Using Social Media to Promote Your Webinar

By Robert Hadley
Robert Hadley is a business report and blogs via Contently.com.

One of the great things about promoting a product or service via the Internet is the ability of online promotion to go viral, which means that your original post can be shared exponentially throughout social networks.

For example, when you post a webinar announcement on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, all your connections can share the announcement with their connections, who in turn can share it with their followers, and so on. Pretty soon you will have created a domino effect that can reach a far wider audience than even a carefully targeted email.

Here are a few ways to leverage the viral power of social networking to spread the news about your webinar.

Send an Invitation

Both Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to create and promote events. Facebook’s event module lets you post event details and invite members of your network. Although it’s primarily geared torward in-person events, there’s no reason you can’t list the webinar’s landing page as the location and send invitations just as you would for a party.

LinkedIn’s event function is a bit more flexible, as it provides a field to include the webinar’s landing page, plus a checkbox to designate virtual events.

Although LinkedIn won’t send email invitations, it will post the event in your status updates once you’ve checked the “I’m attending” option on the event creation page. You can also notify your first-degree connections by clicking the “share” link in the event’s overview tab.

Go Viral

Whether you decide to use the event features of Facebook or LinkedIn, you can still publish a link to your webinar’s landing page in the status updates on either platform. Once you share the link, your entire network will see the promotion (depending on your privacy settings).

AnyMeeting has a feature called “Social Notifications” that allows users to connect their account with Facebook and Twitter. Once you’ve enabled this feature, whenever you designate a meeting as public, AnyMeeting will automatically post a link to the registration form on Facebook and/or Twitter.

If you have brand ambassadors — key employees who can spread your message — make sure they post the webinar link in their status updates and share it in any relevant groups they belong to. Different groups have different rules about promotions, so it’s a good idea to either consult the rules or email the moderator for guidance.

Tweet Your Own Horn

Although Twitter restricts posts to just 140 characters at a time, it can still be effective for tweeting links to your seminar’s Web page. To take full advantage of Twitter, learn to exploit the power of hashtags. Twitter hashtags are code words (preceded by the “#” symbol) that designate your posts for keyword searches. For instance, if you include the hashtag “#webinar,” in your tweet, anyone searching for that hashtag will see search results that include your tweet.

Ensure a Smooth Landing

So you’ve promoted your webinar on the three major social media platforms, but how’s your landing page, the website your potential customers see when they click the link you’ve promoted virally?

Make sure everything is clearly labeled, such as a large “Register Now” button or a link to speaker bios in large type or a contrasting color. Remember, potential customers scan things on the Web, so keep your information in bite-sized, noticeable chunks and you’ll avoid unnecessary confusion.

Social Media Integration Helps Spread the Word on Your Webinar

Imagine you’ve created the perfect webinar. It is well put together, keeps the audience engaged and provides information that is valuable not only to those in your company, but the industry as well. So, the next step is to get people to attend. You are ready to send out invitations, and you know everyone in your company will sign up, but you will still have a lot of open seats that you hope to fill with outside influencers and thought leaders in the industry.

Did you know that you can you use social media to spread the word and promote your webinar? AnyMeeting’s social media integration features allow you to automatically promote your scheduled event on your social media accounts. The first step is to set up your Public Profile, which provides the tools you’ll need to easily share and promote upcoming webinars. This feature allows you to create a personalized page you can share, with information about yourself and the upcoming webinars you will be hosting. You can also add key words to your profile page to help boost its search engine ranking.

Once you have created your profile, you can connect your Facebook account and Twitter stream to your public profile. Then, when you are setting up invitations to your webinar, you can choose the option to make the webinar public and AnyMeeting will automatically post information about your webinar on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Before you know it, your webinar will be filled to capacity with people eager to learn from you.