Social Media Comments and Your Event
Social Media can be a virtue or a vice for event organizers. On the positive front, event organizers can interact with their target market like never before. You can use target market interaction and feedback to build a better event. On the negative side, social media can be used to leave disparaging comments about your event. In some cases the comments might not be true or misrepresent your event. Even worse, negative comments about your event can show up on web sites that you have no editorial control over. If comments appear on a popular web site (a local news agency web site) they will probably get indexed into the search engines. Today people are apt to read something online and take it as fact without checking the facts.
Below you will find some suggestions on dealing with social media comments regarding your event.
Last week one of my clients held a big press release for their upcoming event. After the press conference the local media outlets published stories about the event. One local news paper has a web site that allows you to comment on their news stories. Because my client decided to change the format and location of their event, there were plenty of comments posted with the news story. The comments covered the whole spectrum from very positive to negative. If you’re an event organizer it’s hard to ignore comments about your event.
Addressing Comments About Your Event
You don’t need to get stressed about negative comments. Here is a simple process for spinning negative comments about your event to your advantage. Start by tracking down online comments about your event. You can easily do this using a Google Alert (Jenny B.). Google Alerts is free and allows you to leverage Google’s massive search capabilities. Collect all the comments about your event into a simple document. Organize the collected comments into positive and negative categories. Use your event web site to directly address some of the most prevalent comments. In most cases you can silence criticism by giving a straightforward answer to a comment or question. Consider addressing the most popular comments on a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page. You can even integrate the comments into your marketing. In most cases, it’s not worth your time replying to comments on other web sites. You’re better off addressing comments on your web site.
Whenever you read a comment about your event, stop and ask yourself “How can I turn this into a positive?” Like the old adage goes, “Any publicity is good publicity.” Find out ways to take the negative and spin it positive.
Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:
- Event Marketing: Do You have an Online Champion for Your Event?
- Online Comments About Your Event
- Advertising and Marketing that Sells
- Providing Massive Value in Your Marketing and Advertising
- P.T. Barnum on Advertising
- Why Well Planned Events Fail
- Turn Your Event Into an Experience
- The Event Promotion System
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