One thing event planners all have in common is a shortage of time and money. While there isn’t a whole I can do about the latter, I am happy to report there are digital tools available for promoting your event and staying connected with attendees while they are at your conference that can save you significant blocks of time.
This free tool works with your Twitter account and allows you to schedule tweets well in advance. When promoting your speakers, exhibitors and content for your event, you can go in once and schedule everything. You can also visually see all the activity associated with your Twitter account from one screen.
The drawback to this tool is you cannot add images to scheduled tweets and you can’t bulk schedule tweets.
This social aggregator works with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ to schedule your postings. It has free and fee features and analytics to determine which postings resonated most with your audience.
This tool has a lot of power and though it is intuitively easy to navigate, I would recommend you spend some time learning and setting up all the profiles you want to follow and analytics you want to receive.
Buffer is a social aggregator that works with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Just like Hootsuite, some of the functionality is free while others are fee.
This tool is navigationally simple and has some free analytics but most of the rich stuff is fee based.
This tool allows you to share a blog post or web page on multiple social platforms including all of the ones listed above and 60+ more. This is a free service and an easy to add plug-in, however in contrast to Hootsuite and Buffer, you need to share one social channel at a time.
This online paid registration service allows you promote your event on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ for free. You can also post it into LinkedIn groups and invite specific individuals you are connected to on LinkedIn.
The one thing you need to do is shorten their URLs if you send to social. Hootsuite, Buffer and LinkedIn will automatically shorten them. If you want to use an outside service, go to: Bitly or Google URL Shortener.
This free or fee registration service allows you to promote your event on Facebook or Twitter.
It has some free analytics within the system and can connect to Google Analytics.
Allows you to import your email contacts and start a campaign for free if you are a small to medium sized organization. However, if you wish to schedule an automated campaign, there is a cost associated with this feature.
Once you have set up your email campaign, you can send your message to Facebook and Twitter.
No matter if you use one or all of the apps listed above or somewhere in between, SmartSource Rentals can help you by preloading the apps onto iPad rentals or laptop rentals. They have video walls where social interactions can be displayed for all attendees to see. Check out what they have to offer and engage your attendees!
