GoodDogz.org is heading into its “busy” event season, with four events between now and the end of the
year. As we move forward, we are looking at different ways we can promote these events online. We use both convention methods as well as our social media properties to push these events to our target market. As online marketing continues to PUSH to users (rather than trying to bring people to you), we find ourselves constantly changing our methods. Here is an example of what we are doing and some of the mediums that we are using.
One October 23, we are hosting our first Rock 4 Rescue benefit concert. It will be held at a local nightspot and will include 2 popular bands, food, drinks, door prizes, etc. Here’s our plan for promotion:
- Community Calendars – In our community, community calendars are key and always bring us a lot of traffic. They are easy to post to and reach a large audience.
- E-Newsletters – We will put out several e-newsletters to our subscribers encouraging them to attend.
- Blogging – We will blog about the event up to, during and after the show.
- Facebook - We are posting the event to our Facebook page as well as to our personal pages.
- Facebook Groups – We will also reach out to relative Facebook Groups in the hopes of generating more interest from our market.
- Twitter - Get ready, my little tweethearts, you’ll be hearing about our events shortly.
- Meet-ups – We are planning to push the event out to our local pet and singles meet-up groups.
- Member Websites – We will ask our member organizations to post the event on their websites and e-newsletters.
- LinkedIn - We will push this event out to our network on LinkedIn.
- NING - The event is already listed on our NING community and we will start sending out mass notifications to members of the network.
That is our starter list. Please let me know what avenues I might be missing as we are open to any and all forms of online exposure for our event!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What do you think are the most effective strategies for using social media to raise awareness about nonprofit events offline?
Hey Beth – if you are referring to promoting offline events using online mediums, that’s really what the post outlines. Our Rock 4 Rescue event is a physical rock concert that we’ve chosen to promote almost solely online.
We’ve found the most effective methods to be through our e-newsletter and social media properties – NING in particular. Because our NING community is relatively diverse (pet owners, pet seekers and animal welfare volunteers), we get the benefit of direct engagement with folks who may attend the event while generating a buzz with people who connect with other pet lovers everyday. It’s worked out well. We are still growing our community, but even with a relatively small membership, we are still reaching more interested folks than we did before we had the community.
I hope I answered your question (it’s been a long day.) =)
Let me know if I missed the mark.