Inbound marketing is a powerful force for promoting your business, no matter what industry you’re part of. But it can also be a strong complementary force to outbound and guerrilla promotions for your next event. Hubspot published a great step by step guide to help anyone use inbound marketing to help promote and publicize their event.
I’m calling this post “How to Promote an Event With Inbound Marketing… Even More!” because I want to take their 7 Steps and give some ideas about how to build off of those essential steps. So thank you, HubSpot for putting down the inbound marketing strategy for your event in such an easy-to-understand format! And to those of you reading, I hope my ideas help you build out your inbound marketing strategy even further.
How to Promote an Event With Inbound Marketing… Even More!
1. Set up your event website.
They recommend setting up your website early and making sure it has a link to it so that it gets indexed- Do it.
Even More: Set the website up with socialized sharing in mind. Make sure that the website, the pages and the taxonomy are SEO friendly, and include buttons for sharing as part of the structure of the website, not something you add in later.
2. Leverage your network.
They recommend using the people you know to get the word out- Do it.
Even More: Whether you have an event planned right now or not, start sharing links and information about the events that other people in your network are having. That way, 6 months from now when you need to start asking people to tweet, post or write about your event, you can say “…like I did for yours last year” instead of “I promise I’ll help you out next time.”
3. Get great people involved and leverage their networks.
They recommend leveraging the networks of your speakers- Do it.
Even More: Create content that highlights those speakers, not just your event. Imagine how happy a speaker will be to ask their network to promote their speaking engagement (that is your event) rather than Your Event (that they are one part of).
4. Reach out to relevant communities.
They recommend finding your audience and speaking to them there- Do it.
Even More: Find those audiences now and be a contributor to the community. In the same way that helping others in your network will make it easier to ask for help when you need it, announcing your event to a community you actively take part in will be better-received than showing up just to talk about what YOU’RE up to.
5. Create a community around your event.
They recommend Facebook, Twitter and blog posts- Do it.
Even More: Don’t just use the same content for all three- take the time to understand what works for each one and make sure that the content you create around your event for that community suits that particular media.
6. Publish lots of content and encourage others to create content.
They recommend creating a lot of content- Do it.
Even More: Make sure that you don’t just start creating content without an overall strategy. Realize that the kind of content you should be creating two months before your event is different than what you create and put out there a week before-hand. Plan that out a few months in advance so that you have a roadmap and don’t have to take the time to come up with strategic thinking in the midst of that crazed last month leading up to your event.
7. Use an event tag for all media published on the web for your event.
They recommend creating an event-specific tag that you use across medias- Do it.
Even More: Make that tag something that makes sense. If you use something like IMC10, it will make sense to only the people who know what your event is already. Yes, you need to think about length for Twitter, but should Twitter determine the tag you use in the other 10 media outlets? I would say no. InboundMktgConf2010 would be better.
Do you have further recommendations about what we can do that is “Even More” for an inbound marketing event strategy? I’d love to hear them in the comments.
– Scott James
