How to Promote an Event

The Journalistics blog ran a great piece today about how to use social media to market an event. Let's expand on that topic here and review how to use traditional media to market an event. Most situations benefit from a combination of both. Include as many of these elements or tasks into your planning as possible:

• Create a plan with a timetable. Events have lots of moving parts and if you don't have a large staff, you'll be distracted by the logistics and forget about publicity components if you don't have it all on paper with a calendar that reminds you when to do what.
• Incorporate newsworthy elements. Maybe it's the "first" or "world's largest" whatever, a local media personality as your emcee, or a celebrity speaker.
• Uncover and use all of your pre-event publicity angles. Those elements above are key here -- who cares if you've got newsworthy angles if you aren't using them to get media coverage? I was once responsible for planning and publicizing the first beach snowshoe race, a charity fundraiser sponsored by a beverage alchohol brand. It was covered by national TV media only because I alerted them.
• Make a pitch for on-site media coverage. It's too late to generate attendance at this point, but the exposure is good for your image, product, cause, or service.
• Look for ways to get publicity after the event, too. Hire a professional photographer to take candid photos you can send to weekly newspapers and add to your newsletter and Web site. Was it a fundraiser? Send a news release announcing how much money was raised and how it will be used. Did the event break records? Share that information with the press.

You can't afford to overlook either social or traditional media when promoting your event, so make sure your plan incorporates as many tools and tactics from both as possible.

Uncanny Publicity Idea

Need publicity ideas? Read the newspaper. I saw a great idea in my daily this morning for a publicity generator that "can" be implemented in just about any community.

The article is about a "Canstruction" event -- a competition to create architectural structures with cans of food that will be donated to the local food bank. (Read the "Can-do competition" article.)

While the food bank enjoys increased visibility and the more than 20,000 cans of food used in the event, it's not the only one benefiting from this activity. The site of the competition, an eclectic art gallery, is mentioned in the article as are the businesses that created entries. (It's a safe bet that the TV stations covered this, too.)

The Society for Design Administration can help you host one of these events in your community, but don't forget to use good media relations strategies to call attention to the event once you get rolling. Here are a few ideas for getting help for this or other events benefiting a nonprofit when you're not sure how to do this yourself:

• When partnering with the charity to assemble a planning committee, include a representative from a local PR firm willing to publicize the event as a volunteer. Make sure the volunteer is a publicist, not someone who works in advertising. They require different mind and skill sets.
• Recruit local media personalities as competition judges. They will help you promote it.
• Ask participating businesses to get their marketing people involved in promoting the event. Pooling resources will expand your reach and impact.

But back to that original thorught about where to find ideas . . . make it a point to read your newspaper -- and those in other cities when you travel -- for publicity ideas you can tweak or duplicate. They don't all have to have the charity connection this one has -- but that nonprofit tie-in sure helps.