Clients, as well as registration vendors understand the marketplace need for social media within the registration process. Incorporating online marketing tools, in addition to standard marketing tools to drive traffic to your event is an integral part of a well-rounded, multi-faceted marketing campaign. To stay current with this growing trend, many companies are turning to their registration vendor and InGo, a social media event marketing plugin, for assistance.
Registration Vendor Integration
Your registration vendor likely already has some social media integrations in place. The integrations may vary with each media outlet, however, each should be designed to link the attendee to the Client’s social networking sites, announce that they have registered for the Client’s event, and allow an invitation to be sent to others.
Examples of what these integrations may look like include:
Facebook – After someone registers for your show, they click on an icon to connect with Facebook. They can choose to become a friend or fan of your show and post this information to their Facebook page and their friends’ News Feed Wall. On your show’s Facebook page, fans of your event are able to see the friends they have in common with your show.
Twitter – After completing the registration process, a registrant can opt in and follow your show’s tweets. Twitter users can also tweet show related information and links to all their followers, thus promoting the event.
LinkedIn – Once the registration process has been completed, the registrant has the ability to join a LinkedIn show specific group that will allow them to see which of their colleagues using LinkedIn are currently registered for the show, as well as connect with other people attending your show.
Integration with InGo
As mentioned earlier, InGo is a social media event marketing plugin. You might be wondering what that even means. Well, InGo is a third party company that provides widgets (small chunks of code) to your registration vendor that get incorporated into your attendee registration websites. Their functionality allows for greater social media integration, including:
Social Media Login – The widgets give the attendee the ability to login to the website via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter; it speeds up registration by auto-filling fields with social profile data.
Social Posting – Attendees can interact via their social networks after they have completed their registration. They can post to their newsfeed, alerting friends they’re attending your event.
Personal Invitations – Attendees can invite their network to attend, based on targeted keywords and InGo’s socially-smart ranking algorithm.
Who is Attending – Attendees can discover who is attending your event, both in and out of their network and can invite new contacts right from your website.
In summary, social media is an essential marketing channel for trade show organizers. No matter which option you choose, it will make an impact. By encouraging attendees to promote the event for you, you’re creating pre-show buzz, increasing your recognition and building a social community around your event.