Contemporary Issue 2: The Impacts of Social Media on Events

(Image from TheDrum.com)

The Power of social media is becoming more apparent in 2013 than ever before. Within the events industry, social media is becoming an important tool in engaging a wider audience as well as allowing people to give feedback on the event and to share their experiences whilst the event is taking place. Lee et al. (2011) argue that this development of social media has challenged event managers to rethink how they market their events.

Xing Events' 2013 Social Media and Events report found that over 80% of event organisers are planning to increase their social media marketing measures in 2013 compared to 75% in 2012. They argue that social media is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool with 645,750,000 twitter users worldwide and 135,000 new people signing up everyday. The findings from this research concluded that one of the most important objectives of social media activities is to increase awareness of individual events as well as of the brand. As a result, it can be argued that event managers need to ensure that their social media sites are run efficiently and to meet the audience’s needs in order for them to gain more followers and increase awareness.

Below are the three social media websites, that I believe have the largest impact on the Events Industry as powerful tools for the organisation and running of events. These social media websites can also play an important part in the success of my future career in the events industry.

Facebook

Number of active users: 1.11billion

Impact on the Events Industry: The introduction of Facebook pages for companies and public figures in 2007 saw Facebook change from a way of socialising with friends to a way of advertising and raising awareness of different companies. In addition, with the event invitation feature on Facebook being introduced in 2010 , everyone could become an event organiser. Facebook has played an important part in the organising of events as part of my degree as it has allowed us to create event pages which we can then invite our friends to and consequently works as a way of advertisement. 

Twitter

Number of active users: 645,750,000

Impact on the Events Industry: As a user of twitter myself, I have had experience of using it whilst attending an event. The hashtag feature allows users of twitter to be able to search different topics and then read all the tweets that are relevant to this. As an event manager, twitter can play a big part in receiving feedback from the audience as they can read what people are saying during the event. In addition, by setting up a twitter page at the beginning of the planning stage, the audience can use twitter to ask the organisers any questions or suggest any ideas and this in turn may see the number of attendees increase.

LinkedIn

Number of active users: 259 million
Impact on the Events Industry: As an events management student, the importance of having a LinkedIn account has been emphasised by many of my lecturers due to the many features which can help me in my future career within the events industry. Through having a LinkedIn profile employers can view the skills and experiences of candidates as well as allow users to network and find jobs. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, the impact of LinkedIn on my future events career is that it could assist me with finding a job and networking with other event professionals, rather than act as a way of promoting an event that I am managing.