Bynes

Tasia Bynes
Professor Kristine Mirrer
Social Media
18 May 2015
Driving Event Attendance and Engagement with Social Media
In this paper I will incorporate techniques used on the Hootsuite learning model to
demonstrate how to drive event attendance and engagement with social media. I will also use
scholarly and other resources to support my findings. Narrating the Hootsuite segment is Dan
Spicer. He is the leader of the EMEA community team at Hootsuite based in London. He is
responsible for growing and nurturing their online and offline communities. His main goal for
the company is distribute strategies and delivering social media success across multiple regions.
With this instructional module, Spicer gives tips on successful strategies to use in social media to
promote and gain awareness for events.
According to Spicer, conversations are about aspiring, educating and entertaining. Events
can be described as network gathering or social affairs. People who attend these events are there
to interact, connect, and share with their peers. People go on social media for the exact same
purposes so it makes sense to use social media to help plan and promote events and build
excitement. There are 3 primary goals for any event planner and that is to create awareness,
engagement and conversion. Its a good idea to spread the word to the customers, to build
relationship or engagement, and covert your goal to market and sale your product. Your event
goals must be the same as your social media objectives so you can devise social media tactics
that can meet the same goals. When you are using social media to promote your content its
important to know where and how the audience is consuming content. When finding an engage

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community online you have to be a detective; you need to know where your content is being
viewed so you can put out it at that time. This could affect the success of your social media, so
its a good idea to focus on key social media platforms. For example, popular sites like Twitter,
Facebook, and YouTube.
Once you know your social media goals you can start thinking of your event goals. You
know where you audience is and what social media outlets you want to target. With pre planning,
Spicer recommends creating an editorial calendar that highlights on the pre, during, and post
planning tactics. It allows you to focus on key content themes and provide an overview of your
different content. Its also a way to manage your time more effectively. First, you want distribute
relevant content to the right people on the right platform. Next, you want to try the influence and
outreach tactic. This is basically the opportunity to build relationships with key influencers in
your industries for instance leaders, bloggers, etc. You want to utilize every additional reach and
awareness outside of your own media realm like event speakers.
As far as creating content you want to create rich content to publish during or after the
events. Make sure what your post is compelling and tells the story of your event. This is where
social listening and engaging come in. Motor audience questions, respond to them, and build
conversation with those online. Throughout your event you should be doing event hashtags for
attendees to use. This is where the general buzz with come in. And finally, launching post event
activity. One good post event editorial plan is creating a blog post. Its the most popular way to
highlight themes and topics or take away discussions held during the events. Its also a great last
minute attempt to convert potential prospects to purchase your product or look to your services.
Additionally, look for ways to maximize publicity through your own content and media
channels. His final tip is empowering your team to share your content. Employers distributing

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content within their own personal media profiles to help create awareness for your events.
Promoting it broadens the potential reach. Once you measure and track your successful tactics
you know what works and what doesnt work for future events.
I have found a number of articles emphasizing the importance of social media in driving
engagement in different social situations. Twitter is probably one of most successful media
outlets for gaining event awareness and generating fast buzz. In the article, Discovering Social
Events through Online Attention, researchers aim to find a measure of attention in social media.
Through quantitative methods they investigated the quick findings of social events through the
realm of scattered media data. They chose to specifically look at Twitter. The reason being is
because Twitter enables the real-time propagation of information to large groups of users, it is
an ideal environment for the dissemination of breaking news from news gatherers and from onsite locations where events are taking place (Kenett, 2014). On twitter, a single tweet can muster
an impressive amount of views in a matter of seconds, thats why businesses look to as the
perfect promoting platform.
In another article related to the effects of social media, researchers examined how users
behave during certain media events and compared it with how they communicate outside of these
events. They examined the extent to which shared attention to media events changes individual
and collective communication behaviors, observing 200,000 Twitter users. They found attention
to media events did change individual and collective communication behaviors. To no surprise,
their data supports the theory that those that use Twitter during media events greatly altered their
interpersonal communication and social interact. Although this looks at it as somewhat negative,
it is more evidence supporting the benefits of online interaction. As seen in one article,
researchers sought out ways to document creative uses of social media for faculty development

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in academic medical centers. The reason they went down this route is because they found it
difficult to attract attendance for in-person events. Once they looked to social media they were
able to find a way to provide information while building a community; bringing more awareness
to their company.
In one case study from the popular press, Pepsi uses social media to help promote its new
Challenge ad to appeal to the millennial generation. Pepsi Challenge ads put Pepsi against
popular competitor Coca-Cola. But now Pepsi has a new campaign that blends social
responsibility with popular culture. Pepsi signed some of hottest celebrities to recruit consumers
to participate in a series of challenges meant for the social media generation. Every month, the
celebrity will use social media to issue a new challenge. All the challenges will focus on social
media in some way involving either technology, music or sports. In this case study, it is seen that
Pepsi understands the power of social media in reaches todays audience. Another way its
generating awareness is by donating 1 dollar to charity every time a consumers uses the hashtag
#Pepsi Challenge on their social media profile. Pepsi is using the hashtags as a promotional
strategy and at the same time influencing consumers to help out in support of a good cause.
According to Kelly Springs-Kelley, director of Marketing at Event Pro Strategies, Social
media and event marketing have two things in common: they are effective, intimate and highimpact ways to reach consumers, with the potential to create long-lasting and meaningful
relationships (Oct 2014). Similar to the Hootsuite model, this author shares pre, during, and
post strategies to drive attendance to events through social media. First by concentrating on
creating an event that people want to talk about and then sharing the experience on social media.
She also mentions wanting to involve influencers to drive pre-event awareness. An example of
this is could be identifying and showcasing your biggest fans with the biggest online presence

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into your pre-event awareness. During the event you want to provide motivation for consumers
to like, follow and share and tie lead generation to social media. And lastly, she mentions that
after the event its important to keep your on-line interactions consistent, fun and sharable.
The final article I found describes a different method to how a film festival uses Twitter
to boost attendance, and engagement. Director of special events Leslie Feibleman, explains
Twitter is similar to the film industry in that its dynamic, continuously emerging, and is
infused with new talent, technology and ideas a place to discover and be discovered.
According to the article, one must first inspire interest. As mentioned in the Hoot suites
segment, contests and giveaways are wise to draw in crowds. Whether it be to win movie passes
or whatever the prize people would be more willing to engage if there are fun giveaways. The
happier the attendees the more prone they are to talk about their experience and spread the word;
which may increase their possibility to come back. Twitter, can also serve as a way to reach
moviegoers who may be new festival followers and attendees. In terms of post planning,
retweeting posts made by the filmmakers and sharing links to their video content could be also
be effective in creating an after buzz. As Spicer, states the more compelling the content the more
online engagement you will receive.
In closing, the purpose of this Hootsuite Training series was to develop social media
strategies and successful pre, during and post tactics to drive event attendance. Social Media is a
global platform and the perfect market to help plan, promote, and build awareness to events. Its
important to measure and track your target audience because this will affect your social media
activity and the content you distribute. The articles Ive chosen demonstrates similar insights to
the instruction video. Each one shedding light on the powerful effect of social media on this
generation and its success in gaining engagement opportunity for hopeful businesses.

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REFERNCES

Cahn, Peter S., Emelia J. Benjamin, and Christopher W. Shanahan. "'Uncrunching' Time:
Medical Schools' Use Of Social Media For Faculty Development." Medical
Education Online 18.(2013): 1-6.
Ember, Sydney, and Emily Steel. "The Pepsi Challenge Is Returning, but This Time for the
Social Media Generation." The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Mar.
2015.
"How to Leverage Live Marketing With Social Media Before, During and After Events."
Entrepreneur. N.p., 27 Oct. 2014.
Kenett, Dror Y., et al. "Discovering Social Events Through Online Attention." Plos ONE 9.7
(2014): 1-7.
Lin, Yu-Ru, et al. "Rising Tides Or Rising Stars?: Dynamics Of Shared Attention On Twitter
During Media Events." Plos ONE 9.5 (2014): 1-12.
"MediaShift." PBS. PBS.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/business/media/the-pepsi-challenge-is-returning-but-thistime-for-the-social-media-generation.html
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238186
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/how-film-festivals-use-twitter-to-boost-attendance
.