Today we bring you a guest post courtesy of Cara Kleinhaut, founder of award-winning event creative, production and design agency Caravents. In the last few weeks alone, Caravents has organized and promoted events ranging from the Essence Black Women of Hollywood pre-Oscar week luncheon to InStyle‘s annual Golden Globes beauty lounge, the Playboy Superbowl party in New Orleans and a D.C. inauguration event sponsored by Target.

Here Cara presents 5 best practices and two case studies in effective social media event promotion and “activation.”

5 Best Practices for Social Media Activation at Big Events

• Create a short, easy event hashtag. Be fun, relevant and clever when coming up with the hashtag. (Example: #MLKDay2013)
• Showcase @handles and #hashtags prominently throughout the event on all printed materials, signage, screens, etc. This will make it easy for people to talk about your event on social media.

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For 42 years, Essence has been addressing the issues of importance for African-American women. Targeting Black women between the ages of 18 and 49, Essence is now more than a magazine. It’s a website with about one million unique monthly visitors, a music festival, and a special “Hot Hair” issue launched in 2010.

In Mediabistro’s latest “How to Pitch for PR” feature, we offer tips for getting your story into the pages of Essence.

“Black women come to Essence to get inspiration, insight, and relevant information about our culture they cannot find anywhere else,” said executive editor Vanessa Bush.

For more information about pitching Essence, click here. [Subscription required. Not an Avant Guild member? Click here for more info.]

And, ICYMI, we recently spoke with Essence icon Mikki Taylor and the magazine’s new EIC Constance C.R. White for MediabistroTV’s Media Beat program. Click here to check out those interviews on our YouTube channel.

With a circulation of 1.5 million and about a million unique monthly visitors to its site, Essence should be on your radar if you’re trying to reach the African-American female audience.

“Black women have grown up with us and their mothers have grown up with us,” Emil Wilbekin, managing editor of Essence.com tells Mediabistro.  “We’re the authority on Black women and we have a history of great journalism.”

Mediabistro’s latest “How to Pitch for PR: Essence” article offers tips on how to make your pitch stand out. For example, make sure you know what the editorial staff is working on at that moment.

“That ‘latest’ could include new services, hot products or breaking technology, which the powers that be are constantly looking to spread out over Essence‘s pages,” the article says.

Click here to read more.