With tens of millions of active, loyal users and an unprecedented ability to differentiate users based on their interests and affiliations, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace offer a rich opportunity for events to increase their audience, focus their offerings, and extend the reach of their event beyond the convention hall. Social networks represent five of the top 10 Web sites in the world; the rest are search engines pointed largely at the content on those social networks. And you can't afford to be absent from them any longer.

For the uninitiated, social networking sites are Web-based services that use software to facilitate online networks of people who share common interests. Also called social media, they expand the “social” reach beyond the network into the vast realm of Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, and video, as well as photo-sharing sites. They're where the traditional broadcast media model transforms into a true conversation.

A recent development in the space is the idea of the platform, a common software standard upon which to build new services that leverage this social information. This trend, led by Facebook's Developer Platform and recently joined in a big way by the Google-led Open Social system, has extraordinary potential. The social networking sites benefit by expanding their reach outside their walls, and third-party developers benefit by being able to reach into and interact with the voracious users of these sites. As we explore ways that you can, should, and (really) must leverage social networks to market and enrich your events today, consider that this is just the beginning. Securing your footprint and strategy today will lead to even greater opportunities tomorrow.

Listen Up

One of the most important and immediately valuable benefits of all this social interaction is the ability to put an ear to the track and learn what consumers are saying about the products and services that matter to you. Services like Technorati, TechMeme (for tech-specific topics), and Google's Blog Search allow you to search the blogosphere for brand or event mentions. The Twitter microblogging platform also presents a rich lab for learning about current attitudes surrounding an event or product. Using an adjunct service like Summize to search Twitter allows you to quickly see all mentions of a certain term. Listening is how you find your target audience within the social network — and how you find out what they are looking for from you. Once you find them, you simply respond to their ideas, address their concerns, or offer them an incentive to attend your event. This can also help head off a potential firestorm or allow an organization to ride and enhance a wave of good will.

A recent example of this is Comcast quickly swooping in to put out a fire started by blogger/mogul Michael Arrington. Arrington complained, on Twitter, about a recent outage and in short order he was contacted by a Comcast rep in order to sort out his issues. Comcast has since staffed a Twitter account (comcastcares) to directly interact with Twitter users.

Build Awareness

One of the simplest and most effective methods of increasing one's social media footprint is to dive right in and join in the fun. Depending on the show's demographics, adding accounts at services like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Upcoming can allow direct interaction with prospective attendees. As long as the interaction is within the communities' written (and unwritten) guidelines, interactions on services like that can generate impressive results. Using tags (basically, keywords used by these systems to sort and group information across the site), conversations about events on Twitter can be easily tracked across multiple users by using Web applications like Summize or Hashtags.

Setting up events on Facebook offers a great opportunity to build awareness. As each user indicates they're attending an event, the news percolates around their network, showing up in each user's news feed, a river of updates about a user's network. It serves as a passive but yet personal recommendation of the event.

Sites like Flickr and YouTube can also build event awareness. Using agreed-upon tags in both systems and “pools” on Flickr (multi-user collections of images) all of the cameras and camera-phones in the audience can be put to good use documenting the ins and outs of a show. This can enhance the show experience for attendees and can create interest in people who missed the show (“Wow! That was a great talk.”) to make the trip the next time around. You can even create your own YouTube channel that features all of the videos from your event.

Audience Acquisition

For many people, the Web is the first avenue of research into any purchase, including an event registration. Presenting solid, enticing information about a show in channels that appeal to the prospective attendee can help to grease the wheels of commerce. Events are social monsters — people want to hang out with friends, people of interest, and people who can help them in their careers, so putting a human face on an event and linking out to the social Web (a speaker's Facebook, Twitter, and del.icio.us pages) can help create that social atmosphere around a show long before the doors open.

Another method of creating a social buzz around an event is to create badges, mini apps, and widgets that readers can post to their profiles or blogs. Leveraging the Facebook Platform or Open Social allows your customers to act as your best salespeople, proudly spreading the gospel of your show to the world.

Dell's Bob Pearson recently claimed to have raised an additional $500,000 in revenue directly attributable to offers made via Twitter. To target customers, Dell utilized services from Seattle-based Visible Technologies, who scanned the conversations flowing through Twitter for users talking about Dell-related topics. Why shouldn't your organization be able to do something similar?

Let's Talk

By definition, social networks are all about communication. For an event, they can provide invaluable pathways for conversation and information exchange. These communication pathways also represent the most direct way to convey the value of an event to prospective attendees. Event organizers should start by writing a blog, updating it frequently, responding to comments, and syndicating that content into social networks. An RSS feed of news from an event blog can easily be added to Facebook, for example. That way, every time you post to your blog, it automatically adds a link to the post to your Facebook page. Let's hope some of your enthusiastic attendees will share your blog feed on their pages as well.