Today we have a guest post from Holly Krenek, the Event and Brand Manager at Affiniscape, Inc. where she focuses on social strategy and brand development. She has over 7 years of experience in social media, event management and interactive marketing.

Most mobile phones in America will be smartphones by the end of 2012. It’s hard to imagine walking down a busy street today and not seeing pedestrians scurrying around on their iPhones looking up directions, texting, tweeting, instagraming, or checking in to the latest hotspots.

Event marketing company Cvent recently released a cool infographic posing the question – Are event planners catching the mobile wave? As mobile technologies continue to expand and phenomenally grow year to year, it’s important for event planners to stay on top of these trends and best practices in the emerging mobile arena.

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Creating mobile user experiences that excite and inform event attendees allows for a win-win for both the event planners and attendee. Audiences want real-time engagement, and by giving them exclusive access in the palm of their hands anytime, anywhere during events, provides for a higher level of event success.

Tips to consider when building your event app:

• Consider previous years concerns and questions
• Make sure the app is seamless in that any attendee can understand how to navigate from the homepage to each subpage with ease
• Make it straightforward and provide an easy navigation menu
• Include social media capabilities so attendees can participate in live tweeting, post photos from the event, or upload them to their personal Facebook pages

Some other fun ideas:

• Add a check-in feature
• Send texts updating attendees on scheduled meetings or about a change in time or place
• Run contests via social media and send alerts once a winner is chosen

Keeping up-to-date with mobile at events is more important than many realize. In the course of an event, attendees open the event’s app at least 12 times, which creates an incentive for organizations to use this tool to get in front of attendees – sponsor the event app or get in the mix and talk with the attendees within the app via the event hashtag. Both are relevant ways to increase your organizations membership, and keep two-way flows of communication going between your team and new or prospective members.

-Holly