Your Holiday Party, Your B2B Social Media Marketing Opportunity
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011Do you plan to promote your B2B company’s holiday party through social media this year? Does your social media marketing strategy aim focus on lead generation? Are you inviting current, future or potential clients to your big bash? Then buckle up team, you have an awesome opportunity to optimize your event marketing strategy with social media!
5 ideas to help with your event planning using social media:
1. Create online invitations (you can also send print ones if you like to keep it traditional) that include links to your social sites. Incorporate a call-to-action above the links that encourages your guests to follow your social networks and join in on the holiday fun leading up to the event.
2. Blog about it on your company page and share through social media. Invite media or industry bloggers to the event to get more press afterwards. Evoke a sense of anticipation and urgency in your expected guests by giving clues to a special guest or party surprise via your blog and social media.
3. Engage your fans leading up to the event through social media. Even if they are not invited or cannot attend the event you can still include them in the festivities. You could create an advent calendar in Wildfire leading up to the big day with industry tips or holiday haikus written by employees. Allow fans an opportunity to be a part of the experience by a polling fans on Facebook for decor theme ideas. Creativity is key!
4. Take photos of party attendees and post an album to Facebook after the event. Set your album tagging preferences to fans only. Announce via your social networks that you have posted the album and let fans tag their pictures. You will encourage attendees to “like” you on Facebook in order to tag photos. It is likely that if they attended your holiday party, they will have no qualms with liking your brand on Facebook and hearing more from your company after the event.
5. Create an event hashtag that is relevant to your brand and live tweet from the holiday party. Play with your target keyphrases when crafting creative messaging. A party is a good time for many to discuss the event via their social networks and share their experiences with their followers. Having a dedicated hashtag can help you capture, organize and follow-up with the conversation during and afterward. You can even include an event tweet digest as part of your party re-cap blog post!
Do you have more ideas for how to promote your holiday party through social media? Share them with GPO through Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Happy Holidays!





