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Online PR and Viral Marketing Your Event

By: Sam Harrington-Lowe - Updated: 1 Feb 2011 | comments*Discuss
 
Online Pr And Viral Marketing Your Event

It’s no secret that these days the internet is probably the greatest source of unsolicited enquiries and potential clients. You need to have a web presence and your website should clearly represent who you are and what you do. But there’s more to it than that. It can feel like a potential minefield to some people, but online marketing and PR is vital nowadays. You need to make sure you’re in the game!

Your Website

Firstly, your website is crucial. It not only tells potential customers who you are and what you do, but it offers a way for people to find you. Think of the Yellow Pages book and how that used to work – you wanted a plumber, so you looked up plumbers and tried a few until you got the right one. Well the internet and your website work in exactly the same way, but on a global level. You need to make sure that not only does it represent what you do, but that it looks attractive, that it appeals to your target market. Do some research, engage the services of a good designer and make sure it’s fully optimised – ie, that it can be indexed on the world wide web and therefore visible to people searching for your services

SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimisation and is the first port of call for optimising your site. Unless you know what you’re doing here, you really need to engage some experts. It’s a specialised job but can make a huge difference to your ratings, and as a result, your position in the search engines. As with any supplier, get a few quotes, explore the success rate of the SEO companies you’re talking to by assessing some of the sites they’re working on, and once you’ve settled on the right people, they’ll be able to take you step by step through what you need to do to make your site as visible and findable on the web as possible. Within your budget of course!

Other Ways to Publicise your Site

Apart from doing the work on your own site, there are other ways to generate PR and therefore interest in your company. Paid for listings sites in the events trade or directory sites such as Yell or Scoot are valuable, but as with print PR, sending press releases to online magazines in the right trade will also help. They may run stories about your company, even link to your site. Get some research going to see what online presence you might be able to tap into. Look also at social networking sites such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr as they can really help raise awareness

Viral Marketing

This is a very specialised area and works along similar lines to social networking, except you aim to create something that many web users – not your usual market – also tap into, thereby creating brand awareness. It could be, for instance, something really hilarious that happens at one of your events that is captured on film and ends up being on youtube. Suddenly half a million people have seen it and heard your company name. Again, there are experts who can deal with this kind of thing, so unless you’re a whizz with this kind of thing, ask for help. Try your SEO company for recommendations as a first port of call

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