Event Promotion

[Lexie Linden]

How about some advice and best practices related to event promotion?  Any thoughts or opinions anyone?

[Josephina Bonetto]

I am finding that so-called event spamming groups are becoming increasingly less effective, probably because all members are advertisers and the ones who aren't have notices turned off.  The SL official event listing is ok but I release my schedule monthly which means I can no longer list a legitimate month in one sitting as only 5 events can be listed in a 24 hr period.  I am finding though that there are less spam events, so maybe it is just a trade off.  I am a 1.23 LL Viewer user mind you so I cannot vouch for the accessibility of events displayed in search via V2.

I use my groups, one pay per notice group, my subscribe-o-matic (which rarely bears fruit these days) and hope for the best.  I am trialling the Second Life advertising beta this week to see how effective that is but the cost is a bit prohibitive for club owners with very little income, so it might not be done every month.

I use Avatars Events (free) and I am about to advertise on SL Universe (free event forum and paid banner ads) and a radio station (paid) too.  I do attempt to maintain a Facebook Fan Page and a Twitter account, although I don't want to spend all my time listing events in a zillion places with no reward.  I want to work smarter, not harder and I find Google calendar particularly useful for this - I have a Google event board in my club linked to my Google calendar and it is also embedded in the clubs website.

[Lasher Oh]

How about bringing back a proper classified section. LL in  their infinite meaness have crippled event organisers by removing decent resources. And even worse for places that  happen to have been forced into the Zindra ghetto.

^L^

[Josephina Bonetto]

Yeah I have to say running events has got far harder than it used to be due to diminished visibility in search, events disappearing when I know I've listed them, things like that, niggles adding up really.

[Jura Shepherd]

If you are a club or any other venue with frequent events, i really like what Josephina has done by having a website/blog as an info-hub.

If possible, the home page should be done "feed" style so that there's always current content to give a sense of something happening. The teleport button or link should be prominent and up top. Any off world ads or social media postings should point to the blog rather than a slurl (the exception would be event listings that are specifically for sl events).

If you're thinking that you don't have enough stuff happening to do a content feed, you probably do. Basic info on up-coming events is fine, but it need not be dull. If you are a live music venue, you can talk about the artist, have the bio/samples, or have a mini interview. You can also do event follow-ups. For example: if you are a contest club you can have a pic and a few words from the winner. Taking a few pictures during an event is actually great because you can post them the next day along with people's names. People will develop a habit of checking your blog after an event because if there's one thing all us SLers love, it's looking at ourselves and seeing our name in print. Anyway, you get the idea. Be creative and personal.

[Gemini Enfield]

I've been running a club in SL for over 5 years and we have 3 to 5 events a day. The recent changes to event listings has made my job incredibly difficult. The limit of 5 events within 24 hours is not workable for many event organisers. Personally I don't think there should be a limit at all, if you have an event you need to list it. We are after all providing content/entertainment for the general populace and at times it feels like LL are working against us and making the experience laborious. I don't believe that is the case, but it does feel like it.

Occasionally I have events to post for projects other than my club and with the limits I have to ask someone else to post and from experience, I can't rely on others to meet my meticulous exacting standards. I need 2 extra people to post all the events for the club to get around the limitations and reliability is always an issue. I was recently forced to take time out and on my return I found that most events weren't listed at all. It comes down to the old adage 'if you want something done you have to do it yourself, only this is currently impossible.

What we really need is:

1. An overhaul of the existing posting system
2. A calendar based system
3. Reoccurring events as many events happen weekly (perhaps a repost every 4 to 6 weeks)
4. No limits on how many events you can post
5. Improved events searching based on tags

The above is a shortened wish list of a sort which I'm skeptical I will ever see fulfilled, it feels like LL are not listening and would be over the moon to be proved wrong.

Please, please, please fix this and renew my faith. 

 

[DogWomble Dollinger]

I have organised a fair few gigs myself.  To give people an idea of what has worked for me, I'll post a quick list of what has worked for me.

- Events Listing Posting.  This is something that has worked well for me in the past - outside of my friends list, it was my main promotion medium that I used.  However, you have to know how to use it well - the problem is that it does get "spammed" a bit, which makes it difficul to get your event noticed. Make sure you choose wording that stands out, try and find a category that fits the event and also doesn't get too many spammy type events.  What also helped me is that my events ran at times when things were a bit quieter events-wise.  This is something to aim for if you can, but this may not be practical for all people.

- Get your friends involved.  Again, you don't want to spam them, but if you're running an event and some of your friends might be interested, let them know about it.  It can sometimes help to have a few friends there as well, not as a "traffic gaming" thing, but if people come and there are already people there that are chatting, having a good time, etc. they are generally more willing to stick around.  And it might eventually help build a small community around what you're trying to do, which can provide a good source of regulars that will keep coming back.

- In-World Groups.  Personally, I've found the "promotion groups" a little touch and go.  On some occasions, I seem to get some attention from them, but other times I've barely had a nibble.  if you are helping improve on an existing venue, or building a venue in an already established community, find out if there's a relaed in-world group.  These people already have an interest in what's happening on the Sim, and you often only need a small nibble from the members the first couple o times to get things started.  Once you've built this up, particularly if you perform across many venues, this can help create a following of people that might be hapyp to check out these differen venues.

This is jut my 2c worth, YMMV.  This has, with a bit of effort and forethought, worked for me in the past.

[Loki Eliot]

Promoting events is real hard in SL as there is no great working way to communicate. To be able to promote your event you yourself have to become a person with many contacts and followers. 

1) Twitter. many SL users use twitter or Plurk. Join these and use the #SL #Secondlife hashtags to get it out there. Again this only really works if you have quite a few following you to retweet your event.

2) SL events Guide. Im not sure who actually uses it, i know i 've never really got to the SL users guide to look for an event. But some do.

3) Community Group Chat. If it works Use group chat and plan the message for moments when there are many in the group online. Group notices if you have permission to send notices often get lost in Viewer2's poor UI.

4) Get high profile people who have many friends to come along. They can sometimes bring their friends and followers.

I would like to see a totally revamped friends communication framework that allows a more twitteresque approach to notices and sharing  events, places and content. Something like THIS

[Miyo Darcy]

Event promotion starts to be effective when the events are interesting and if the event holder or dj´s and what ever make a lot of friends because of that fact. I know some DJ´, singers or guitarits who have a real huge friendlist. They just call the full friendlist and those peoples drive in more traffic by the own friendlist. Something like viralmarketing.

I also thing those groups arent effective these times as there are really only peoples who want to advertice. Same goes to product and service advertice groups

[Ciaran Laval]

An Events listing forum would be useful, limited to premium or concierge members perhaps, with a limit of two events every 24 hours.