Sponsors and organizers of live events have captive audiences for several hours. During these events hundreds or thousands of photos, tweets, videos, and status updates are generated but are dispersed throughout the Internet. The brands do not participate and in fact completely lose contact with all of the attendees who just had a great time together. And the attendees don’t have a unified place to share their experience. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Marketers are starting to understand that there are ways to increase the value of their live event marketing spend by leveraging the tools provided by social media. The campaign Nike ran in Indonesia to leverage their sponsorship of soccer matches is a good example of this. When you see innovative companies like GetGlue increasing engagement around TV viewing you realize that the surface has barely been scratched when it comes to live event engagement.
An excellent post on how social media improves sporting events highlights some examples of what is being done today to increase fan engagement. However, there is so much more possible as these engagements are fleeting and scattered. What is needed is a central hub for all the social media activities where all of the participants and fans can build a community and have a meaningful dialogue that can be referenced back to easily over time.
There is a lot of innovation going on in the live event space and leading the way are those in the ticketing sector. Eventbrite and Ticketfly are using social media to create a legitimate threat to the 800-pound gorilla known as Ticketmaster. Both of these companies have excelled at making the pre-event experience a great one for all involved. Some social media marketing campaigns are beginning to happen during events. And there has been no focus on post-event engagement. What a missed opportunity.
Tags: engagement, event, social media, socialmedia