Social Media in Events: Beyond Facebook & Twitter

Does it seem like every post about social media in events talks about Facebook and Twitter? Do you feel like your creativity is being constrained, because so many people are talking about the same 3-4 solutions?

I do.

In a followup to my last post (Real World Likes – The Next Big Thing in Social Media in Events), I want to show you two fresh examples that will help you open your mind to new possibilities for social media at your events.

New York City Marathon 2010

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See how Asics used videos and location based tracking to help family and friends at home cheer on their marathoners. This is really cool stuff. Fans record videos and leave messages for runners. Then as the runners go past a checkpoint, the videos and messages play on large screens. 

EpicMix Ski Application

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See how Colorado skiers track and share their ski experiences with their friends and social media buddies. This is the skiers version of Nike Plus (watch video). It provides gaming elements, badges, community engagement, performance reporting and social sharing.

Lessons for Social Media in Events

1. Look at how these digital experiences compliment the IRL (In-real-life) experience and enhance it.
2. Look at how mobile, social media, RFID and communities are all working together to create remarkable digital experiences rather than as individual components.
3. Look at how the gaming elements or leaderboard and rewards are included (especially in EpicMix).

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, this post gets you thinking beyond Facebook and Twitter for using social media in your events. As you saw in the videos here and in the previous post, there are a number of ways that technology can be integrated to create remarkable digital experiences.

Have you seen anything like this? What else would you add?