I recently attended a fashion show where my fashionista daughter had two of her fashion items entered and as a proud father I came along to support and cheer from the sidelines.
My expectations of the fashion show were not high as it was only a local event in a regional city and we were not talking about the catwalks of New York, London, Milan or Paris. I did not for a moment think that it would be an event that should be more than just a nice outing with a dose of fashion.. boy was I wrong!!
The show had canapes, champagne and celebrities. It was sponsored by the major media and one of the largest retailer chains in the country and then the real ‘show’ began!
The lights dimmed and the ‘glamourous’ master of ceremonies came out to start the show and with that the DJ kicked in the sound as the the fashion models who were all selected from the local fashion college strutted their stuff.
The fashion that emerged was many including creative, beautiful, shocking and astounding. There was section for ‘recycled threads’ as well as swim wear, street wear and the red carpet. As I watched the show I thought “this is worth sharing” both from a personal view and as an event that is showcasing the fashion designers who want to get their name out there even if at this stage they are only amateurs. ( I did find out later that they had a Facebook presence)
The opportunity to market these up and coming fashion designers and provide them with more online exposure to take them to the next level was not optimized. So here are some ideas for creating and sharing content from an event for promoting your brand online.
1. Videos
Hand out video cameras to your employees to capture the buzz and the happenings as well as utilizing a video recording crew to record event. These can be posted on YouTube or submitted to an online social media Video distributor such as TubeMogul.com which provides a free service that provides a single point for deploying videos to the top video and social networking sites.
2. Pictures & Images
Create a Flickr account to allow attendees to submit photos to share. This provides crowd sourcing content that is free and remember that most phones now have high quality multi-mega pixel cameras. It does’t cost you a cent and provides your brand with more presence online.
3. Slideshare
Slideshare is a social media platform that turns your Powerpoint presentations, Word, PDF’s, documents and professional videos into slides for viewing online anywhere anytime. They can’t be copied but allows you to share the major points from an event.
4. Twitter
You can create a Hashtag for the event eg #fashionshow that allows you to see peoples reactions to the event in real time and to also create buzz about the event and your brand.
5. Blogs
Engage bloggers to blog about the event and you can aggregate their posts using a blog widget
6. Facebook
Create a Facebook page or group for the event to share updates before and after as well as being able to publish links ,images, videos and any other multi-media rich content
7. MySpace
Even though Myspace has been overwhelmed by Facebook in the mainstream sense a MySpace presence should be included if it a music or video centric event aimed at a younger demographic.
8. Website
Also don’t forget to publish content both before and after the event on your website. (It helps if you have a website developed using a CMS (Content Management System) that allows easy uploading of content without hving to know programming or HTML.
9. Digital Media Aggregator
Digital Media aggregation allows you the opportunity to provide a portal where all or most of your content from the event can be viewed
For more information and resources on how you can leverage your digital and and social media events see a case study by Alan Belniak on how he did it for his company PTC a global software company.
So how have you created and shared your event on social media?
