I have covered the “why” elsewhere in my PodcastYourConference site and in various presentations and Webinars, but here is a quick list of the reasons why you should consider incorporating social media into your event planning.

• Running an event blog, or blogging about the event on your regular blog, will help to publicize the event among potential registrants.
• Tweeting about the event can do the same. In fact, Twitter, which encourages re-tweeting, may help your message spread even more quickly than will your blog. Of course your content has to be interesting. You can’t keep rebroadcasting the same “Hey we’re having an event” message.
• Ditto with building your presence on Facebook or any other venue where your audience gathers online.
• Pre-event podcast interviews with key speakers offer potential attendees, exhibitors and sponsors a glimpse of what they might be experiencing in your event’s keynote presentation, workshops, breakouts or other sessions. You’d be amazed at how much interest you can generate with a 10-minute audio podcast.
• Suppose you’re running an annual event, and your members, employees or customers are traveling from all over the world to be there. Do you think this is an opportune time to capture audio and video conversations, presentations, event feedback and so on? In my humble opinion, YES! The cost of recording, editing and publishing this content is likely to pale in comparison to your total event budget. USE this content now and in the future. Repurpose it. Repackage it. Make the most of it!
• If you take a few minutes to create an event hashtag (such as #iabc09), you make life easier for those who are blogging and tweeting about you. You also simplify your own tracking of the conversations about your event. Do you care what people are saying before, during and after your event? You should. This feedback is real and unvarnished, and can help you to organize even better meetings in the future.

Social media can help you to create buzz, boost registration numbers, foster a sense of community among attendees, entice exhibitors, and create relevant content for your Web site and marketing efforts.

Remember: Conversations about your organization and your event are happening, whether you’re listening to them or not. Be a part of them. Doing nothing is not a viable tactic.

It’s very tempting to record a slew of audio and video before or during your conference and just slap it up onto your Web site. Why is it so appealing? Because it’s so dead easy. Easy for you. But you’re putting  a burden on your audience by doing so.

Let’s put yourself in the shoes of the potential attendee, OK? He’ s thinking of registering for your All About Widgets conference, which is just 90 days away. So he sits down with a cup of coffee to listen to your pre-conference audio. And what does he hear?

• Lots of introductory babble that adds zero value.
• One speaker is very loud and the other speaker is barely audible.
• An interview guest who is obviously very smart, but who starts every sentence with a big “Uuuuummmmm.”

How long do you think he’s going to sit there and listen?
Instead, what if you took the time to:

• Edit out the Ums and Ahs.
• Trimmed the useless introductory fluff.
• Evened out the volume so that the sound levels are consistent.
• And maybe added a high-energy call to action at the end, to encourage the listener to register, maybe with the added enticement of a promotion code?

Think about it. If you want your organization to appear professional, and to be aware of the needs of your audience, you’ll take the time to edit, edit, edit. My example is about audio, but the same rules apply to video. In fact, with video, you have even more to think about. We’ll cover video editing in a future post.