I’ve finally got a useful post for you folks to go out and build some links for your business that will give you some extra link love. I’m a huge fan of finding an avenue that lets you build a few quality links and provide a future source of link acquisition for your company. Most businesses have some sort of event happening once or twice a year so why not utilize that to build some links? I’ve found a handful of choice websites that let you do just that, so make sure you think about these sites the next time you plan an event.
One of the clues some of you will pick up on to further your event marketing ideas is of course backlink research. I am providing you guys with an extensive list for marketing an event, so why not find the hidden gems I’m not blogging about? Where should I start you ask? Well I recommend heavily analyzing the link profiles for venues, especially the largest and most popular spots in your city. This should lead to a plethora of ideas for getting venue links so your can better position yourself within your niche.
The social event websites are all free and provide quite the service so make sure you do not waste their time by spamming these sites. Since it is quite business oriented you won’t be able to get away with much ill gotten behavior, so I’m comfortable dropping this fine list on you all. If anyone has a great event site that I missed, and would like to be listed, then drop your link off in the comments and I’ll get around to adding it when I have the time.
The Goods: Social Event Networks:
Thescene.com is a site you’ve most likely come across in your attempts to figure out what to do during any given weekend. The site is completely dedicated to events and the layout allows for an easy read, plenty of awesome content and will allow you to build some quality content. Your events and venue can have a page that does include a followed link back to your website. The key here is to hopefully have enough events and activity to stay indexed to keep that link juice coming.
UQevents.com is another superb looking event website that has just about every feature you’d want in a site like this and then some. This event site is quite active and the interface for setting up an event is very easy, so there is no excuse for not taking advantage of this site. You as well get a followed link back to your venue or event so it makes sense to re-use this site in the future and build up a strong account. I personally love the way this site is designed and functioning, and personally use it on a weekly basis to grab my local events.
Yahoo’s own Upcoming section has been kicking for a long while now and is a highly traffic’d web application they’ve got going on over there. The system is quite user friendly, interacts with your Yahoo account which everyone should have by now…if you don’t, where have you been? If you are the venue owner and haven’t included your location here then get your ass in gear. You can grab followed links to your venue and event within the listing which is bloody killer knowing where that link is coming from. Keep in mind event listings might not stay there forever, or even indexed, so the venue itself will get more value out of this site.
Going.com is one of the hottest looking event sites on the market with all the bells and whistles of a social network. Did I mention they also have a very active iPhone application? To top it all off events and venues can and will get the benefit of the followed link on your listings page. Going gets a good amount of traffic according to Alexa, but I imagine that`s not even coming close when you factor in the mobile application and RSS subscribers.
When.com is another slick and easy to use event platform that has some sort of relation to Going.com. I say this because of some linking they have going on, as well as their platforms both seem to be the same CMS, or at least a spin off of it. When.com provides all the usual goodies that are the same as the other sites which includes followed links, social media tools and a decent sized user base. I didn’t see a mobile application for the events and they did appear to have some widgets you can use, but the link was 404ing at the time of me writing this post.
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Resources:
More Event Sites:
– http://www.scenepeek.com
– http://eventful.com
– http://www.eventsbot.com
– http://zvents.com
– http://youreventhub.com
– http://explocity.com
– http://culturemob.com
– http://www.clubplanet.com
