How to Use Twitter for Successful Events

Planning a successful event starts months in advance. It involves a great deal of work, such as preparing a guest list, sending invitations, making arrangements for logistics, refreshments, and so on. However, the most daunting task of the event management phase is to promote it to the target audience in an effective way. As a result, event organizers always look for productive ways to market their events and social media marketing is gradually becoming their best possible means to do the same.

Here, we have come up with a few tips that can help you promote your events through Twitter.

Create Your Event Account in Twitter

Before you start using Twitter for promoting your event, you have to create an account with it. While creating an account make sure that you use a short name. However, if your event is happening every year, avoid registering a year specific account. Use hashtags to differentiate event editions. You should provide enough information about the event and its benefits, so that your target audience can get directly to the point. According to industry experts, you must start your event account in Twitter at least 6 months before the event takes place.

Selling Event Tickets via Twitter

If you are looking for registrations in volume, then Twitter Ads can be an extremely powerful tool. With tweets, it will take years to achieve the desired results, but Twitter Ads will deliver the same in a matter of weeks. Twitter Ad is an amazing tool that assists you to attain the preferred outcome within a shorter span of time and with minimalistic effort.

Extensively Use Hashtags

Hashtags offer you an official way to talk about specific events on Twitter. In recent years, Twitter has made hashtags clickable, which has opened up new opportunities for event planners. It also enables users to refer to events that are displayed on Twitter walls set up by the organizers. With hashtags, you can even do live tweeting. Thus, sending multiple tweets in a very short amount of time is no more a hassle.

Choose Hashtags Appropriately

Choosing appropriate hashtags is extremely important. Keep in mind that using hashtag is the only way to analyze the level of buzz generated by your event. Your hashtag should be short, yet catchy. For example, you are hosting an exhibition for dog owners called "Dog Expo 2012″. For this particular event, your hashtags variations can be #dogexpo #dogexpo12 #expodog #expodog12 #dgex12.

Promoting Hashtags is the Key to Success

Twitter has now introduced hashtags buttons for making comprehensive promotions of hashtags. Using this you can easily set hashtags buttons on the event website. Apart from this, your event hashtags should be clearly stated on all communication materials. You can even promote your event hashtags through twitter ads.

Try using twitter more effectively the next time when you promote your event through social media.

The Role of Technology in Planning a Meeting

With the growing threats of financial crisis in the post-recession period, the organizers are constantly looking for cost-effective ways to plan a meeting. It is true that now-a-days holding a meeting is a costly affair and, if they are not planned well in advance, it can lead to lot of troubles in the long run. With so many problems cropping up almost every day, majority of event organizers are turning toward technological solutions to plan their meeting at ease and that too, without investing a lot of money.

At present, technology plays a significant part in planning your events seamlessly, without spending much time and money. Moreover, with the introduction of Cloud-based solutions, event planning has now become virtual. Today, a lot of organizers are using event registration software to streamline the planning process of their meetings. For this, they do not require to install any hardware device or software programs additionally. Let's take a look at how technology can help you plan a meeting successfully and without any hassle.

Effortless Attendee Registration

Attendee registration is a major part of any corporate meeting or event. You can streamline the process by accessing the benefits of online event registration. It not only helps you build up a customized registration page in minutes, but also allows your attendees to sign up 24x7 from any location. All they need for this is a computer with internet connection. Organizers can also launch group registration system, if necessary. However, for this, attendees no longer need to fill up separate registration forms. Moreover, the registrant data automatically get submitted in the database. Thus, it reduces the back-office workload significantly, as your admin staff no longer needs to enter registrant data manually into the database.

Easy Promotion of Your Meeting

Promotion is the key to a successful event. Traditional methods of promotion, such as distributing flyers, brochures, conducting frequent press conferences, and others have lost their ground in this phase of the economic crisis. These have been replaced by online promotion in recent years. The growing popularity of "online networking" has made social media sites a leading platform for event promotion. With a single click of your mouse, you can spread your message to the world. In this way, you can even get extensive promotion.

Sending out Invitation becomes Simple

The event registration software comes with email and other communication tools, which help you manage your guest and dispatch invitation by a single click of your mouse. With it, you can write just a single email and send it to multiple recipients at the same time. Thus, you can send email notification and RSVPs to your potential candidates in no time.

Tracking ROI and Success Rate of the Event

The event registration software comes with a number of in-built reporting tools, which help you track the success rate of your event in no time. As soon as the program is over, you can conduct an online survey to know the attendee satisfaction rate. Apart from these, you can even check out the registrant data online and other details pertaining to the occasion.

Use technology today to reap maximum benefits from your next corporate meeting.

The Importance of the Right Keynote Speaker for Your Events

The role of the keynote speaker is to make speeches that often will define the theme of the event whether it is a corporate event or a political one. The event may have other speakers also but the keynote speech can be the most important. With his speech he can have a good influence on his audience and people who are natural good speakers can be inspirational and can greatly influence an assembly of people. People giving keynote speeches can also command high fees for the speeches made.

Preparations that a Keynote Speaker Should Do

The preparations made before a keynote speech is done will not be an easy task to do. He has to know what the event is about and what the theme is. If the keynote speaker is a member of the event organization he will not have a hard time on what to talk about but if he is not, then he has to study first on the theme and make preparations for this. The type of speech to be made has to be studied also and one that can excite and inspire the audience will be the one ideal for that occasion. Contents of the speech are important and how the speaker will deliver that speech.

A naturally good speaker can always deliver whatever the kind of theme he is provided and talk about. He will always be naturally good for this and he can always be a good motivational speaker whether he is given only a little time for preparations or informed beforehand. Not all speakers can be a good keynote speaker and this is a skill that he has mastered from his experiences and education. An amateur speaker will not be able to perform like him or captivate his audience the way he does it.

Professional Speakers to Deliver Keynote Speech

For events where a keynote speaker is needed, that person may not be along the same professional line as those organizing the events. He may not be with the same degree of education but what is needed is that he can talk on the theme and be able to captivate his audience. There are many of these good professional speakers who can motivate and inspire people. These people can be top executives in big corporations or they may be consultants in their field.

A good motivational speaker will be paid a bit higher than other speakers, and they deserve this high professional fee because of their exceptional skills. They are not the ordinary speakers you can find around the corner. They learn their trade through years of experience and exposure to speaking engagements. Other good speakers will only ask for the average fee as the other ordinary speakers and they will give the excess fee to a fund pool or a foundation. This may be to fund educational seminars or train potential speakers.

A good keynote speaker can be readily found these days because of the availability of the internet to provide information on where to find one. The video sharing sites can also be a good source of information and you will have the chance to see how they speak, their speech styles, or how good they can inspire and motivate an audience. If you are in the process to find one for your event, you will not have a hard time because you can choose from among the many inspirational speakers you will see in the video sharing sites. From among the many you can choose who among them will fit your event's theme and your budget.

Why You Should Outsource Your Social Media and Public Relations

Outsourcing itself is nothing new. Firms have long hired outside vendors to handle marketing, advertising, public relations, media buying, event planning, web design, printing, and many other services that are deemed by companies as "necessary functions best left to experts". And when it comes to the time-consuming tasks of social media and public relations, seeking outside expertise is a smart idea. So we call it "in-sourcing" because the key is to integrate your outsourced services with your team and mission cohesively, fluidly, and successfully.

That's what outsourcing does: creates an efficient 24/7 team of experts for your organization, removing workplace inefficiencies such as time, expense, and inexperience when strategizing, creating, planning, implementing, maintaining, and coordinating the intricate details of a successful PR campaign

Benefits of Outsourcing Your Public Relations/Social Media

Public Relations & Social Media is 24/7, not 9-5...

In a digital age, news, developments, and crises happen instantly and spread through social media even faster. Any positive or negative effects on your organization need to be reacted to just as quickly; as such, the reactionary nature of PR and social networking requires a 24/7 work ethic and involvement. The days of pitching media and writing press releases for eight hours a day have been trumped by trends of sending brief messages throughout the day. If you don't have staff that reacts instantly to positive, negative, or lucrative developments, even when off typical 9-5 work hours, your organization could be left in the dust by competitors and could be pushed to the back of consumer's minds. Hire a person or firm that understands the 24/7 nature of PR and your organization will be well-prepared for developments and happenings that are good, bad, or ugly.

... and is one of the most time consuming workplace tasks.

Social media, when performed incorrectly and inefficiently, is a huge time sink. Simply posting news items on wall's and feed's or trying to build your number of "Like's" and "Tweets" isn't enough to maintain a competitive presence in the media landscape. Creating profiles and maintaining blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Digg, and dozens of other social networking accounts can be time consuming tasks that drain your organization's and employee's time for other important tasks. Worse, having employee's involved in social networking may lead to slacking off on their own social networks, reducing work focus and ethic. Time is the biggest advantage SM agencies offer to the workplace and for companies without the resources to adequately bring a dedicated social media expert on board, outsourcing is the best option. Outsourcing your to an outside agency allows your organization to keep employee's time and energy focused and efficient.

Saves costs (making your dollars go further).

Saving money and stretching your dollars further is a juggling task on every firm's mind. In tough economies, firms need to do more with less. Budgets for PR and social strategy can be very tight, especially during a slow economic recovery. Yet smart companies and organizations understand that when times are tough, public relations and social media are important cost-effective alternatives to traditional marketing and advertising campaigns. By outsourcing those tasks, your firm is able to work within your budgetary framework, reduces overhead and operating costs (such as office space and employee benefits), and increases worker efficiency by allowing them to focus on more important and concentrated tasks.

These taskse aren't "filler work for staff".

Public relations is the art of helping the public see your organization in the most beneficial and cutting edge light. Poorly written and inexperienced public relations work shows the world just the opposite of what you intended. Employers who put less of a focus on public perception tend to take a "do it yourself" approach and assign PR and SM tasks to inexperienced workers in an effort to save money. Assigning workers that lack experience, required skill sets, and strategy tools for an extensive social media and public relations campaign is not a cost-efficient option in the long run; in fact, factoring in months of training, salary, and trial and error periods makes it a potentially expensive proposition with little to show for at the end of the day. Social media alone requires the art of being social and creative, a skill not all employee's excel in. Bring in the experts in public relations and social media - it's a more cost-efficient option that includes a team oriented, creative, goal-focused perspective.

Integration made easier and sensible.

Social media has redefined the traditional tactics of PR. Certain aspects of PR fuels the "going viral" part of social media and social media redesigns public relations from a press release into an online elevator speech. With the close ties between these two forms of communication, having separate people for public relations and for social media doesn't integrate your message and brand as clearly as possible. Which is why outsourcing your campaigns to the same expert team is the most sensible option when creating an integrated campaign among all media outlets.

By outsourcing, you'll end up working with creative experts with a 24/7 work ethic and an eye for integration, helping your business or organization save money. Outsourcing is starting to make a lot of sense.

Problems of Selling Event Tickets Manually: Is There a Way Out?

Selling tickets manually is not an easy job - you must hire somebody to sit at the ticket counter for a number of days issuing tickets as well as handling cash payments. The task doesn't end here. The staff then has to update ticketing lists manually to keep statistics and book of accounts up-to-date. Moreover, individuals have to travel all the way to the ticket counter in person to buy tickets of their favorite show, festival or sporting event. Furthermore, in the absence of an update system, there exists a great possibility that the event may be a sell out and you may not be able to purchase any tickets even after travelling all the distance to the counter. Event organizers can tackle such situations and additionally derive more benefits by implementing and utilizing an online ticketing solution.

Now, what is this online ticketing solution all about? Let's find it out in detail.

Customized Ticketing Page

Event planners can customize their online event ticketing page by adding colors and attractive graphics. The planners can change the overall layout of each page as well as add a company logo/banner to professionalize the page. Many online payment companies offer add-on services that will help to design the ticketing page similar to that of your company website.

Sell Multiple Event Tickets

You can create a wide range of ticket types to meet your event goals. For example, you can upload VIP tickets, 'Early Bird' tickets, and member-only tickets, and so on with different price tags as and when required.

Promote It

Try to use social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on) to promote your festivals, family shows or sporting events online. Free promotion on these social media websites will help you attract a large number of audiences to your events page and will generate interest in them. This may lead up higher number of tickets being booked or sold for upcoming programs.

Built-in Credit Card Processing

Selling tickets online comes with the benefit of collecting payment online. In other words, you can let people pay you via their credit / debit / charge cards, Wire Transfers, PayPal and so on. Online ticketing solution offers real-time authorization and processing of payments made via this method. Thus, using a Cloud-based ticketing software can help you eliminate the problem of receiving and managing cash and paper checks. Processing refunds incase of cancellations is also any easy affair when using an online payment system.

Generate Detailed Reports

Cloud-based ticketing solution lets you easily generate several online customer and sales reports in almost no time. You can quickly gather sales and details of individual customers from the online ticketing database which stores all information automatically for use by the event organizer anytime, 24x7.

Most importantly, converting to an online payment management solution completely eliminates any kind of accounting discrepancies that may occur in case of manual processes in place.

Top 5 Challenges Faced by Event Organizers: How Should They Cope Up?

Event organizing companies are trying to find an effective solution to the 5 challenges listed below. They are:

繚 How to manage wastage before, during, and after events?
繚 How to maintain a steady growth rate and keep on adding more to the ROI?
繚 How to meet mounting costs related to infrastructure and travel?
繚 How to improve customer service and networking with prospective consumers?
繚 With the rising fuel cost, how to encourage people to register in order to attend your events?

Surprisingly, these issues hold true for almost every corporate organization today. With the concern to save the planet, a large section of the society is moving towards finding ways to reduce wastes production. We see a number of companies (IBM, eBay) having a recycling program as part of their waste management initiative. With reference to event organizers, they can successfully lend their support towards the 'Green Campaign' and reduce the production of wastes by opting for an eco-friendly, online solution. Internet based applications don't require paper usage of any kind, thus saving costs and the cutting down of trees (paper is made from trees).

Here's sharing an interesting fact. USA, with around 5% of the earth's population, uses 30% of all paper manufactured worldwide. It is by far the largest per capita paper consumption rate for any country on earth. (Source: http://www.treehuggerbrand.com/ )

Online solutions are much easy to use so you don't need a technology trained staff to handle its operations. You just need to log onto to a computer or laptop and access the type of solution apt for your business needs. It can be the online event registration solution or the payment management service. Besides, you will get the advantage of utilizing additional online applications such as emailing service, marketing tools, surveying and reporting options, and so on, to streamline your event-based administrative jobs.

Once you open up online registrations, you will see the difference in terms of attendee numbers. Manual registration processes called for the physical presence of people interested to attend your event. They had to travel to your registration center just to complete pre-event registration formalities. With online registrations, interested participants can easily complete the process sitting at home, while at their job or on the move.

People usually appreciate online payments transfers since you can send funds from any region of the world and most importantly at anytime. You don't have to visit your nearest bank branch to do the needful. Interacting with VIPs and registrants can be done via emails (sending a corporate mail adding your event registration and payment webpage links, etc.). Moreover, marketing your events on social media increases the chances of getting higher registration rates and networking with potential attendees.

Cover Bands and Live Music From Corporate Events to Weddings

A cover band is a tribute act that would usually be booked to play a line up of cover songs (other musicians' songs) which are popular with the crowd expected at your event. Most people think about a band when planning entertainment for corporate events, balls, functions, festivals and of course if they want a wedding band to perform live music.

Having a cover band play at your event is a superb way to get your guests involved and you can often choose a themed cover band to play for instance you may have a 1960's themed wedding then your chosen wedding band will specialise in 60's themed music or you may choose a band that will play indie music, rock, guitar, jazz - or simply popular tracks that a range of people will enjoy.

A good point to make if you are seeking an agency to provide your live music and entertainment is to find out how much experience the cover band has, ask to listen to a recording or preferably a quick live performance if possible - this way you will be able to judge their stage presence, however this is not always possible and not forgetting a performance in an office in the day time will perhaps not reflect how the performance will go with the correct lighting and good atmosphere at an evening event!

A cover band should always be booked with a good DJ that can play during intervals and before the act performs. Bands generally will not play for the whole duration of the event so the DJ will be rostered to play high energy music and dance floor fillers at the end of the live music performance.

A fine entertainment agency will have superb connections and a good list of acts to make for a fantastic event that keeps your guests entertained, the cover bands and your DJ will be able to discuss with you a playlist covering your chosen music be it golden oldies, pop or dance etc and the cover band will normally provide all the equipment, PA's and lighting.

Once booked you should normally expect to pay a deposit and the price will often cover travel expenses. Once a deposit is paid, you can expect the cover band and wedding DJ to travel to your event location and provide the perfect entertainment for your party or corporate event.