Boosting Your Event Strategy With Social Networking

Reap the rewards
The process of creating a social-networking ecosystem for your event is virtually free in terms of direct costs — and it isn’t nearly as complicated as you might think. However, keeping your presence meaningful and your target audience engaged once you’ve created your social hub is another matter altogether.

The rules of engagement are different on social platforms. People expect to be able to engage in open dialogue with each other, as well as your organization, on a fairly regular basis. Before you go down the road of creating your ecosystem, ask yourself whether you or others within your organization truly are ready to commit to learning about and keeping up with the social networking environment. If the answer is no, an option is to consider outsourcing the day-to-day maintenance to professionals. Whatever minimal costs might be associated with this maintenance will be well worth the investment. It’s a different kind of investment, but one that will pay off tremendously when it comes to driving grassroots participation in your next event.

Donna Wilkins is the president of Charity Dynamics, a provider of online solutions for nonprofit organizations.