The 5 To Watch is in partnership with Globe and Mail to recognize Canada’s Sports Business leaders under 40 years old. George Brown’s School of Sport and Event Marketing staff and alumni are the creators of this event/award which launched in 2013. It’s a “must-attend” event where you get to network with industry professionals, enjoy amazing food, learn from keynote speeches, and join the after party.

The proceeds from the event will be put towards the George Brown College Foundation which grants awards and bursaries to individuals at the George Brown’s Centre for Business.

This year the Canada’s Sports Marketing Business Award will be at the Waterfront Campus of George Brown College. Business professionals will gather to celebrate the winners on Thursday, June 22, 2017.

2016 Highlights;

• Winners: Andrew Greenlaw, Senior Director, Sponsorship Marketing & Strategy, Brent Rossi, Executive Vice President of Brand Strategy and Marketing – Pegula Sports and Entertainment, Dan Near (Head of adidas Hockey – Adidas Group),

•  Matthew Logue (S&E Sponsorship Group), Sophie Kotsopoulos (National Hockey League).

• Alumni Achievement Award Winner: Jacquie Ryan (VP of Sponsorship Marketing with Scotiabank)

• More than 400 attendees

• Top-notch networking

When

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Agenda

6:00 PM – Networking Reception

7:30 PM – Awards Ceremony

8:30 PM – Post-Awards Reception

Location

George Brown College Waterfront Campus

51 Dockside Drive, Toronto, ON

Phone: 416-415-5000 x 6164

Email: 5toWatch@georgebrown.ca

For Further Details and tickets

Visit http://www.5towatch.ca/Login.aspx

On November 8th, 2016,  CEO and Co- Founder, Alan Smithson, introduced the world to Toronto-based Virtual and Augmented Reality Innovation Agency, MetaVRse.

Here are some new and exciting things that will make your next event a little different. Our favourite was the  360° Photo Booth.

MetaVRse Emulator ELITE is the world’s most advanced DJ performance system, a.k.a. It’s the future of DJ’ing. With the world’s largest capacitive touchscreen, the Emulator ELITE is the updated and more tactile version of the original Emulator. If you want to really wow the crowd, have the DJ perform on this machine, guaranteed “rave” reviews for your event.

For a fully immersive guest experience, MetaVRse 360° Photo Booth will take up to 10 people to a world specifically branded to your event. With a fully customizable photo background and booth exterior, the specifically designed “green room” takes a picture or video using a futuristic 360° camera to capture the scene. Afterward, your guests can view their experience on touch screens or VR Headset and have it sent to them so the experience can be shared with their friends via social media.

Testing out a virtual world with MetaVRse’s VR Headset and handheld remotes at the November 8th 2016 Toronto unveiling.

VR Headsets is how much of MetaVERses fantasies become augmented reality, and its application is only limited to your wildest activations. The headset act like goggles, letting the wearer see a scene or video in full 360° view. Explore the entire scenario by simply moving your head, more immersive techniques allow you to walk around, and with handheld remotes the 3D world becomes interactive.

Contact website for even more exciting tools to integrate into your next event http://metavrse.com/

Written by: Paula McDines

Do you ever find it hard to keep your guests interested, awake and engaged at your events? Social media walls could be used by anyone from wedding planners to corporate event planners to community leaders onsite at their events and meetings. Social media walls provide their attendees with a great way to interact.

A Social Media Wall shows content, not only from Twitter (Twitter Wall), but also from other social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or YouTube.

Top Tips On Social Media Walls:

• Hashtags: Create an easy to remember, short relevant Hashtag. Ensure the hashtag  you create is on your Instagram posts and in your tweets. Ask guests to use the same hashtag when discussing the event on social media.This hashtag allows you to search who else is talking about your event. Tag all of your posts with it, and encourage attendees to do the same.

• Tweet a lot and listen: Share those pre-planned Tweets, ask questions, pictures and videos as much as you can. Don’t forget that communication is a two-way conversation, so don’t just Tweet and Post and leave it there. Listen to the conversation and contribute when you can. RT or Favorite Tweets, Like and Share posts, answer questions and respond to comments. You’ll be surprised how it can encourage more interaction and build a connection with your followers.

• Display branded content: If you are sharing a lot of official updates during the event, social media walls are a great way to maximize the lifetime and reach of all your branded social media content via TV displays around the venue. Connect your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram etc. and your attendees will never miss an update while walking around the event. Share announcements, prize winners, next speaker in line etc.

• Onsite Contests: Consider organizing a contest and asking followers to submit their own photos/videos — the winner could win a prize! Social Media Walls will make it more visual and will help you track the hashtag of your event and contest. You can display photos of prizes, tags and hashtags your attendees can use.

Watch our video below for more complete information and tips on how to market your event and create the buzz on social media.

Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to like this video, share it and subscribe to CityEvents to gain valuable knowledge about planning your future events.

If you liked this video you may also like our video on How to market your event on Periscope and Google +.

Everyone uses Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to advertise and market events, but why not try something new? Instagram. This social media platform is often under-used but most effective when it comes to promoting your event, building your brand identity and gaining a stronger following for your company. It is building in momentum and is a must have.

As Instagram is all visual, photos are always a great way to provide a visual to your event. An Instagram photo diary is a wonderful way to promote your events to your target market and audience. Instagram live is also popular.

Top Tips On Instagram:

• Get Posting: Just like other social media platforms, the key to be successful on Instagram is being active. This means taking lots of pictures or videos and posting them for your followers to see. Consider setting a posting schedule and stay on top of that, whether it’s five times a day or five times a week. Study your past posts to see when they got the most audience engagement.

• Create a Story: Let your followers and audience in on the details of the event.  You want to make them feel involved in the event right from the beginning. For timing it is important to create excitement before tickets are on sale. You can do this by making your posts tell a story, updating them regularly and let them in on the planning and preparation right through to after the event. Having regular updates will make people look forward to the next update and keep them wanting more!

• Hashtags: Create an easy to remember, short relevant Hashtag. Ensure the hashtag  you create is on tickets, website, signs, email reminders, facebook event/posts and in your tweets. This hashtag allows you to search who else is talking about your event. Tag all of your posts with it, and encourage attendees to do the same.

Watch our video below for more complete information and tips on how to market your event and create the buzz on social media.

Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to like this video, share it and subscribe to CityEvents to gain valuable knowledge about planning your future events.

If you liked this video you may also like our video on How to market your event on Social Media Walls and Facebook.

Social media sectors such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and your surrounding neighbourhood are great ways to network and spread the word about your past, current, and future projects.  Today we are focusing on Facebook: one of the most popular social media tools.

Facebook is a powerful and cost-effective social media tool. Creating and promoting an event on Facebook is free and requires a series of easy-to-follow steps.  You can also enhance your facebook marketing with a custom facebook ad campaign.

Top Tips On Facebook:  

• Create an event on Facebook: Ensure to have any staff, ambassadors with permissions as a host. Once someone has accepted the invitation you are able to change their status to host so they can edit the event and update and post easily. Once you have created the event start to invite friends, ask others to invite others to increase the reach.  You will need to keep the event as a public event so that guests can invite others and people can find your event through facebook search.

• Facebook Campaigns: Many events have grown tracking or increased its exposure and attendees through facebook campaigns and Facebook Ads.  These can be useful as you can be very specific of the geographic area, age, status and other elements so you are only paying for advertising to your target market.

• Photos: Always a great way to provide a visual to your event.  This is a wonderful way to promote your events to your target market and audience and show people enjoying past events. It also gives them a better understanding of what the event looks and feels like. Change your profile and cover photo with the main banner of your event.

• Videos: You can also create promotional videos or video photo slide shows about your event to post.  This can be done using a slide show of photos related to your event, any related footage you have access to, link to music and add text with your main event details.

• Tags: A tag is a hyperlink making it easier for your followers or guests to click and visit the  page or person that you’ve tagged. Your post is usually displayed onto the Wall or Timeline of the Page or friend that you’ve tagged. By tagging speakers or guests, you will make your event more visible and have a chance to reach future attendees.

Watch our video below for more complete information and tips on how to market your event and create the buzz on social media.

Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to like this video, share it and subscribe to CityEvents to gain valuable knowledge about planning your future events.

If you liked this video you may also like our video on How to market your event on Hootsuite and YouTube.

This marketing video outlines how to prepare effective techniques to market your events on Twitter.  Because posts on twitter are only 140 characters, your tweets have to be creative and engaging. It’s better to tweet something short and eye catching and include a link that people can click for more information.

Top Tips On Twitter:  

• Text/Quick Stories/ Bytes: Different people are interested in different things, write tweets about all aspects of the event and don’t forget to mention sponsors, ambassadors. One text byte explains charity or the cause or explains official message, while another is all about the talent, celebrities or DJ, and another could perhaps showcase the venue or the food, or signature drinks etc.

• Photos and Videos: Photos show up well on twitter, so similar to facebook, tweet and post photos so followers can get a visual of the event. You can also create promotional videos about your event to post on various sites online.  This can be done using a slideshow of photos related to your event, any related footage you have access to, link to music and add text with your main event details or can try Vine that is integrated into twitter recently.

• Twitter contest: Setting up a twitter contest is a perfect way to increase your reach and have your followers engage or retweet.  The most common is a Retweet to win, another way is to ask ppl to mention a hashtag and account name (@Mention)  These can also be held onsite at the events to increase engagement by attendees.

• Hashtags: Create an easy to remember, short relevant Hashtag. Ensure the hashtag  you create is on tickets, website, signs, email reminders, facebook event/posts and in your tweets. Hashtags will make it easier to find any tweet related to the event and can also be very useful if you have a social media wall during your event.

Watch our video below for more complete information and tips on how to market your event and create the buzz on social media.

Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to like this video, share it and subscribe to CityEvents to gain valuable knowledge about planning your future events.

If you liked this video you may also like our video on How to market your event on Instagram and Hootsuite.

This time we are telling you how to promote your event through Snapchat: a messaging mobile app where you can share exciting pictures, videos and daily life stories to others in a 10 second window. Snapchat sends pictures and videos that you will be able to see from 1 to 10 seconds before they disappear. This application is used by millions of young users which makes it the perfect place to market your event to this type of attendee.

Here are some highlights of the video:

• Snapchat is easy to use. You only have to download the application on your phone and create your account.

• Snapchat has its own terminology such as: snaps which are photos or videos, and stories which are series of snaps that you can send to your friends. You can personalize any of your snaps with filters, emojis or drawings.

• Unlike other social media, Snapchat has a time constraint on the shared content, which means any snap you send will expire and will not be seen ever again. Stories are the best tool for your marketing campaign as the snaps can be seen during 24h. The extended view time opens the door to all kinds of creative marketing campaigns. For example, you can create a series of videos and images showing the progress of the preparation for your event or the teams working on certain aspects of the event.

• Snapchat is an exciting application as it allows you to be very creative and to stand out from other companies. There are different ways you can market your event and create buzz such are creating offers & promotions, teasers like a behind the scenes of your event, giveaways and storytelling.

Watch our video below for more complete information and tips

Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to like this video, share it and subscribe to CityEvents to gain valuable knowledge about planning your future events.

If you have been following our series of how to market and create the buzz on social media, here is our new video!

This time we are telling you how to promote your event through Youtube: the number 1 video-sharing website used by millions of users. Youtube is a great tool to promote your events as it is free, easy to use and can increase your exposure on the web. The more popular your videos are, the more visibility you will get. In this video, we are explaining you how to use Youtube and how to create an interesting, as well as tips on how to create the buzz and to promote your event efficiently.

Here are some highlights of the video:

• Use a catchy title and focus on the description: before posting your video, make sure to use a title that will drag the attention of your viewers, but also a good description of the content of your video. Keywords are everything on youtube as they will help you be more findable. Make sure to use specific keywords on the description and to use any other related keywords in the tags field.

• Create good videos: Creating a good content is essential to create the buzz and attract more viewers. Make sure you are prepared for the filming of your video by choosing a specific location, having a script ready to structure your video.

• Create the buzz: many companies use Youtube to promote their company, so it is essential to stand out from the crowd. Creating an original content will help you create the buzz and attract viewers. Also, it is essential to increase your brand awareness so add your logo and colours to your videos so people will recognize you more easily.

In order to create the buzz, make sure to make your audience the star of your video. You can interview the attendees of your event or create a vlog to show the organization of the event.

Watch our video below for more complete information and tips

Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to like this video, share it and subscribe to CityEvents to gain valuable knowledge about planning your future events.

Green Lotus Presents The Donate & Learn Online Marketing Expo

On the 10th of June, Green Lotus was hosting the Donate & Learn Marketing Expo from 5:00 to 8:30 pm. at Ryerson University.  The event was an opportunity to unite with 600 of Toronto’s best entrepreneurs, business owners and online marketing expert to gain innovative search engine and social media marketing programs for your business!

The CityEvents team attended the Facebook workshop animated by Brian McNeil-Smith from EasyPromos. For an hour we discussed contests and promotions on facebook and how we could manage them with a low budget. When you are a small business, he advised to create a contest over a longer time frame. Regarding Brian McNeil-Smith, “Strategy is only limited to imagination”.

At 7pm, the main event began with a presentation from Procter and Gamble, LinkedIn and Green Lotus. What matters the most when you are a brand is to tell your brand a story and have a BIG Idea. What is a BIG idea? For Maria Shibaeva, Sr. Assistant Brand Manager at Procter and Gamble it has to be true in your business and also should be :

– disruptive to the market

– heart and mind opening

– immediately understood

– recognizable

– easy to execute

Here is an example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-20Qe4M8Y

This year, Green Lotus worked with Enactus Ryerson and Project Pathways.

For more information visit: http://greenlotus.ca

Where: YWCA Toronto Headquarters, 87 Elm St. Toronto (Bay & Dundas)

Admission: FREE with a donation to the YWCA Toronto Girls’ Centre

Whether just starting to plan an online marketing strategy or deep into implementation; the Donate & Learn Workshop provided the knowledge, strategies and networking opportunities needed to improve online marketing results,&take your businesses to the next level!

For more information contact:

YWCA Donate & Learn – Search and Social Media Workshop

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YWCA.TO

Twitter: @YWCAToronto

Sponsored by: Go Daddy, Toronto Star’s NewInHomes.com, Epic Cruises and Big3 Video Agency

100% of donations went to the YWCA Girl’s Centre – a judgment free and supportive environment for young women to start building their futures. The YWCA Girls’ Center members are media savvy, fearless future leaders. Supporting members of the Girls’Center becoming exactly who they’d like to be!