Kari Rippetoe of Tuvel Communications, has discovered a win/win situation for event planners and social media communities. She shares tips for getting the most out of social media partnerships, here.
As we’ve worked with more and more events over the last couple of years, we’ve come to realize the importance of building lasting relationships that provide promotional value to everyone involved. Don’t get me wrong, everything we do is about building lasting and valuable relationships through social media with people who can help spread the word. But we’ve taken that a step further with our event clients by building cross-promotional partnerships on their behalf – what we call Social Media Partnerships.
What are Social Media Partnerships and how can they be valuable to your event? They provide a way for you to team up with a company or organization to create mutually-beneficial social media marketing opportunities. Many events (like conferences and trade shows) have sponsors and media partners who help promote the event to their audiences in a variety of ways – such as banners, offers and promotions, and coverage. By adding a Social Media Partnership level, you can create additional opportunities for promotion of your event through social media channels – not just Twitter or Facebook, but via groups, blogs, forums, newsletters and online communities. There’s incredible potential in Social Media Partnerships to reach hundreds or even thousands of prospective attendees through partner networks.
What to look for in a Social Media Partner:
- Relevance: Look for blogs, online communities, or associations with the most potential to reach your audience. Conduct research for those discussing or championing topics covered at your event.
- Reach: Vet prospective partners based on how many of the right people they’re reaching. Find out how many newsletter subscribers, blog readers, group members and social network followers they have (Twitter, Facebook, etc).
- Opportunity: Identify as many different opportunities a partner can offer to promote your event. Can they write a blog post, tweet, post to their Facebook page, or run a banner? How about including a mention in their next newsletter or podcast?
How can you leverage Social Media Partnerships for your event?
A Social Media Partnership is about building a mutually-beneficial relationship with the partnering company or organization, while getting as much promotional value as possible from the partnership. We work with our event clients to put together an agreement that outlines exactly what both sides will be providing and receiving. If you already have a trade and barter agreement for other marketing and media partnerships, it will provide a good template for a Social Media Partnership agreement. The main difference, however, will be the inclusion of social media promotion and exposure.
To read the rest of this post, click http://www.tuvel.com/blog/2012/01/26/leveraging-social-media-partnerships-for-your-event/ . Posted with the permission of Kari Rippetoe.
(Photo by Victor1558)
