Give Them Something to Talk About
I received a call the other day from a very nice woman from the March of Dimes inviting me to a lunch to learn more about what the March of Dimes does with the hopes that I will get involved in their upcoming fundraiser. She was very honest about the nature of the lunch and I said that I would be happy to receive an invitation and check my availability for the lunch. As usual this phone call got me thinking about marketing and social media. I loved the open and honest approach of an invitation to lunch knowing we were going to get a pitch. I was giving them permission to pitch to me.
What really got me thinking was that even though they were probably not aware of it when they invited me, I was most likely going to Tweet about the event or share information on Facebook. That’s just my usual M.O. That led me to think that it would be really advantageous to them to include a hashtag and link on their invitation. Sidenote: I have not received the invitation yet, so it is possible they are including these.
Why?
Even if you are not using social media to promote an event, chances are some of the people you invite are. Why not make it easier for those people to share information about you and your event. Provide a hashtag and even a trackable link using a service like bit.ly. Events and organizations that use social media often assign hashtags to events very early on, but there is no reason you can’t do the same even if you are not active in social media. Let your community do the promoting for you. People love to promote things they believe in and feel strongly about.
Another advantage to including a hashtag and trackable link is that you can actually track the conversations and measure your reach. By using a service such as bit.ly, you are able to see who tweeted your link and see how many times it was clicked. You can also set your hashtag up at “What the Hashtag?” and see who is using it and how often. Now if you aren’t currently involved in social media you won’t be able to respond, but at least you can track the reach. From this information you may find a very strong case for including social media into your marketing plan for the next event.
It all comes down to the fact that no company or organization can completely ignore social media. Even if you don’t want to actively participate in it, give your community and fans the ability to promote for you. This is especially true for non-profits that may not have the resources to commit to social media, but want to elicit help from supporters. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
This is a great piece of information, as simple as it may seem. I have found in the past it is best if a company has a professional person handle this type of campaign for the best results.