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Earlier this month I presented at FutureTix, a conference of ticketing industry leaders who shared their views on the state of live-event ticketing across all types of venues from arts to sports. And because ticketing is about the most social of any e-commerce activity, there was a lot of discussion about social media and ticketing.

One of the hardest questions facing marketers today is how much effort to put toward social media, and how to measure the ROI of it. At the conference, I heard two specific comments about social media that could help marketers justify taking action.

Angela Gannon from Situation Interactive encouraged the use of social media before an event, saying, “A person is 50 percent more likely to talk about you after an event if they have talked about you before the event.” This is a compelling argument for encouraging social media conversations with audience members on Facebook and Twitter before an event. This investment in social media effort should pay off in terms of word-of-mouth marketing later.

Meanwhile, Alex Topiler from PinLeague (which specializes in helping companies leverage Pinterest) commented that only 1 percent of “pins” are negative — a dramatic difference from what we find on other social media sites.

He explained that Pinterest is future-oriented, meaning it is all about people’s wants and desires rather than their complaints about the past. Because the Pinterest user base is heavily skewed toward women (the key decision-makers for the arts), investing time and effort to build a Pinterest community very likely will yield positive images and mentions of your show or event.

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