Hosting or sponsoring a community event can be a great way to build awareness of your brand and connect more deeply with your customers. However, if you are not including these offline events in your online content marketing, you are missing half the point.
The Internet of today is social and mobile. People expect to learn about, sign up for and check in at events online. When they do, they also increase the value and reach of your related online content.
Here are eight ways in which you can transform your events into powerful content marketing:
- Post details about upcoming events online. If you are looking for blog content ideas, this is a natural one. It helps you get the word out about your upcoming event, so that more people will show up. It also means that people who are searching online for details on an event will be directed to your site.
- Allow online RSVPs. You can do this on your site or on your social media pages, depending on your goals. Besides allowing you to provide reminders about the event--which people expect--RSVPs on a site like Facebook expand the reach of the event invitation to all of the attendees' friends.
- Include them in emails. Highlighting upcoming events in your email marketing efforts can help you increase your email open and response rates. Besides, those who have signed up for email updates would expect to be kept abreast of any company events.
- Post photos. Photos always improve engagement with online content. For some content, it can be difficult to come up with interesting, relevant photos. This is not the case with events, which practically beg to be photographed. Include images with all of your event-related content and post photos from the event on social media for attendees to tag themselves in.
- Encourage attendees to post about the event. People will gladly post their own photos, comments and check-ins on social media. This effectively makes them part of your marketing team for the duration of the event. You can encourage them to do so, and make their posts easier to find, by creating an event hashtag (which now works on Facebook, along with Twitter, Instagram and Google+). If your event has a display screen, you can feature attendees' social media posts at the event itself. You could also turn it into a contest, using tagged posts as entries for door prizes. Some events have ended up trending on Twitter this way.
- Make event content mobile-friendly. This should be true for all your content, considering how many people now access the internet primarily on mobile devices. But it is doubly true for events, since people will be looking up details and directions to the occasion. If you regularly host events, an event calendar app might be a welcome tool.
- Include a follow-up. Besides having content before and during the event, wrap things up by posting a summary, a thank you or a photo album.
- Optimize event content for search. Don't overlook the value of your events for SEO. Use keywords, title tags and photo descriptions to your advantage with all the content you post online.
By utilizing these tips, you can rather easily generate some very engaging content and build a more active online community around your brand.
* Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
