The Shimmy, Shimmy Social: Promoting Your Festival Affiliation via Social Media

My Twitter workshop partner, Stephanie Michelle Scott, and I are fans of Burlesque.  We wanted to offer some quick tips to advertisers and vendors of the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival  as to how they could promote their VIBF involvement (as well as Burlesque in general) via social media.

Photograph by Foxtongue Photography

Here are our suggestions:

By showcasing VIBF and Burlesque content you can have something interesting to talk about and engage upon, while subtly mentioning your involvement.

1) Keep your Twitter account active! It’s the perfect time to revitalize a dormant account. If you tend to feel you have nothing to say – well now there’s plenty! So get back to tweeting!

Things to keep in mind:

• Twitter works best when you talk to and mention others’ content) and only occasionally promote yourself (the general rule is 80-90% promotion of others and 10-20% self-promotion).  So do spend the bulk of time talking to people and reposting interesting content.
• Link your promotional posts with your VIBF involvement. (For instance, how are you participating in the VIBF? E.g. is a performer wearing your fashions? Which ones will they be wearing? You can post pics of those photos onto your Twitter feed. You might also wish to highlight those performers.)
• Also, pay attention to other content being mentioned about the festival (you can search using http://search.twitter.com/advanced). You might do searches for VIBF or #VIBF (in the hashtag section) or the complete phrase Vancouver International Burlesque Festival
• We’ve also started a Twitter list of people involved in the Vancouver Burlesque scene.  Check out what they have to say about the fest – or in general. (More cool people? Let us know and we’ll add them)
• Remember to tag all your VIBF-related Twitter posts by placing the designated hashtag for the fest somewhere in any of the messages.  (It might be #VIBF – but I’m not sure, so ask the organizers.)

2) Interface – employ Facebook!

Remember to:

• Update your fans! If you have a Facebook Page, remember not only to post content – but also to send an update to your Facebook Fans (Go to “Edit info” and then click on “Marketing” in the left-hand column. “Send an Update” will be the last options).
• Don’t be shy – tell people that your supporting the VIBF. If you post this message you even remind even those you know about you of your efforts – and you encourage them to spread the message to their circle.

3) Be engaging!

Critical:

• With social media you are looking to create interaction – so don’t just post content – ask questions. (You can also get information – even about what people like most about you!) Think of interesting ways of interacting with your audience.

4) Try running a contest.

Have a few tickets to the VIBF that you are planning on giving away? Why not run a quick contest?

Some thoughts:

• The easiest contests to run are ones where people can just enter their name for the draw. You can make a simple form via Google Forms to get entries.
• If you have a blog you might just put up a quick post and ask people to comment to win. (You might want them to also “like” your Facebook page in order to enter. (e.g.))
• You might just run one for your Facebook fans – ask a question (e.g. “What are you excited to see at the Fest?” or “What do you plan to wear to the fest?”)
• Perhaps try a Twitter contest. Perhaps there too you might ask a question and get them to answer in order to enter.
• Or you can go more complex on your blog and ask for photo entries or video entries.
• Remember to promote your contest on all your social platforms in order to get maximum exposure.

5) Find cool content!

Stumped for fun burlesque content to link to via social media?

• Look at the list of performers and hosts of the VIBF: You might try a search for any of them on Google for articles about them, videos etc. (use advanced search to narrow down content). You might also type in “Twitter” next to their name in the search to get some interesting content (Such as )
• Search for “Vancouver Burlesque” or “Vancouver International Burlesque Festival” at Flickr photos – there’s loads of fun pictures to link to!
  
• Search Google for “Vancouver International Burlesque Festival 2011” and you’ll turn up content about the fest. Or you might simply Google “Vancouver Burlesque” for general content about the scene. (e.g.)

6) Watch what others in the scene are saying.

• As above,  we’ve started a Twitter list of people involved in the Vancouver Burlesque scene so if you’re looking for cool content about Burlesque, these people likely have it. Retweet them!
• Similarly, look some VIBF related Facebook pages to see about content you want to share (e.g. VIBF’s FB can be found at: http://on.fb.me/vibffb ). Go there and you’ll see some great stuff such as a recent post about a workshop that the East Vanity Parlour girls will be putting on.

Those are our tips – what would you suggest?  Do you have some good tips for sponsors of an event etc.? Please share your ideas in the comments.  Cheers!

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Note: Our next workshop is on May 21!  To register for Twitter Parlour: (Twitter for Your Unique Business) Workshops (we’re currently rebranding 🙂 go to http://twitterforbusiness2.eventbrite.com/

Here’s a cute post about how to tease on Twitter: “How to Tweet Like a Burlesque Dancer“.