As social media tools and services become so important for marketing your event – and your brand – online, it can be tempting to jump in before planning your strategy. Although it might seem like a good idea to learn about the world of social media through direct experience, having no plan in place can leave you floundering, and wondering whether you’re succeeding or not. Before you get started (or even if you already have), ask yourself these five questions, and put some plans on paper.

Why use social media?

As fun as it can be to jump on every passing bandwagon, an important starting point is working …

Image and video bookmarking service Pinterest is growing in leaps and bounds, recently reporting a 2000% growth in page views, when it hit 421 million in October. The website offers a simple and aesthetically pleasing way of collecting videos and images from across the web.

As a popular source of design, fashion, shopping and cooking inspiration, Pinterest offers a new way to explore the promotion of your event through visual means.

Exposure for your products

Bookmarked images and videos are collected onto ‘pinboards’, which are organised by title and category. Each pinboard generally has a theme, whether that is a …

Live-blogging is a recent trend that has been seen at all kinds of events – from tech industry events to news coverage, to the Academy Awards. Essentially live-blogging means to continually update a single blog post in ‘real-time’ as the event unfolds, noting the highlights as they take place. Far from making it unnecessary to attend your event, live-blogging offers many benefits in promoting your event and increasing audience numbers in the future.

Let’s take a look at three ways this could lead to an increase in future audience numbers.

Add more value for those already attending

For those who are already at your …

For those who don’t know, ‘nascent’ refers to the relatively new and developmental state of social media. Although social networking as we know it has been around since the early 1990s, it is arguably still a young area of technological growth.

Just in the past ten years, we have seen the birth of social networking giants like Facebook and the slow death of struggling networks like Myspace. With constant changes, social media seems to be a long way from settling into a staid, predictable pattern. This can be a good thing, though.

Here are three ways you can take advantage of the nascent state of social media when promoting …

We all know how important it is to pre-empt any possible misfortunes that might arise when planning your event. From bad weather to poorly functioning technology, there are countless things that could go wrong at the last minute.

The ability to contact many people at once, and in ‘real time’, through social media can be a saving grace at crunch time. Here are five ways social media tools could come in handy when things don’t go your way.

1. When you have to relocate

Bad weather, lack of resources, insufficient facilities or an uncomfortable environment may force you to move your event at the last minute. If you’re lucky enough to find a new location to save cancelling the event, you’ll want …

If you are interested in using location-based services at your next event, you may be wondering which app is the best choice. Even with Gowalla out of the picture since being acquired by Facebook, there are several options to choose from. Let’s take a look at the big and little players in the geolocation arena, and what each has to offer your event marketing strategy.

Foursquare

Boasting 15 million users worldwide (only 50 per cent of those are based in the U.S.), Foursquare is undoubtedly a major player in the location-based game. With a large user base and an established name in the field …

Social media and web 2.0 technologies are in essence all about user-created content and control. Blogs, forums, photo and video sharing sites and social networks all allow users to create, collate and comment on content.

As I’ve said before, this makes social media a double-edged sword. I love the fact that social media tools act as equalizers between the ‘little guy’ and the ‘big wigs’ of the world. At the same time however, this means users have a much bigger hand than ever before in the kind of image your brand has online.

This is not something you can avoid. People will talk about …

We moved office over the weekend to a new location – about 500 metres from the old office!

Our new address is:

Level 3, 534 Church Street,
Richmond, 3121,
Victoria.

We are actually on the same level that was previously inhabited by Firemint, and directly below us is Groupon Australia.

Lets hope some of the magic rubs off hey?

Have you ever wondered how closely Australian fast food advertising matches the finished product?

Take a look at the infographic below to see how your favourite food matches up.

Embed This Infographic:
<a title="Advertising versus Reality with Australian Fast Food" href="http://www.eventarc.com/posts/2011/12/12/advertising-versus-reality-in-australian-fast-food/"><img title="Advertising versus Reality with Australian Fast Food" src="http://www.eventarc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Eventarc_Topfive_Advertising_Vs_Reality.jpg" width="600" height="2615" alt="Advertising versus Reality with Australian Fast Food" /></a>

While social media tools offer a plethora of ways to improve and enhance your communication with people and the interactive possibilities of your event, the nascent state of this technology means there is still a lot to learn about how to use it best.

Before you take to your next event with QR codes, shareable content and location-based promos, take a look over these all-too common social media marketing pitfalls to be aware of.

Hashtag takeover

A popular way to use Twitter’s hashtag feature is to publish a live stream on your website of …