7 Simple Rules to Make Your Events Remarkable!

I have written often on this blog about hosting events and using things like TweetUps to be a connector of people. I will not delve into the value of why you should do this. You should already know this.

But I will tell you a few simple rules that you should follow to make events promoted on social media more successful, and remarkable. And these are tactics I just used at a recent event. Last night in fact. Here is video evidence of the event:
[youtube=zHMXoh0cNt4,CENTER,480,4:3]
So, here are 7 things I learned while applying them to build this event. Modify as needed!

1. Make the event different. There are literally thousands and thousands of events promoted online each day. Make yours stand out. For me? We made this TweetUp a “punk” event. Oh, and we combined it with a champagne tasting. That’s a weird combo. People were wondering what the heck we were doing, and couldn’t help but be curious.

Todd, Stephanie, and Laurie

2. Partner with way cool people. In my case, partnering with co-hosts Stephanie A. Lloyd and Laurie Ruettimann made this thing easy. They are way cool people, with large followings of devoted fans and friends. People wanted to be a part of something they were a part of. In fact, my co-hosts are so well thought of, friends from several other states and even Canada flew in for the event. That sure helped make the story about this event more fun to talk about…

3. Encourage participation. Being an event with a DJ, we asked people to submit song requests. That was fun, and something a little different. People had fun remembering old punk songs from their youth.

4. Use other online applications to make it interesting and to advance the conversation. In this case? I used Blip.fm to tweet out cool and memorable punk songs to get people in the punk spirit.

5. At the end of the day, you still must get out there and encourage conversation. We spent a lot of time talking up this unique event. People were talking about it all the time on Twitter, and by the time the event rolled around, there was a lot of buzz. In fact, there were dozens and dozens of people tweeting things like “wish I was there” or “jealous, we’ll be there next time.” Those are good signs that you’ve generated buzz. It doesn’t just happen…

6. On event night, do something out of the ordinary. In our case, we also live ustreamed the event, so people not there could get a taste. That was cool and allowed others to participate from afar. (Randy Barnes helped us out on that one…)

7. Is there a seventh? Oh yeah, filling these venues to standing room only doesn’t happen overnight. I have been building my community for a long time. Stephanie and Laurie have to. Creating something remarkable is actually easy, just requires a little thought. Building a community that you can actually engage takes a long, long time. You might as well start. right. now.

Thanks to all those friends who were there. What other ideas do you have?

Tagged as: Atlanta Networking, Blip.fm, Building Community, CircleNomics ™, FuegoMundo, Laurie Ruettimann, Randy Barnes, Social Media, Stephanie A. Lloyd, Todd Schnick, TweetUp, Twitter