall solution that meets your specific needs and goals.

What is a social wall?

Simply put, a social wall is a display of social content, usually in the form of a live-updating feed of posts, photos, videos, and text. It can pull content from a range of different platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more.

It provides a way for your event attendees to interact with your brand in real time and gives you a visual footprint for the event itself that has exponentially more reach than you would have on your own.

Case study: Twitter Social Wall at SXSW

Case in point: it is widely believed that Twitter was launched at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in 2007. In actuality, it was launched some months before, but the way it was presented to festival-goers made it blow up.

Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Medium, among other tech startups, created a campaign that was arguably the social wall’s first iteration. They made a deal with the festival to set up multiple screens in a heavily-trafficked hallway that displayed user tweets. Festival-goers were then encouraged to text the words ‘join SXSW’ to 40404, and their tweets would show up on the screens.

Prior to this event, Twitter had a volume of about 20,000 tweets per day. Following the event, that number tripled to 60,000 and has grown exponentially since. This event, though it happened a good two months following the actual launch of Twitter, has widely been seen as the birth of the Twitter brand – largely due to the success of the social wall at SXSW.

The evolution of the social wall

Since its inception, the potential applications of social walls have evolved and expanded well beyond their initial use at events. Today, social walls have become a versatile tool for a wide range of industries and purposes.

Some of the specific use cases of social walls include:

Social Media Monitoring

Social media monitoring is one of the key functions of social walls, particularly for corporations with dedicated social media war rooms. With social walls, companies are able to keep a close eye on what is being shared about their brand online in real time. This powerful tool also enables them to monitor their competitors’ activities, identify emerging trends, and provide immediate customer support. By leveraging the insights gained through social media monitoring, companies can make informed decisions about their marketing strategies and improve their overall customer engagement.

Social Walls for Internal Communications

Social walls are not only useful for external events but also for internal communications. People operations and internal communications teams can leverage social walls to boost employee morale by displaying user-generated content, customer feedback, and other positive comments within the workplace. This establishes an ongoing narrative that all stakeholders can access at any time, fostering a sense of community and engagement within the organization. With a social wall, internal teams can keep employees informed and inspired while promoting a positive company culture.

Social Walls influence buying decisions at Retail

Social walls have emerged as a powerful tool to influence buying decisions in retail settings. By displaying authentic user-generated content on digital screens within brick-and-mortar stores, social walls provide customers with valuable validation and social proof. This encourages customers to engage more deeply with the brand beyond the sale, leading to greater loyalty and higher customer lifetime value. By leveraging the emotional power of user-generated content, social walls can significantly impact purchasing behavior and contribute to a more successful retail strategy.

Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns with social media walls

Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns offer a unique way to reach consumers in contextual settings, such as restaurants, subway stations, and other public places, by taking ads off social media platforms and delivering them directly to the target audience. With social walls, DOOH campaigns can leverage the power of user-generated content (UGC) to create engaging and dynamic digital signage displays in bus and train stations, airports, and on billboards. By incorporating UGC into DOOH campaigns through social walls, brands can create a more immersive and authentic advertising experience that resonates with consumers and drives engagement.

Why use a social wall?

There are plenty of very good reasons to invest in a social wall:

Increase audience engagement

Social walls have proven themselves as a very effective way to capture the imagination of event-goers and engage an audience in real time.

Create a community

Encouraging engagement with social walls is a much less invasive and sales-averse way of connecting with customers – people who might otherwise tune out to conventional advertising. Learn how Bottlerock Music Festival was able to create a sense of community with their social wall:

Reach a wider audience

The potential for your reach to grow is incredible. Think about each person who actively engages with your brand and then consider their following and so on; this is influencer marketing you cannot buy.

Revenue through sponsors

Sponsorship creates a potential revenue stream based on your social wall activity. From logo placement to co-branding, sponsorship mitigates or removes the cost of your social wall and turns it into a revenue-generating initiative.

Social proof for the event or a product

In today’s digitally-savvy landscape, social proof is important in the effort to elevate brand status. People respond more positively to brands that are active on social media and who engage with their followers. This can be tailored to an event, product launch or contest – the possibilities are virtually endless. Learn how LA Fashion Week provided social proof of their event using conversations on social:

Provide real-time updates

Social walls are highly visible components at any event. It displays user-generated posts in real-time, providing immediate interest for whatever you are promoting and encouraging people to contribute their opinions, photos, and insights.

Lastly, but certainly not least, a social wall platform will deliver detailed analytics of all user activity, helping you establish ROI and tweak your future marketing campaigns.

Creative social wall ideas

Social walls are all about inspiring your audience. Taking a creative approach will help you stand out and linger in the imaginations of your users.

Some of the ways you could use a social wall to enhance your event include:

Sponsors

Partnering with sponsors on your social wall will help to generate revenue but it can also help you promote your hashtag and campaign. Your sponsored posts can also be designed to encourage the type of content you want your users to post and share.

Speakers

A social wall is a great way to create a buzz about your event’s speakers, but it can also be a way to engage people who are not physically at the event by giving them access to the live stream of your speakers’ segment.

Contests

Social walls are perfect for running event contests, and as we all know – everybody wants to win! Your social wall encourages engagement and creates a buzz; you can even control the platforms from which the contest is run. Build excitement by featuring your contest winners’ accounts and content on your social wall.

Polls

Finding out what your customers are looking for, their likes, dislikes, and wishes for the future is priceless. Running a poll or survey on your social wall delivers these insights and boosts participation.

Q&A

Answering your audience’s questions in real time is a great way to ramp up the excitement. You can use it to pose questions for your featured speaker or to stimulate discussion on a topic.

Display the speaker’s content

Connecting your speaker’s tweets to your social wall will ensure your attendees never miss a beat. Your speakers will love it too, because their posts will be exposed to thousands of event-goers, helping them gain more followers.

Run industry-specific news

Connect to other influencers’ feeds to provide your audience with interesting, topical, and curated content that they will love.

What to consider when choosing a social wall platform

So, now that you know what to do with your social wall, it’s time to think about the platform you will use to make it all happen. Since there are so many social wall platforms to choose from, it always helps to start your search by defining exactly what you need to accomplish.

Reliability

Look for trusted companies that have been around for longer than three years. It’s simply not worth it to pinch pennies on a social wall only to have it fail to deliver the goods on the day of your event. Where is the company headquartered? Different time zones may impact support response times. Do they offer upgraded support packages? What are other customers saying about them on review sites like G2? Have other marketers on your team used the software before? What has their experience been?

Price

The price of your social wall platform should fit your event’s budget, and it should be able to scale if you need it to. Other things to consider include the following: does the social wall provider charge per screen, per event, or per post? These issues matter because depending on the number of screens, events, or posts you are running, it may impact your budget. You might need your social wall to run all year, in which case you need to find out about long-term pricing options.

Flexibility

Will you need to handle both web and event use cases? Do you want to use the content on a website or microsite? Will this be a solution that others on your marketing team will be able to use for other use cases? If so, you could spread the cost out across multiple teams in order to reduce the impact on your budget.

Aesthetic Appeal

The look of your social wall is very important, both to your brand aesthetic and to your customer. Choose a platform that looks professional and modern. Compare the theme and template options each provider offers by signing up for a trial. The look of your social wall makes a huge impression on event-goers about the quality of the event.

Customizability

You should be able to create consistent branding for your event, so it’s important to ensure that the social wall platform you choose will allow you to add your own logo and unique branding.

Compatibility

How does your content get to the screen? Are you a Mac user or do you use PCs? Your social wall platform should be compatible with the hardware at the event venue or with the digital signage software installed on the screens. Ask the venue technicians for these details to ensure the platform you use is compatible. TINT has established partnerships with event and signage companies to increase their compatibility.

TINT social wall platform

Now that we’ve detailed all the issues you should consider when choosing a social wall platform let’s look at TINT , the best social walls platform.

TINT is a versatile digital marketing platform that provides customizable solutions and pricing to suit your unique needs. With a range of plans and engagement options available for both project-based and long-term use, TINT offers a multi-faceted approach to social walls. By leveraging multiple content feeds and customizing themes to match your branding, TINT helps you create a truly immersive and engaging experience for your audience. One of TINT’s key strengths is its omnichannel capabilities, allowing you to redistribute your content back to your website or digital ads across the web. With TINT, you can easily amplify your social media presence and maximize the impact of your marketing efforts.

Talk to our experts today to learn more about how we can help you

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