Social Media – How to effectively Market your Events

A few months ago, I was invited to attend the Five Star Conference in Dallas.  I was so excited to attend this conference with some other amazing NAN team members so of course, without hesitation, my answer was a resounding YES and I immediately started of thinking of ways I could promote NAN to the Five Star attendees

Nationwide Appraisal Network attends several tradeshows throughout the year and yours truly is the one who manages all the scheduling, organizing of shipments, correspondence, reservations, etc for the shows. From booking the airlines, updating our website, managing the social media and marketing our events and everything in between, this is just one part of my job at NAN.  You can imagine how excited I was to be a part of all the action!  In order to create positive awareness which in turn, improves our success at our tradeshows, we rely heavily on social media. Marketing our tradeshow in social media is a great way to get NAN noticed BEFORE and DURING the show.  Post show social media is also a great way to keep everyone informed.

Here are a couple tips from the NAN team:

1. Freshen up your profiles– Long before you start marketing your tradeshow, it’s crucial that your social media profiles are up-to-date.  When you direct your clients and prospects to your profiles, you want to be sure everything is updated with the latest information about your company and events.  We are always updating profiles to be sure they’re consistently engaging and exciting. Check them out: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts for Cari Burris , Joni Pilgrim, and myself.
2. Create the excitement before the show– Count on your connections to influence your message. Creating compelling marketing content for your show will make your ideas more engaging.  For the Five Star conference we weren’t exhibiting, but we did have an open house.  Joni Pilgrim also spoke on a panel where the topic of discussion was the evolution of regulations in valuation.
   Before the event we created high design invitations to promote our event weeks in advance on social media and through our website. We also promoted a drawing to win a Google Nexus 7 prize package.  The giveaway ended up being a great way to generate hype for our open house event.  We handed out invites to the attendee’s days in advance at the actual conference.  That gave us a chance to personally meet everyone and shake hands and introduce ourselves. We interacted heavily with the marketing team at Five Star to promote the conference.  In turn, the Five Star marketing team promoted our company and events.  It was great to work as a team since we were both in alignment to accomplish the same goals.
3. Real-time marketing-Attending the Five Star Conference & Expo was not only educational, but it was also exciting posting real-time updates and direct messaging our contacts, especially with my social media background.  We followed closely with the events that were happening at the trade show and posted live updates on the conference that we attended. This was a great way to stay connected to those who weren’t able to attend the event and keep them in the loop. Interacting with the Five Star team and the attendees of the event using our custom hash tag added a fun element to the show.  It’s easier for followers to find you with your custom hash tag rather than trying to sift through your news feed to find the relevant information.  We have important things to say and we wanted to be sure we gave our followers multiple ways to interact with us.  After one of the meetings at the conference, a former client of ours commented on how fast we were to post pictures and updates. He was sitting near us and looked at his phone only to see a live picture of our team! He was blown away by our speed! Such a great compliment to us!

Social media offers tons of ways to stay connected with people. If used properly, you can really take advantage of the power it offers to drive brand awareness.  Attending the tradeshow with the NAN team was such a great opportunity. It was also a great pleasure in meeting the Five Star team who was a partner in our social media campaign.  Being there live with the NAN team definitely gave us a competitive edge in the social media arena!