Event planning final

Social Media Director Best Practices

Sarah Parillo Event Production 3/27/14

Table of Contents Prologue .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Job description ................................................................................................................................ 3 Place in hierarchy........................................................................................................................ 3 Mission statement ....................................................................................................................... 4 Responsibilities ........................................................................................................................... 4 Goals of social media ...................................................................................................................... 5 Complete this before Event Production ...................................................................................... 6 Timeline .......................................................................................................................................... 7 In-depth description of tasks ........................................................................................................... 9 EDMC Guidelines ................................................................................................................... 9 Setting up email ...................................................................................................................... 9 Setting up social media ........................................................................................................... 9 Using hot links ........................................................................................................................ 9 Post templates ....................................................................................................................... 10 Weekly blog checklist ........................................................................................................... 16 Analysis: What worked and what didn’t ....................................................................................... 17 Tips ............................................................................................................................................... 18 The pages ...................................................................................................................................... 19 Contacts through social media ...................................................................................................... 40

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Prologue My name is Sarah and I am the Social Media Director for the 2014 Art Institute of Seattle’s (AIS) fashion show, The Fashion League #CreateYourLook. I am responsible for promoting ticket sales, sharing show information and updates, and creating hype through our blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The best parts are that this gives the opportunity to share the work of talented AIS students and allows every degree program the chance to shine!

Links to pages: WordPress blog: http://thefashionleague.wordpress.com/ Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/AISFashionLeague Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AIFashionLeague Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fashion_League Instagram: http://instagram.com/aisfashionleague The primary elements of this document are: 

Job description



Place in hierarchy



Mission statement



Responsibilities



Goals

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Work that needs to be completed before the Event Production course

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Timeline

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Detailed description of tasks & how to be successful

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Analysis of efforts

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Tips

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Job description The role of Social Media Director falls under the Front of House (FOH). I post to all social media pages daily. All posts need a link to Ticket Leap and have the CreateYourLook hashtag.

Several times a day I check WordPress, Facebook, and Instagram to see if there are any questions or feedback that other users have posted. The day of the show my responsibility was to take photos to share on social media and post the winners on Facebook at the end of the evening.

I also helped FOH set up and prepared the seat plates with mail merge from the seating chart.

The social media “group� began as only one (me) and I do not recommend this. Social Media Director should have one or two assistants that are assigned specific pages to maintain. Early in Event Production I recruited one assistant, Tili, who managed the Twitter page.

Jobs I completed outside of this role include ticket sales, weekly contribution checklists, contacting potential sponsors, and generating a list of Seattle fashion bloggers.

Place in hierarchy

CoProducer

FOH Director Social Media Director Social Media Assistant (Twitter Mgr)

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Mission statement By engaging our audience through multiple social media channels we are creating excitement for the upcoming show, becoming a reliable fashion news source, and increasing ticket sales.

Responsibilities From day one we are told to SELL TICKETS, which makes the push for ticket sales on social media the No. 1 priority. Including links to Ticket Leap and providing our audience with attention-grabbing, excitement-building information about the show is necessary to push sales.

Constantly evaluating the success of posts is important. Why? Well, because there is no need to post things that aren’t engaging to readers, of course. WordPress and Facebook provide data that can be useful. Unfortunately, Twitter and Instagram don’t have this data, but you can gauge by “retweets” and “likes”.

Other responsibilities are to stay on top of social media trends by continually conducting research and increasing readership by creating a posting schedule. This is ours: Social Media Channel

Frequency of Posts

Blog – WordPress

1-2x per day

Facebook

1-2x per day

3-5 tweets & retweets;

Twitter

2-3 conversations daily

Instagram 1-2x per day

Types of Posts Ticket sales, weekly giveaway, quote blocks, fashion facts/news/polls, themed posts (who’s in a league of their own), silent auction items, team interviews, campus news Linked to blog post Linked to blog post & Fashion League news, ticket sales, interesting local information, fashion articles found around web, retweets of followers Share images of fittings, quote blocks, designer sketches, venue, fashion designs

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Goals of social media Primary Goals Promote ticket sales The main goal for the event production group as a whole is to push ticket sales. Our social media team has the advantage of directly connecting to fashion bloggers, fellow students, Seattle businesses, and other style-savvy consumers through our social media channels.

Increase readership Increasing readers and promoting ticket sales go hand-in-hand. We promote ticket sales daily, but if we don’t have anyone to read them we aren’t going to make any sales! So we had to push everyone in the class to spread the word and brainstorm ways to increase our fan base.

Secondary Goals Share the event planning & production process The event production team started out as the event planning team. We were just a big group of fashion marketers and designers gathered in a classroom, sharing ideas about how we could make an amazing fashion show. We have come a long way since then and I think we can all agree that it’s nice to have some of our progress catalogued and shared.

Putting our work on social media has also given us the opportunity to gain our readers interest and showcase some of our skills. There is already some curiosity and excitement brewing when a person sees that this is the “largest student-led fashion show in the Pacific Northwest”. To build on that excitement we offer a front row seat to some of the behind-the-scenes action, like photos from fittings and sneak peeks at silent auction items.

Promote student work The students need love too, right?! After all the hard work that students have put into this show they deserve some recognition, and possibly some shout-outs to businesses that they are interested in working for.

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Complete this before Event Production  Read and follow the EDMC social media guidelines. A dated copy is in the bible. See if there is an updated version available.  Create the email and pages. They have to be APPROVED before any posting can begin.

(Share web addresses and login information with instructor and fashion department director. This quarter it was Ali Basye and Emilia Valle.)  Start building your audience.  Start compiling photos of classmates.  Generate post templates.

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Timeline There are several tasks that can be completed to prepare you for Event Production. You can follow the checklist I provided on page 6. The rest of the tasks should be performed on a weekly basis at varying times.

Maintaining the social media pages requires your attention every day, sometimes when you aren’t expecting it. Setting aside one day every week (preferably a day when you have at least 12 hours free) allowed me to put together post drafts for the whole week. I found the easiest way to keep up with my daily post and Instagram photo upload was to do both when I woke up in the morning. They should already be prepared so it only takes a few minutes to load, and if they contain show news or important information, I would share them with the AIS Fashion Club, AIS Fashion Group, and Creative Exchange pages on Facebook.

When I received blog posts from groups, I would put them in a folder in my email account and check the checklist once I had completed their post draft. Every Thursday, I would double check the folder with my checklist to make sure I had marked every group that had submitted for the week. I would then turn the document into Ali. This also helps you reference old posts from classmates if you need to.

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The time it took to research for social media would vary. Usually spending less than one hour per week allowed me enough time to read through articles I received from Entrepreneur and Inc. in my inbox. If there was a special topic I wanted to research then it might take a little longer.

Ticket sales and promotions are important tasks for everyone in the class to complete. I volunteered one day out of the week to sell tickets at the table and participated in some form of promotion each week. For example, I handed out postcards to different businesses in Belltown, which probably took about 30 minutes.

Sharing footage and following up with social media contacts fall into the “unexpected work” category, meaning sometimes you have to share, post, or reply at a moment’s notice. I can’t put a timeline on this because it differed from week to week, but I can say that it happens more often than you will think so be prepared. Following up will continue after the completion of the show, so plan on continuing social media until the end of the quarter. This will consist of sharing photos and links that you receive from contacts that you have made throughout the quarter.

Posting once a week is more logical at this point.

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In-depth description of tasks EDMC Guidelines The guidelines are helpful and have rules you need to follow. Read them.

Setting up email Do NOT use your personal pages or email to start anything. I learned that the hard way. (It is okay to use your personal telephone number if you want to get updates directly sent to your phone though.) I just created a Gmail account for The Fashion League and used that information when creating the social media pages.

Setting up social media Facebook was a little tricky since they will only let you create a profile for a person, not an event/company/etc. After much trial and error I found that the name “Arts League” was an approved name to use. I then created a community organization page specifically for The Fashion League. Make sure you choose an APPROPRIATE NAME, everyone can see it.

There shouldn’t be any problems setting up the blog, Instagram, or Twitter. You might want to set aside some time to get familiar with WordPress or whatever content management system you use. Linking the blog, Facebook, and Twitter is recommended.

Do not use the Art Institute of Seattle logo for any of the social media pages. The EDMC guidelines will further explain this.

Using hot links Setting up links to the pages in your email helps promote them. If you have Yahoo Mail go to Settings > Writing email > Signature and fill in the box with your name, title, and the links to the pages.

For example: Sarah Parillo Social Media Director, The Fashion League Get show updates: https://www.facebook.com/AIFashionLeague Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fashion_League Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AIFashionLeague

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Post templates All posts have to be approved by the instructor before they can be published online. We worked out an easy way to do this by creating post templates. Tili and I created templates of posts that we would be regularly using on our social media sites. The instructor asked us to submit 10 templates each. Here are some that were approved: 1. Daily posts of artists that are in a league of their own. (This coincided with our theme and might not be as relevant to future shows.)

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2. Daily post for ticket sales – I’m going to try to incorporate fun photos with the tickets for each.

3. Interviews from show participants (culinary club, graphic design team, staff, etc.)

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4. Fashion-related quizzes, polls, trend updates from outside sources.

5. Behind the Scenes updates (designers sketches, fittings, photos of the marketing team, weekly “what we’re working on” post.

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6. Welcome sponsors to the team and shout-outs to companies that the designers are interested in sharing their work with.

7. Weekly ticket giveaway. The other giveaways will be more exciting with quizzes, random drawings, etc. This giveaway is intended to increase our readership.

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8. Quote Blocks. The quotes are from fashion icons and the images were found online.

Make sure the images are not copyrighted! Bing Image Search: Creative Commons is a good place to look. We used Photoshop to add the quotes.

9. Posts discussing designers from Fashion Week.

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10. Promotions for local businesses, Seattle fashion bloggers, etc. (This is a quid pro quo situation- they need to be promoting our show, giving us Swag bag items, sponsoring us, etc.)

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Weekly blog checklist There are several groups in the Event Production class and each group is responsible for creating a blog post and sending it to the Social Media Director every week. (These posts are a part of the student’s grade!) Every week I had to fill out a form, similar to the one below, and turn it into the instructor so my classmates could get credit for turning in their post.

I got a lot of questions and comments like, “Am I supposed to post directly on the blog?” or “I don’t know what to write about.” Don’t let anyone submit their post on the blog. They need to email you the posts because you have to edit and add the proper links, hashtags, et cetera before the posts are ready to go out. Plus, you don’t want everyone posting at the same time (most groups waited until Thursday to send their post to me). That’s a waste of posts that can be used throughout the week and you’re overloading your followers with several posts at once.

For the second comment, if someone doesn’t know what to post here are some suggestions: 1. What did their group do this week? Stop and take a picture of the group at work and describe what they were doing.

2. What is their job for the show?? Find a cool article or famous person that does the same thing and share.

3. Create a quiz or poll that relates to their team. (Check out the hair & makeup poll on our blog)1 4. IF ALL ELSE FAILS….fashion news! (Fashion week, the Oscars, local museum fashion exhibits, etc.) There are plenty of “fashiony-things” going on to share. Encourage them to find something that relates to the show though.

Weekly Blog Checklist Week ___ Dates ___________ Name

1

Contributed

http://thefashionleague.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/have-a-say-in-the-hair-makeup-looks-for-the-show/

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Analysis: What worked and what didn’t By posting engaging information daily we achieved 230 friends on the Arts League Facebook page, 9 blog followers, 245 likes on the Fashion League community Facebook page, 65 followers on Instagram, and 66 followers on Twitter! I think that’s pretty good for the amount of time we had. I bet you can’t do better.

We tried Weekly Ticket Giveaways to increase traffic to our pages, but it didn’t really work.

People rarely participated. If we had created a stronger following earlier I think that more people would have been aware of the giveaways and been more likely to take part.

The day of the show the Social Media Director is supposed to share as much footage as possible.

The intention is to build hype for the event and share the winners once they are announced. This doesn’t really work since there are so many things to do throughout the day. My suggestion is that the whole class is encouraged to post and share throughout the day, but they should be sure to tag the show page while doing so. If this isn’t possible, then two people should be in charge of covering the show for social media.

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Tips 1. Use a social media manager, if possible Read this article: 14 Tools Every Entrepreneur Needs for Managing Social Media2 2. Keep in mind the audience for one social media site might differ from anotherSOMETIMES CREATING POSTS FOR INDIVIDUAL PAGES IS NECESSARY! 3. A Facebook PROFILE is better than a Facebook page for networking. You can add friends, plus our followers were more responsive.

4. A Facebook PAGE is better than a Facebook profile for data gathering. They compile statistics based on the people that “like”, visit, and interact with page.

5. A great place to find Seattle fashion bloggers is on Instagram!

6. Subscribe to FREE newsletters to get news about effective social media techniques: 

Entrepreneur.com3



Inc.com4

7. Link your pages to your phone so you get notifications! It’s much easier than going to the pages all the time to check if there has been any activity.

8. Put links to TICKET LEAP EVERYWHERE!

2

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231851?newsletter=true http://www.entrepreneur.com/newsletters/ 4 http://www.inc.com/newsletter 3

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The pages The Fashion League blog

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Facebook Profile

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Facebook Page

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Twitter

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Instagram

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Contacts through social media Various people will contact you to ask questions or to see if they can get involved. Make sure you reply to them promptly, even if it is just to tell them that you are working on getting whatever information they need or that we don’t need them. For example, several models had offered their services, but we do not need runway models. Instead of ignoring these girls, I let them know we have a contract with TCM models which prevents us from allowing freelance models to be a part of the runway show, BUT we did have two slots for car show models if they would be interested in helping out with that aspect. Any person that contacts you gives the opportunity for show promotion, if you leave them with a bad impression they are less likely to say something nice about the show and/or the AIS students.

There were several fashion bloggers that shared our event information. I was only personally contacted by one, so I have included that information below, along with contact info for some photographers and models that contacted me. Contact information for other Seattle Fashion Bloggers is available in the best practices book by Holly Sternod.

Name

Roxanne Franck

Tiffany Smith

Email

Affiliation

Relevance

roxannejadethread@gmail.com

She promoted the show, wrote a review after, and we promoted her site. We gave her a free pass to attend.

Seattle Fashion Blogger

Modeled for Northwest Motorsport vehicle -contact if you need a car show model-

Model

Contact through FB

Website

http://jadethread.com/

https://www.facebook.com /tiffany.smithmodel

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Lindsay McCoy

Greggery A. Acord

David Bailey

Mike Adams

Contact through FB

Contact through FB

Contact through FB

Contact through FB

Offered to be a car show model.

Offered him a press pass to the show. He took tons of pictures and offered edited versions to us.

Images are on Facebook.

Requested two passes.

Assistant came.

Write up of show will be posted May 2014.

Requested a press pass.

Posted photos to Facebook.

Model

https://www.facebook.com /Lindsay.A.McCoy

Photographer

https://www.facebook.com /artisticwritr87

Mode Magazine Rep. /Photographer (knows Joan)

https://www.facebook.com /david.m.bailey.7

Owner/Photogr https://www.facebook.com apher at Mike /profile.php?id=100000022 Adams 174415 Photography

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