Welcome to the 2nd installment of a new series of articles I kicked-off last month on the subject of how to promote your events online.  Part One was all about Twitter.  Last month I laid-out what I hope were some easy to follow and execute techniques for using Twitter to market your event.  Check it out now, if you missed it the first time!

As a general disclaimer, I should say that the methods and ideas I’ll be writing about in this series are not my own.  I don’t organize events.  What I know about promoting events online is 100% based on what I see users of Eventbrite doing.  Y’all are the amazing ones.  I am ever-in-awe of how clever and inventive a group of users you are.  My position here at Eventbrite affords me the opportunity to “snoop” on what y’all are doing.  And it is only for that reason that I have any insight into event marketing on the Web.  So, thanks for that!

This month I want to share a few tips for using Facebook to good effect.  But first I want to talk a little bit about the idea of creating “multiple instances” of your event on the Web.  Eventbrite recommends posting your event on as many other sites as you can.  We believe so strongly in the idea that we actually publish your event for you on a whole network of publisher partner sites.  At a minimum, you give a prospective attendee, whom you might not have otherwise reached, a way to discover your event.

On Facebook,  you gain that, but you also gain the opportunity to take advantage of a host of wonderful socialization mechanisms that Facebook has created especially for events.

The first step is, of course, to create an event page on Facebook for your event.  You just have to provide the basic details — when, where, etc.  And be sure to include a link back to your Eventbrite page in the space provided for a URL.  Once you’ve done this, you can proceed to invite people from your network.  But, honestly, that’s kinda boring.  You can do that on Eventbrite.  What’s really fun to do on Facebook with your event is to ask people who can’t come to your event to say they are.  This can include people who live too far away to attend, are celebrities, or just wouldn’t be all that interested in attending.  Especially desirable are people with big personal networks or networks with a focus on your event’s target attendee demographic.  Ask yourself, who in my network is friends with the people I’d like to have attend?  When they say they’re going, all their friends can see your event! This technique can be extremely effective.  Suddenly that “weak link” with half of IBM’s EMEA sales force in his network is your new best friend —

Another very effective technique is what I call carpet-bombing.  This is when you ask a small number of people who all share a lot of common friends to RSVP at once.  This can create the impression that an event is hot and that you should be sure to get in on what’s happening.  Say for example, you wanted to target Goodby Silverstein, all you would have to do is get two or three account managers and that popular admin to RSVP and you’d start an avalanche.  Here again, it’s nice that your friends can do this for you without actually having to show up or even buy a ticket, lol.

But perhaps my favorite Facebook feature for events is the ability to have attendees’ photo uploads automatically tagged to your event.  I love it.  Facebook let’s you assume that people who said they were going to your event, and who upload any pictures during your event or for a short time after your event, are uploading pictures from your event.  Facebook informs the uploader that [insert your event name] is suggesting a tag for their image.  This is, of course, great if your event actually generated many photographs and people are actually uploading them to Facebook.  But it’s also kinda cool because it let’s you “hijack” all the photo upload activity of anybody who RSVPed to your event.  This is a great way to extend the visibility of your event after the fact and prime future invitees.

Thanks again to all the Eventbrite event organizers who teach me something new every day.  We’ll see you back here next month.

Related posts:

1. How to promote your event online, part 1 — Twitter Lots of folks will tell you to use Twitter...
2. How to promote your event online, part 3 — email Giving our event holders the power to exploit email...