You’ve picked a date, fretted about the location, selected the best treats and eats, arranged the tables and chairs just so, and you’re confident that your event will be a blast! But have you decided on how your event looks on the social web during or after the socializing is done?
Here are some pointers, and I’d love to hear more ideas from our readers. Beth Kanter has some great posts on the subject that I’ll link to throughout this post.
I think the starting point, though, for any strategy about tying events to the social web, is to know your goals beforehand. If it’s to get sponsors, or more attendees, or more page views of your web content, you may want to pick and choose wisely from these ideas.
Photo sharing
Let event participants know that they can share photos with others on a web site, such as Flickr, by using a specific tag on the photo. By indicating a tag, you are setting up a collection spot on Flickr so the photos can be viewed as soon as they are uploaded, and people can subscribe to updates using RSS feeds supplied by Flickr at the bottom of the tagged collection page.
If your event is an annual one, you may want to ask people to use a tag with the year in it. For example, the recent New York City Marathon event caused a lot of people to upload photos tagged with nycmarathon but there are also photos tagged with nycmarathon2009.
Beth Kanter has several good tips for selecting the right tag for your events. Before choosing an event tag, you should test it out to be sure another event or organization hasn’t already tagged photos with it. Also be sure the tag is short and easy to type. Avoid using underscores or dashes, and if you must use a somewhat different tag for uniqueness, test it out with some people who might want to use it. If they hate it, find another tag. 
Blogging
Liveblogging is when bloggers write and publish blog posts during an event, taking notes while they listen to speakers, and so on. If your event will not have reliable wireless connections, liveblogging may not be easy. Bloggers would have to blog while offline and then upload posts once a connection is available. Beth Kanter has great tips about liveblogging based on her experiences. I’d summarize by saying, livebloggers should be both bold and brave.
From my view, blogging during an event makes sense if you want to connect more people to the event than could be there in person. But the tradeoff is that some people will pay more attention to their laptops than the session. When people and connections are the main reason for your event, liveblogging is not a good match.
Blog entries live long after the event is complete, though, so you may want to identify and encourage bloggers to write up their notes and reactions after the event. This type of event content helps you get attendees for future years. Writing a summary blog entry is a great idea as well, and it may become the most visited page, says Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality Not Included.
Twittering
Ideally, you’ll use the same tag that you selected for photo sharing as a hashtag for Twitter. Hashtags place a pound sign (#) in front of the tag to enable automated collection of the tweets with those tags with a link to the collection. For example, NIUG, an iMIS user group community, used #niug for its Twitter hashtag and you can see the collection of tweets by going to Twitter search and entering the hashtag.
Since Twitter is often used on mobile devices, it helps people coordinate places and times for meet ups in person during an event or after. I personally like to follow people who are Twittering during events that I couldn’t attend. It helps me feel in touch with the general feel for the event and the people who were there.
Podcasting and video blogging
Some of the best chances to record interviews in person is at an event where interesting people get together. Tom Johnson, writer of idratherbewriting.com, talks about his podcasting experiences at several different professional association conferences. The first year, he interviewed attendees, which wasn’t nearly as interesting as interviewing presenters in the following years. While both podcasting and video blogging require more equipment than a laptop computer, events are a great opportunity to talk to people and record their views.
Collecting and sharing
Make sure your organization is “on top” of all the media outlets, including social media, for your events by listening in on conversations as they happen. You can set up and subscribe to a search for your event’s name and tags using Google Alerts, for example. If your event has sponsors, using social media is a good way to get them the attention they deserve for participating in and sponsoring your event.
You can also make your organizations blog or website “the” go-to place on the web for people who couldn’t attend the event itself to get the latest notes, photos, and tweets. With some roving reporters and a few digital cameras or video cameras you could increase the content and increase the online traffic surrounding your event. Your site is where you aggregate and collect all the content being created for your event, so that others can find it easily and learn from it.
What are some strategies that have worked well for your events?
Posted by ionnonprofits 
Posted by annegentle 
Posted by ionnonprofits 
