Recently I had a conversation with someone I had done some consulting work with; the conversation was about how they had recently promoted an event they hosted. It turns out they promoted the event in only two places, on their website’s news page and on Facebook.
The result?
Within 7 days they had half filled the event (50 people), and after 2 weeks the event was fully booked (100 people) with a waiting list.
They had intentionally only promoted the event this way as an experiment, testing some of what I had said to them in the past. For an event like this they would normally have used traditional letters and or newsletters sent via Royal Mail. This would have taken longer and cost much more than the “Free” it cost to promote the event online.
Their news page is syndicated to a news aggregator for their target audience, so they new just posting it there would give it a wide audience. The aggregator also sends updates to Twitter, so they knew the information would end up there too. Facebook provided easy access to people who were already self-identified as “fans” and/or members of a group around their organisation.
The syndication and free dispersal of their news is important here, it allowed their message to get passed further than they had the ability to do themselves. The news was syndicated by the aggregator and that in turn “tweeted” the news. This was “re-tweeted” by people. Re-tweeting is important as it is pure “word of mouth”. When people retweet a message it means they are basically endorsing the message.
So if someone influential decides to re-tweet your message, your message gains from their status amongst their followers. Which may well be substantially higher than your own. Syndicating your news (via RSS for example) so other sites can use it has the same effect.
What the story tells you should be this:
The easier you make it for people to use your information and to use it in their own way, the more your information will spread and promote your event, product, cause or services.
