How to use Ego Bait to promote your event

There are a number of different ways to use content to promote your event online, many of these result in other people doing the hard work on your behalf, in internet marketing spheres this is known as baiting and one form that works quite well in the events industry is “ego baiting”.

Ego bait is generally a piece of content created to attract the attention of a specific individuals or a group, when thinking about events there are lots of people involved to stroke the ego of, you could think about the artists performing at your events, the venue owners, other event promoters in the area as well as the regular attendees.

Let’s be honest we’ve all got an ego, even the most senior industry figures have an ego and as long as you’re able to create content that’s subtle enough not to come across as being sycophantic you’ll be able to rely on the ego you’re targeting to do some of the promoting of your event on your behalf (even if they can see through what you’re doing 9 times out of 10 they’ll help you out in return for promoting you).

In the modern era of internet marketing, authorship, author authority and expertise is crucial to being able to create a viable long term presence. One of the keys to this is to be cited (and if you want to rank in Google) letting Google understand where content about you is, either by linking to it from a website, blog post on your own website or social media – especially Google Plus.

The key to good ego bait is firstly picking the right target, you generally want someone or a group who are well known, say they’ve got a big fan base following them on Twitter and Facebook – that’s a good start, but you don’t want to go for the seventh day too soon, be realistic about who you can target.

After this you want to do your homework about them. If you’ve got a DJ playing at your event you’re going to be writing about them, but how about writing about their agent or their record label? If you’ve got someone with a big following that’s been to your events before why not get in touch with them and add a quote in from them  about your event? The opportunities are limitless however for not a lot extra work you can tap into what could be a goldmine of free promotion.

On Skiddle’s own news section we often produce interviews with industry types and this is pure ego bait, even when were looking at the kind of native advertising content that often appears in the news section the inclusion of quotes and unique references in the content results in it being a form of ego bait

Ego Bait Ideas Options for Events:

• Lists – produce a top 10, include lots of details (and names!) and links back to the relevant sources
• Interviews and Quotes – Interviews and quotes are a much more direct form that require a bit of outreach, however you can always source quotes from things they’ve said in the past.
• Badges – This is a bit like the list option, get some badges designed up and send them out to your “top 250” power users, you can guarantee that someone somewhere will choose to use the badge so make sure you tell them where to link back to and include your events logo in the badge itself.

Getting your ego bait to work for your event

OK so now you’re written your content and got it out there, that’s not it, although people do search on their own name every now and then unless they’re a total narcissist they’re not going to be doing it so often they notice the piece of content you’ve produce about them. So you’ve got to get it over to them (again without seeming like a complete sycophant).

The key is to be courteous but to treat them like an equal, you won’t get half the promotion you might if they think your activities aren’t up to their standards.

Include call to actions in your email. This might not seem like the way you’d normally write an email but when writing this kind of email you’ve got to be clear you’re telling the target what you want them to do with it. Don’t be so blatant to say “Please link back to this stuff I’ve produced about you” – if you do that you’re likely to turn them off straight away.

Rather, if you’ve want them to link to you from social media accounts send them to the links to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus posts – make sure you include a link to a Google Plus account if you want your content to benefit from the links in Google’s rankings.

Throw in a comment such as: “If you need a logo or have any further questions please let me know”, this will only apply to a small number of people and will dampen any suspicions about your motives.

Again, the more research you do the better, ego baiting is all about understanding the target and maximising the opportunities based on that knowledge. For example, often entrepreneurs will have a page on their personal or business website with links to press coverage about them or their business online – so you’d be well within your rights to suggest they add it to that page.

Remember to include links back to the page you’re selling your event’s tickets on – this is where you want the most eyeballs falling. If you’ve not already got your event listed on Skiddle be sure to add it in before you start your ego baiting campaign by visiting http://www.skiddle.com/promotion and remember, you can always include some of the ego bait content in the event listing pointing out you’ve also got them some coverage on a site such as Skiddle is bound to work in your favour.