I wrote recently about how you can use Twitter for events.  It was revealed this week however that Facebook remains the most popular social media platform for event marketers to use to promote their events.  The survey by email solutions provider Constant Contact found that nearly 90% of event marketers prefer Facebook for events.

In other events and Facebook related news, FB rolled out a new service this week that suggests guests for your events.  Their algorithm pulls potential guests based on a combination of shared interest and mutual friends.  All of which makes Facebook as a platform for promoting events a bit more attractive.

So I thought I'd give some thought to how you can use Facebook to market your events.  I'm going to focus on the event area itself rather than simply putting up 'share this on Facebook' buttons as I think that's a no brainer.

How to use Facebook to market your event

1. Add your event to Facebook Events – Ok, I'm starting with the low hanging fruit here, but there are lots of places online where you can submit events, and it's often far from ideal having delegates sign up in a multitude of places.  We're using services such as Eventasaurus to make this whole process much easier.  It works in much the same way as TubeMogul does for video.  You upload your event to the site, tell it where you want to post it, and that's it.  All delegate sign-ups are aggregated into one spreadsheet so you don't have to manually do it.  Simples.
2. Add to your wall – Seems a bit of a no brainer, but don't forget to add the event to your wall so that people can see it easily.
3. Provide regular updates – Make sure you keep a steady stream of updates about the event.  If you have a new speaker for instance, or have agreed with a new sponsor.  If one of your speakers is in the news add it to your event wall.
4. Offer live event updates – You can do this in one of two ways:
   1. An easy and low tech way is to provide regular status updates as the event unfolds.  On my Everton page for instance, we provide status updates for each match.  They're easily the most active parts of the Page, with fans commenting and liking events as they unfold.  The CMI page had similar engagement during The Apprentice.
   2. An alternative option is to embed a liveblog such as CoveritLive into your Page.  This allows a much richer experience as you can pull in things from Twitter as well as use polls, video and so on.  There are instructions on how to do this on the CoverItLive website.
5. Encourage interactivity – Most people have smart phones now, so encourage fans to upload photos of themselves at the event to your wall.  Don't be afraid to take photos yourself to get things moving.
6. Follow up after the event – Once people return from the event you want to ensure you keep the buzz going.  So post up videos of speakers, slides from the event, upload photos and ask questions to keep delegates thinking about what went on at the event.

So a few ideas there to help you utilise Facebook for your events.  Do you have any other tips you've found useful on your own events?