Tag: social media
Bandsintown: the #1 rated concert app for iOS and Android
One of the most beloved forms of entertainment is live music. Did you know concerts can be enjoyed throughout your city everyday? ABCey Events loves to stay in the know on all the upcoming concerts, events, and happenings here in the Bay Area, and this is concert app is great for that! Bandsintown is also user friendly on both iOS and Android! This awesome app makes concert searching a breeze by allowing you to track your favorite artists and receive alerts when they are in town!
Features of the concert app, Bandsintown
Scan Your Music Library
Make finding your favorite bands in town an easy process! This free app scans your music libraries, like Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, Deezer, and Rdio to find the artists and genres you enjoy. Also, this app tells you about great artists and DJ’s headed your way. Because Bandsintown connects with your Facebook and Twitter, you can discover similar artists to the ones you love!
RSVP to Your Concert Event
Bandsintown lets you to keep track of the shows you have RSVP’d to. Wheather you are just interested or actually attending, this app keeps you in the know of events coming up! Once you’ve RSVP’d, your calendar will sync with Bandsintown so you never miss a show! Don’t forget to share your concert details with your friends on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Get Your Tickets
Once you browse Bandsintown to find the upcoming tour dates of your favorite artists, you can easily purchase tickets through hundreds of ticket sites like Ticketmaster, LiveNation, and Eventbrite. Additionally, they offer in app purchases to make it extremely easy to get your reservations on time! If there is any issue with ticket sales, there is a Feedback button to report any ticketing mistakes. Bandsintown works with Desk.com so you get fast and helpful service for any “concert going needs”.
With living in such a passionate age for live music, this concert app works hard to connect us to the artists we love! Do you love Bandsintown as much as we do? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter.
5 Interesting Ways To Use Videos For Your Next Event!
Videos may seem a bit overrated, but as technology continues to explode, there continues to be new and exciting ways to use video at events. Videos can be used for a variety of purposes in ways that you may have never known about, or tried yet. From live streaming, to projection mapping, video competitions, user generated videos, and event recap videos, ABCey Events has compiled a list of 5 interesting ways to use video for your events!
Incorporate videos into your next event with these 5 ideas!
1. Live Streaming
Live stream your event! This is a great alternative for those who couldn’t purchase tickets or just simply couldn’t make it. By allowing viewers to watch in on the fun, they’ll want to come to your event even more the following year. In addition, you’ll be able to boost attendance rates by allowing people to view your live stream. Use apps and features that are trend like Facebook Live or Periscope to live stream you event! If you want to learn more about Facebook Live, stay tuned for next Tuesday’s blog!
2. Video projection mapping
Video projection mapping has the capacity to transform any object into a screen. Forget flat projection, as projection mapping has the ability to take a real-world object, such as a building, and project onto its walls without any distortion. Events combine motion graphics, 3D animation, and an occasional bit of video that playfully highlights or manipulates a building’s usual geometry.
3. Video Competitions
Have guests form a team or form a team! Then, have them do a fun activity around the venue for a small prize. One of the participating team members can record their team’s adventure on their personal mobile phone while doing the event. Then, have the teams post their video on social media to get validated to win. This can help guests network make new friends, as well as show other people how fun your event was!
4. User Generated Video
Get your attendees to voluntarily help you do product reviews on your latest product. You can let them try it out and, as an incentive, give them a small prize or a sample of the product afterwards to further promote your brand! Make a promotional video for your product afterwards!
5. Event Recap Video
End your event off with a recap video of all of your event highlights. These highlights help to show guests the best and the most successful activities from your event. Attendees will be able to remember all of the fun that they had, and can share with co-workers, friends, and family. This video can even be used to promote future events as well, or to help build your brand!
Will you be using any of these video ideas for your next event? Comment below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Monday: Share in a Better Way with Buffer
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on, or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events! In today’s Startup Monday, we highlight Buffer, a smarter way to share on social media!
Being an event professional can be overwhelming at times. To top it all off, you have to worry about social media marketing? The struggle is real! The downside of posting on social media is that you can’t be on all the time, so being able to schedule your posts can be a huge help. Well, what better way than to do all that than with Buffer? Buffer helps to manage your social media all on one platform by scheduling posts and is great for teams!
Features of Buffer
Schedule Your Posts For Later
This is the most important feature out of everything that Buffer has to offer. Ease your mind by scheduling your social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google Plus! You can also make sure your team shares posts during specific times to drive the most traffic to your website. Stay on schedule and keep those posts coming!
Collaborate With Your Team
Avoid posting at the same time on social media with other team members! You definitely don’t want to flood your followers with a bunch of spam. Instead, collaborate smoothly and effortlessly! You’ll be able to see what your team members have lined up and can easily manage collaborations.
Identify Insights
Get the stats you need to track how you’re doing! Buffer helps you to easily visualize your social media growth. Through this, you’ll be able to track reader engagement and trends. This will not only let you know what your readers like, but also helps you to get to know your readers better.
There are over 2,500+ businesses using this web and mobile app already! Will you be using Buffer next? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
5 Tips to Successfully Use Instagram for Your Event Business
Instagram has easily become one of the most popular social media apps. In 2016, it’s estimated that 500+ million people use Instagram monthly, 300 million daily, and 58% of Instagram users are 18-29 years old. Why is this important to Event Profs? Because this means Instagram can allow you to reach a larger audience, including millenials!
There are tons of research on the Instagram usage and the ways businesses can utilize it. Also, it’s important to stay up to date with what’s going on with your instagram account. So ABCey Events has created 5 tips to successfully use Instagram for your event business!
1. What to post
First, you need an Instagram account! If you don’t have one, just scroll down to #5 for tips to create the perfect account. Okay, you have an account or just created one, but now what? What do I post? hint: See below to see what types of content to post!
Types of Posts
1. Have a story: Let your followers feel like they are a part of your business and on the inside of the event action with story-like posts! However, don’t post straight advertisements. Instead, have a variety of images from selfies to video interviews. There is no limit to the content you post!
Similarly, studies suggest users want to experience the story rather than see plain objects. Salesforce found most users liked, “amusing, creative, beautiful, and inspiring” content. So maximize your Instagram reach by captivating images, posting entire event processes, features of event speakers and famous attendees, inspirational quotes, and especially human faces!
2. Relatable posts: Keep followers by posting stuff they can relate to! By fusing scenes and possible scenarios that can happen in everyday life with your products and services, followers can see how useful your products and services are!
https://www.instagram.com/p/0tpeJfAUUf/?taken-by=nike
3. Business posts: Advertise your business by posting your sponsors, events, and brand. Do this by sharing images about your sponsors in colorful and fun photos. Additionally, try to get other users, special guests, and famous people to post/tag/hashtag about your event and company. More and more people are basing their decisions on what they see on social media. Therefore, you can grow your business by having ambassadors give you some exposure!
But be careful! No one wants their entire feed filled with obvious advertisements. Learn about event marketing on Instagram below (#4 Instagram for Events).
2. Strategic Posting
Previously, we mentioned that Instagram accounts are more successful when the types of posts are different. But here are other things you can do to boost likes, follows, and comments!
1. Editing your posts: Studies have found what specific aspects of a post make them more popular. They found more people like photos with the Mayfair filter! Also, the 2nd and 3rd most liked filtered photos are #nofilter and Inkwell, respectively. In addition, you’re more likely to get likes on images that are brighter with a single dominant color, especially blue, and background space than others! Don’t forget to use Geographical locations and connect with users by a shared location. Check out Curalate’s full study for more tips.
2. Posting times: Don’t pester and annoy followers! If you are posting multiple times a day, spread them out. However, most studies suggest posting only 5-7 times throughout the week. Specifically, your best bet is to get the most likes by posting on Wednesday from 5-6pm! Additionally, don’t stress about posting right on time and schedule posts with apps like Hootsuite and Schedugram.
3. Gain followers, grow your business
1. Instagram interaction: By interacting with users, you’re sure to gain and keep followers! First off, you can simply ask questions and inviting captions that lead people to comment. From re-gramming someone’s post related to your business/event, tagging companies, responding to comments, commenting on and liking posts, and giving shout outs to your loyal followers, show your followers you care and value their support!
2. Spoil your followers: Reward your followers well by posting announcements, contests, and special offers! You can have them follow, like photos, comment, hashtag, and tag your account to be entered to win prizes and special offers! This encourages people to follow you, as they will be the first to see when you are holding contests. Now you have followers promoting your event and business to others!
4. Instagram for Events
Now, for all you event profs, we have Instagram tricks to make your next event a success!
1. #Hashtag: Make sure you use hashtags to help people discover your Instagram. Use both specific hashtags and popular hashtags so people can find your event/company easily! One study found that interactions increased with 11 hashtags, but most studies suggested using 5-10 hashtags. If your choose to include many, hide them by commenting your hashtags or hiding them many lines below your main caption. This way followers don’t get annoyed seeing them!
2. The Event: You can use Instagram to entertain your attendees and market your next event! Encourage users to post images and include your event specific hashtag in the caption. Then, companies like instafeedlive, will display them on screens around the event, making your guests feel special!
In addition, by simply using your event hashtag, your guests can leave your event with memorabilia! Printers, like Photoboxx and Luster, scan Instagram for your event hashtag and print the images out instantly. Also, you can allow guests to print a postcard and polaroid picture when they hashtag their photos! Learn more about them here. So give your event and company immediate publicity and get these tools at your next event!
3. Event hype: When showing the story of your event, there are tons of things to capture! Post about the event before, during, and after to keep the event fresh in your follower’s minds. First get them excited with behind the scene images of the venue set up with your event team hard at work! Moreover, use Instagram to not only remind followers when tickets go on sale, but also hype up attendees with event fliers and countdown day photos. This makes them feel like they are right in the middle of the everything happening at the event!
5. Creating Perfect Profile
Your profile is extremely important as it’s how they judge your account! Therefore, you need to be sure that your Instagram looks like something they should follow.
1. Your Bio: First, create a bio description that is short, fun, and interesting. But it still needs to say your business name or who you are, what your business does, and make it unique!
2. Get them to your website: If you didn’t know, links on your photo captions don’t work. Thus, the only link to get people to your website is in your bio. So make sure you include your website link, and any other informative names you want people to search and find you by (ex: Event Planner).
3. First impression/Profile pic: Along with photos and your bio, users see your profile picture first. Get a good quality photo of your logo or a picture that represents your company to bring in more followers!
How are you going to use Instagram at your next event? Tell use in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter. Also, follow us on Instagram!
#TechTuesday: SummitSync
#TechTuesday highlights the best and brightest ideas in the tech world. ABCey would like to recognize these up and coming technologies for their innovative ideas and impact on the event world!
Networking is an essential part of the business world. When it comes to events, meetings and conferences, networking helps to develop meaningful relationships and connections that can unlock future business opportunities. However, when at a conference with thousands of attendees, finding those connections can sometimes be nerve-racking and just flat-out awkward. SummitSync is the solution to that problem. Like Tinder for conference apps, it brings the fun and excitement back into networking, making it more efficient and easy.
How it works.
First you sign up with your LinkedIn account.
Then you can choose which conference you are attending and in which city.
Once you have your selected conference, you can scroll through profiles of event attendees.
Swipe right if interested or left (not interested).
And just so swipe lefts don’t get too awkward, the app only allows you to connect with attendees that reciprocate your interest.
Once a connection is made, you can then message through the app and plan a time to meet at the actual conference.
SummitSync is transforming the way conference attendees engage; making it easier to discover and develop valuable business relationships. Gone are the days of countless handshakes accompanied by awkward and forgettable conversations. Instead, build those relationships beforehand and spend less conference time worrying about making the right connections and more time engaging in the actual conference.
Planning on using SummitSync before you attend your next conference? Let us know on Facebook and Twitter!
#TECHTUESDAY: SKIDDLE- Weekend’s Matter
#TechTuesday highlights the best and brightest ideas in the tech world. ABCey would like to recognize these up and coming technologies for their innovative ideas and impact on the event world!
“A small fish in a big pond” is how any person can feel living in a large city, especially San Francisco! The “Things to do” lists extends for miles, but still some remain unaware of the events and excitement occurring a few steps from their door. Skiddle recognized this detachment and brought a resolution with their Weekends Matter app! Before we even go into the deets, this event library includes more than 100,000 events at any given time! Combining that stealthy number with the additional features, it’s no question why this app is featured on this week’s #TechTuesday!
It’s a Friday night and there’s nothing to do- until you open up your Skiddle app and find all of the events occurring within your location! Events range from anything as large as a music festival to something as simple as an art exhibit. The beauty of this app is that it identifies with all interests, which is why it has such an extensive gallery. Don’t feel like scrolling through an entire archive? That’s okay! You can search events by date, location, category, what’s trending, and even Skiddle’s recommendations!
Every once in awhile there’s an event that’s so good it requires you to pack your things for a few days and explore a new territory! However, planning the housing and transportation can be a little strenuous especially when it’s a group. If you’re looking for simplicity, Skiddle has a search feature to scope out the nearest hotels to your event venue. Still confused on how you’ll get to the actual event? If you’re looking for a lift, Skiddle is integrated with the Uber app (first ride is free for the newbies!) or if you’re within walking distance and choose to sightsee it offers directions to your event location!
Looking for some new music to listen to? This app has access to music clips via Spotify to give you a taste of an artist before purchasing any tickets! Once you find your new favorite artist, you can track them and receive alerts when new events are announced. When your event is finally available and you’re ready to purchase tickets, don’t worry! There are no booking fees with this app and ticket delivery is instantaneous!
Why we love Skiddle Weekend’s Matter: Learning new things is what keeps us young! This progressive app introduces users to a range of events that extends beyond their regular “going out” vocabulary. Discovering new music is as easy as a click, which can inevitably lead to a random night on the town to experience something different! It’s exciting to see how many avenues and options are literally at the tip of our fingers, and how simplistic it’s been made for our convenience. This database was made for enjoyment and that statement is clear with the ease of it’s accessibility!
So, where are you headed next? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Spotlight: Snapcastr
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
A growing trend that has been sweeping almost every event blog is the necessity for audience engagement and interaction! Conferences, Festivals, and Sporting events all call for larger scale audiences that must be enticed to attend, excited through out, and anticipating the event return for the coming year. So, the question is, how do we as event planners create this buzz? This Monday, we would like to highlight Snapcastr, a tech-driven company that provides all of these solutions through their social media platform!
THE BUILD UP!
Before we get to the main attraction, we must have a plan of action, and Snapcastr certainly does! Their #Hashtag Campaign supplies companies with clear marketing and event strategies from the very beginning to ensure that promotion is being maximized. In addition, their Social Event Display optimizes on audience connection. These event displays are customizable to create a unique and exclusive feel that can educate and boost audience interaction! By the way, sponsors they did not forget you! These displays have a space for your logos to market your companies and thank you for your support!
WE’VE ARRIVED!
Integrating social media interaction at an event is no longer a question, it’s a MUST. Snapcastr’s Live Social Wall enables guests to feel connected with their live tweets, posts, and shared experiences utilizing the hashtag you created with the #Hashtag Campaign! However, it doesn’t stop there.
Hosting a sporting event anytime soon? The FanPhoto feature creates guest incentive to tweet and promote your event at a chance to be featured on their team’s video board or Jumbotron!
Not sold yet? We have a few more to share! The Leaderboard feature highlights your top fans, top contributors, and/or top influencers! This is a great way to recognize your fans for their dedication or your contributors and influencers for their amazing support!
Have an opinion you want to share? Twitter Polling enables guests to participate in polls concerning your event, which will not only keep them engaged, but it will give you some great insight to their interests and what they’re looking for!
SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!
One of the best features of this company is the data capabilities that come with it! With all of these social media platforms being utilized, moderation and control is a necessity, and Snapcastr provides it. Interested in knowing your guest’s thoughts? The reporting features enables you to measure fan impact based on conversations. As well, you can monitor the growth of your social media accounts with real time analytics. This capability is a great way to track your success and pinpoint any problematic errors to ensure growth for the upcoming year!
What’s your favorite feature of our Startup Monday featuring Snapcastr? Let us know in the comments below or message us on Facebook or Twitter!