SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FESTIVALSGreat ideas for creating content for your

Festival or Event

NEW FESTIVAL – YEAR 1

Behind the scenes – who’s involved, why, what’s their interest – ask questions – shoot video?

Countdown to the Festival – what’s happening this week etc

Who’s coming to the Festival – mention the names, suppliers, producers, businesses etc who’s going to be involved

Photographs showing stalls set up at other festivals

Telephone interviews – write articles Find inspiration from magazines

SOLVE PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS How to get there? When is it on? What happens if the weather’s

bad? Where should I park? Accommodation nearby? Where to eat in the area? What do I need to bring? Timings for special items – e.g.

demonstrations, workshops Ask people what they need to

know via Twitter and Facebook – then answer questions

ASK YOUR PARTICIPANTS

Why did they choose your event? What events have they attended recently? Where are they going next? What made them start up their business? What new products do they have? What do they do with their products? Who’s their best customer and why? Why do they like attending events? What’s their biggest business challenge? How does their product help their customers?

ASK YOUR VISITORS

Recommendations from happy visitors can be used to publicise next year’s event

Criticisms from unhappy visitors can be used to make next year’s event better

Give someone the responsibility of interviewing visitors

Create videos where you talk to your visitors Take photographs of happy visitors Make sure you have permission from them to

use data/ pics/ comments collected

LISTEN TO OTHERS & SHARE CONTENT

Set up lists of people who write well about your subject Use Google Reader to follow blogs or websites

(being closed – create lists? Evernote?) Use Google Alerts to find content using key

words Create interest lists on Facebook and look at

them for content others are sharing Create lists on Twitter and go there first for RTs or

to interact Comment on articles and use a link to your

Event’s site to draw people to read what you’re writing Remember to be helpful when doing this, otherwise

your comments may not pass moderation

GET OUT AND ABOUT

Attend trade shows, exhibitions, networking events

Take photographs Ask questions of people you meet Write about what you’ve seen, learnt,

discussed Record audio clips with your smart phone Take a video recorder/ smartphone

STAY INDOORS & USE YOUR LISTS

What’s stopping you from getting out and about today? Could be lots of others are indoors because of this too.

A couple of examples follow: Ask a question Share some useful information

QUESTIONS

A simple question can work

Single update via FB – auto-feed to Twitter – creates conversations

SHARE USEFUL INFORMATION

SHARE USEFUL INFORMATION (2)

SHARING USEFUL INFORMATION (3)

SAVE INTERACTIONS AND RE-USE

Handy tools: Google Chrome Browser + Add-on “Awesome

Screen Shot” – can screen print and annotate with arrows, text, comments Make sure you use the ‘blur’ tool to blank out names of

individuals who may not want to be shown Google Chrome Browser + Add-on “Hootlet for

Hootsuite” – for creating Tweets from browsing Save articles you find for later: Evernote Web

clipper for Google Chrome – can also send interesting things by email

PicMonkey.com – use to change photographs – add text, make Facebook banners

A NOTEBOOK?

All the digital ways of organising your content can leave you baffled – you could just try writing things in a notebook!

But remember to take the ideas and add to a plan at some point…

KEEP PLANNING, AND REFINING THE PLAN

Work out how to get more from a single piece of content by sharing it in different ways E.g. A recipe – could form the basis of an article Could be a video Could be a series of photographs or a finished

dish Photo album on Facebook Instagram pic Board on Pinterest Share in groups on Flickr

Link to Facebook Series of Tweets

GET BUSY, GET SOCIAL

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