Effective Seminar and Conference Marketing

Brad Kleinman, Digital Strategy Planner at [wire] stone and speaker at Clemson’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference (see Clemson Conferences) offers these six tips on using Facebook to market your programs:

1. 1. Make your Facebook event page as complete as possible. Doing so will make your event easier to find, and the more details you give, the more likely people will actually register and attend.
2. You will most likely want to make your event public, which will allow anyone to view and RSVP. It also enables people to invite their own Facebook friends to the event. The algorithm in the Facebook News Feed places a lot of emphasis on pushing events to users when several other friends RSVP for an upcoming conference. With a high RSVP response, it’s highly likely for your event to creep into my feed a few times over the course of time! The same goes for pictures.
3. Once you are up and running with your Facebook event, be sure to post event updates frequently on the event wall and message periodic reminders to the RSVP’d guests. Not too frequently, though! While the wall posts won’t alert anyone unless they proactively look at the event wall, messages to guests will send out alerts to their email inboxes (depending on their Facebook settings).
4. A good rule of thumb is to send three reminders for the event out through Facebook; one message should encourage attendees to invite their connections and spread the word through Facebook by sharing the event on their profiles; the second message should be sent a few weeks prior to the event as a reminder to make sure people have updated their calendar and prompt some activity on your event wall; and, the third message should be sent a couple of days before the event with final details and instructions. The key here is staying in the forefront of people’s minds so they not only remember to attend but also spread the word about your event to their Facebook friends as well.
5. You can post on your event wall more frequently (a post per day is a good benchmark). Some recommendations for items to share on your event wall can include: (1) Links to the event agenda (2) Information about speakers  (3) Articles or blog posts about your event topic (4) Video links and (5) Photos of a previous event.
6. Try Facebook Advertisements: Facebook Ads do not have a large CTR or click-through-rate, which means they don’t perform very well in terms of users clicking on the ads. However, your payment is based upon CPC or cost-per-click, which means you only pay when someone actually clicks. Therefore, Facebook Ads are a great option when you are running more of a branding campaign for your organization.

Get more ideas on social media as well as all aspects of marketing at the Chicago conference. See Clemson Conferences for a detailed agenda. Register on-line now at Clemson Registration or just call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!