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Welcome back to our Social Media & Events Report 2012 series. This time we’ll give you some usefull tips about how to use twitter within the event organiizing industry.

There are more than 140 million users of Twitter worldwide, including four million in Germany. The microblogging service is growing in importance as a marketing tool for events and is an established component in an integrated social media strategy. Twitter can be used in all three phases of event management.

Planning phase

During the planning phase ahead of your event, you should create a Twitter account and a hashtag (#RelevantPhrase). This is typically the name of the event. Always check on Twitter to make sure the hashtag isn’t already in use elsewhere. Actively publicize your event and the hashtag you’ve created on your homepage and via other existing communication channels. Hashtags have the benefit that they turn up information about the event in a bundled manner, and because interested parties and participants can tweet about the event using the hashtag themselves. Twitter offers a hashtag button that you can integrate onto your event page so that each tweet posted via the button automatically includes your event hashtag.

Twitter has also announced what will be known as hashtag pages, which will be of major interest for events. Hashtag pages are dedicated to a specific hashtag and can be edited and adapted by an admin. The first hashtag page is dedicated to #NASCAR. You can see it at https://twitter.com/hashtag/nascar.

Twitter behavior is independent from the size of the event; what’s important is how much information you as the event organizer can make available on Twitter (see also the amiando study on “Twitter for Events“). If you post a high amount of information, then many users can re-tweet that information as well.

During the event

Prior to the event you should tweet all important information, always in 140 characters or less, such as the event location, the precise time and the program. Post documents about the event on Twitter.

During the event, you should create a Twitterwall (such as twitterwallr.com) that shows all the tweets containing your event’s hashtags in chronological order. Post during the event about lectures, topics, program changes or general impressions of the event. Those interested in your event then are informed immediately, even if they haven’t visited it. Non-visitors can also re-tweet interesting discussions. Create flyers for the event informing visitors about the hashtag. The more tweets that are posted about your event, the better. Stimulate Twitterers to post about your event, such as through automatic inclusion in a sweepstakes for those who tweet.

What’s important is that you as event organizer follow your tweets and respond immediately to questions and critical commentary. You can send this on Twitter as direct messages that are not public visible, but the person must be following your Twitter account and vice-versa.

After the event

After the event you can for example make available free interviews, images and video material so that your event stays a topic of discussion. The percentage share of Tweets is somewhat higher after the event than before the event, due to the provided info materials that your visitors can download (see amiando study “Twitter for Events”).

• Twittergrader

Check on Twittergrader how influential your Twitter users are (http://tweet.grader.com/)

• Build relationships

Pay attention to your power users. Power users post a great deal of content on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and have a very high number of followers or fans. Establish relationships to your power users, since they can serve as valuable opinion leaders for your events.

• Greater awareness

Place your event on the social media event marketing platform TweetMyEvents (http://www.tweetmyevents.com) and generate greater awareness.

Did we make you curious about the Social Media & Events Report 2012 ?
Download the complete Report for free in following languages:
English: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012
German: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-DE
France: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-FR
Spanish: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-ES

For network specific tips about Youtube, click here.

We are happy to announce that the German Industry and Commerce in Hong Kong is using the amiando registration system for various events in 2012. Our current clients in Asia run prestigious events such as the local TEDx events in eight Asian cities, Techcrunch’s Disrupt Conference in Beijing last year and Success Resources’ National Achievers Congresses throughout Southeast Asia.

From a start-up company to a successful international player

Over 180,000 events have been organized worldwide with amiando, and more than 80,000 event organizers use the online event management tool. The Asia-Pacific region shows huge potential for amiando. Singapore in South-East Asia and the cities Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing have become popular spots for international conferences and meetings. The amiando representation office in Hong Kong serves all business clients in the Asia Pacific region, such as the Institute for Infocomm Research Singapore, the Asian Chapter of the Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (SDIWC) and CMC Markets, which have been using amiando for many years for several events and conferences.

The success story in Asia: Hong Kong

Since the opening of amiando’s first representation office for the Asia-Pacific region in Central, Hong Kong in 2011, amiando continues to write its success story in Asia. Compared to the previous year’s figures, amiando realized an enormous sales growth of over 100% between January and May 2012 among its global customer base. But most promising is the focus on internationalization in 2012: significantly more events were organized with amiando in the Asian and English-speaking markets compared to previous years. This leads to an increase of more than 135% in sales volume in both Asia and the UK.

amiando: The perfect event registration and ticketing tool for the Asian market

amiando’s unique selling point in Asia is its flexibility and customizability when it comes to event registration and ticketing. Event organizers can process payments for their events in all Asian major currencies. The system can be furthermore set up bi-lingual in any Asian language, making it possible to offer an online registration in English and Chinese.

The German Industry and Commerce (AHK)

The German Industry and Commerce (www.hongkong.ahk.de) is the official Delegation in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. More than 1,900 German Companies in Greater China are members of the AHK. They are offering services to advocate Sino-German business cooperation and support companies with market entries, searches for business partners, training and development as well as business events. The next AHK event on amiando, organized by German Trade and Invest and German Industry and Commerce will be the “Smart Business Solutions for Hong Kong Companies” in September.
“We are very proud to work together with German Industry and Commerce in Hong Kong for their events. The MICE sector in Asia is one of the most dynamic worldwide and we expect this drive to continue – especially in the field of conferences and business meetings. The successful last months and acquisition of prestigious Asian key customers confirm that we made the right decision to open up the amiando office in Hong Kong last year”, says Boris Barreck, Director Business Development Asia-Pacific.

“We are happy to cooperate with amiando for our upcoming events e.g. the Smart Business Solutions for Hong Kong Companies. The flexibility and user-friendliness of the system lets us save valuable time and provides our attendees the convenience of a professional online event registration“, says Wolfgang Ehmann, Executive Director at German Industry and Commerce Ltd. Hong Kong.

Press Release: amiando continues its success path in Asia and wins The German Industry and Commerce (AHK) as a new key customer

7. August 2012 by Myriam August 7th, 2012 4:57 pmMyriam | Comments (0)

Munich – 07th August 2012 – amiando (www.amiando.com), a pioneer in online event registration and ticketing, is happy to announce that the German Industry and Commerce in Hong Kong is using the amiando registration system for various events in 2012. amiando’s current clients in Asia run prestigious events such as the local TEDx events in eight Asian cities, Techcrunch’s Disrupt Conference in Beijing last year and Success Resources’ National Achievers Congresses throughout Southeast Asia
read more »

Out of our series Social Media & Events Report 2012 we are going to present you network specific tips about Youtube, this time.

Planning phase

Did we make you curious about the Social Media & Events Report 2012?
Download the complete Report for free in following languages:
English: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012
German: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-DE
France: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-FR
Spanish: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-ES

Click here for network specific tips about Google+.

The Events of the Week center this time on events regarding music. A Summer Festival and a Songwriting Festival are presented:
On August 10, the second edition of the Arona Summer Festival will take place at the Estadio Olimpico Antonio Dominguez in Arona, Tenerife. The Festival possesses an impressive line up with artists like Avicii, Sean Paul, Nervo and many more. If you want to take part in the festival and combine good music with good weather click http://www.aronasummerfestival.com/tickets_eng.html for tickets and further information.

On August 12 – 17, the UK Songwriting Festival 2012 will be held at Shennanton House in Scotland. The Festival began in 2004 and is now in its ninth year. It’s a five-day songwriting course including lectures, small group playback and critique sessions, live band sessions as well as acoustic live recordings to take away on CD. Find out more at: http://www.uksongwritingfestival.com/

Welcome back to our series -Social Media & Events Report 2012-
This time we are going to present you some useful tips about Google+.

Google+, online since June 2011, is the newest of the social networks. With approx. 170 million users, Google+ has not succeeded in knocking Facebook off its perch as most popular network, but it has received a great deal of attention and is currently functioning as a parallel supplement to Facebook. The primary attraction is the Circles function that allows the user to divide up his or her contacts conveniently into groups. This means that any given posting can be shared only with specific contacts, avoiding sending too much information to contacts for whom it is not relevant. Depending on the type of your upcoming events, this allows you to target your message much more directly.

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Another blog entry out of the series -Social Media & Events Report 2012-. Learn more about how to adapt your social media strategy.

Posts based on strategy and plan

To successfully implement a social media strategy, it’s important to incorporate the time and personnel into your business plans and to compose a social media plan that lays out what will be posted and when over a specific period of time. This ensures that new content is posted on a regular basis. The plan should be oriented toward your other marketing activities and event planning, but nevertheless retain flexibiblity: if you discover a current, relevant blog article, you shouldn’t wait too long before sharing it with your channel.

Define clear social media objectives: which target audience are you seeking to address? How do you want to present your company? How do you react to criticism and other feedback? Monitoring tools are recommended to measure the success of your efforts. Some are free (such as Socialmention, Tweetdeck, Wildfire, Klout) and others are paid commercial products (such as Meltwater Buzz, HootSuite Pro, Trackur). Depending on your specific needs, it may be worthwhile to invest in a more full- featured tool with greater options for investigating the success of your social media strategy

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To keep the attention of your customers focused on your social media presence for the long run, it is crucial that you always have current, relevant content posted. This can be interesting blog posts, industry or company news, heads-up about upcoming events, photos from past events, or even infographics —the key thing is that your target audience feels personally addressed. It‘s essential that the content be kept up to date. Especially when it involves external content such as blog posts from the industry, it‘s quite likely that other companies from the industry with an overlapping pool of fans will already have posted a link if you wait too long. Be sure to post different types of content to stay interesting. Yet a happy medium should also be sought in terms of the frequency of posting: always keep the dialog moving, but do not overwhelm with information. Give your company a face and show your customers how things look ‘behind the scenes’ by posting photos from everyday life in the office. This will give your company character and makes it more sympathetic

Kipp Bodnar, a marketing strategist at Hubspot, postulated a “10-4-1″ rule. Don’t just promote your own events, but also those outside your company as well as industry-related content so that your users find your page interesting and ultimately subscribe. You should link 10 times to external content, such as interesting articles from industry bloggers, 4 times to your own content and one time to your own homepage.

Your social media strategy will be at its most effective when you involve as many people as possible with your entries through comments, ‘Likes’, ‘Re-tweets’ and ‘+1′s. The articles then also appear in the newsfeed of friends of your fans, drawing further attention to your brand. You should thus animate your fans as often as possible to take part: post questions, ask for feedback — have visitors to one of your event share their photos afterward, for example. This shows other fans not just the success of the most recent event, but also awakens interest in future events.

Did we make you curious about the Social Media & Events Report 2012?
Download the complete Report for free in following languages:
English: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012
German: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-DE
France: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-FR
Spanish: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-ES

For detailed information about importance and usage of social media within the event organizing industry, have a look at our last blog entry out of the series Social Media & Events Report 2012.

Spotlight: Mannifest 2012

30. July 2012 by Sandro July 30th, 2012 5:08 pmSandro | Comments (3)

On August 3-5, Mannifest 2012, the genuine home-grown festival takes place in Glen Lough on the Isle of Man.   Last year, the festival was visited by 7000 people, of whom many called it one of the most amazing outdoor music festival on the Isle of Man.  It is an all-family event, where young and not-so-young can have a great time by enjoying arts, crafts and entertainment.  Besides various music acts, activities for children and other sorts of entertainment are offered, too.  There are still tickets for all three days (no camping) as well as for the DJ night and the whole weekend (inc. camping) available.

Visit http://www.amiando.com/POUABNS.html for tickets or http://www.mannifestlive.com for more info!

In our first blog entry out of the series -Social Media & Events Report 2012- the importance and usage of social media within the event organizing industry is analysed.

About 1,000 event organizers have been asked:

What importance do social media have as a marketing instrument for event organizers?

Social media continues to have a high importance to event organizers

To determine the fundamental attitudes on the part of event organizers regarding the importance of social networks, the question was posed to them about how important social media are as marketing tools.

The answers to this question were unambiguous: 73% of respondents indicated that social media is “very important” or “somewhat important.” Only 10% saw social media as “somewhat unimportant” or “not important at all” as a marketing instrument.

This represented little change from 2011 — social media continues to remain highly important.

Summary:

The social networks continue to establish themselves as important communication channels for event organizers.

What social media channels are being used?

Facebook and Twitter remain the most important social media channels

Facebook remains the most frequently used social media channel at 84%, followed by the microblogging service Twitter, used by 61% of those polled. XING, YouTube and LinkedIn were also frequently used, with participation levels between 41% and 46%. What’s remarkable is the strong interest in Google+, with 36% of respondents reportedly active on the relatively new platform. One sees however that the network has been unable to date to establish itself as a competitor to Facebook, and is used as a supplemental network to Facebook, not a replacement.

The values did not change significantly since 2011, excepting that blogs dropped 6 percentage points.

Tip:

Determine where your target audience is to be found. You should definitely pursue a multi-platform strategy to increase your reach even further. Google Analytics for example offers an effective way to determine the origins of the visitors to your website. It is also helpful to search for participants in your events on the social networks to better analyze the activity of competitors.

Did we make you curious about the Social Media & Events Report 2012?
Download the complete Report for free in following languages:
English: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012
German: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-DE
France: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-FR
Spanish: http://info.amiando.com/social-media-report-2012-ES

Press Release: Social Media & Events Report 2012: How Does the Event Industry Use Social Networks?

25. July 2012 by Myriam July 25th, 2012 4:52 pmMyriam | Comments (0)

amiando (www.amiando.com), Europe’s leading tool for online event registration and ticketing published its new Social Media & Events Report 2012.

The report presents the latest developments and offers event organizers several simple and actionable tips for successful marketing of events with social media.

Inspired by the positive feedback regarding the Social Media & Events Report 2011, amiando once again decided to find out how event organizers are using social networks as a marketing tool. The comparison with results from last year’s report is particularly interesting and points out important changes. The report is based on a survey amiando conducted and had nearly 1,000 event organizers worldwide participate in.

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