Is your organization or affiliate hosting an event? What are you doing to promote it?

At the recent Social Media for Nonprofits conference in DC, Angelika Lipkin, manager of Strategic Partnerships at HigherLogic spoke about promoting events with social media. I started off with my netbook in sleep mode because I figured I had this topic covered. Within minutes, I busily typing away because she had so many great suggestions.

To start, she recommended several social media tools to organize the event, including:

• Skype for conference calls
• GChat, Tokbox for audio, video conversations
• PBWorks, a Wiki collaboration tool that is good for online team collaboration and publishing guest and speaker lists
• Google Docs, Google Calendars
• Basecamp for project management
• Calendar Hub

Once you have the event planned, Angelika said, “Promote and distribute using as many distribution channels as available.”

She suggested promoting a Twitter hashtag and asking for retweets. After the event, post photos to twitpic.

During the event, she suggested live blogging to create buzz. Or, take notes on a blog platform and once the seminar ends, make the blog post live. Another way to increase visibility is to conduct quick video interviews with attendees and speakers and publish.

High-speed wireless is considered the standard for most conferences. She noted that pre-social media, “You put away your phones and laptops. With social media, we want you all to be tweeting and writing on your Facebook status updates.”

Following the event, Angelika recommends:

• Writing a blog of reflections
• Hosting a web page where users can add their social media
• Sending thank yous
• Uploading photos to Flickr account
• Posting videos

What suggestions do you have for promoting events with social media?