Facebook Event Check-Ins: 5 reasons the new feature will be important

If you organise parties, press events or just things that you want people to come to… the latest tweak to Facebook check-ins – Facebook Event check-ins – is going to be a big deal for you.

Arriving soon – with the next edition of the iPhone app – Facebook event check-ins will let you check into a Facebook event – recording that you went to it, and sharing it with all your friends on the network. There will also be a feature that lets people see an overview of where their friends have checked-in and where they are at a given time.

After introducing check-ins in August 2010, Facebook debuted Deals a couple of months ago, which let people use check-ins to get discounts and vouchers at local business. Event Check-Ins are the next step.

Here are five reasons why you – the event-organiser – should use Facebook Event Check-Ins…

1) Live promotion for the event real-time – people wandering around a certain area will be able to see where their friends are without have to text all of them. If people are checking into your event, it will give their friends an incentive to drop-by.

2) Content around your event = More promotion for the next event having check-ins and comments and photos linked to your event is fantastic publicity and builds up interesting content around your nights that will promote future events.

3) Promotion of the event to exactly the sort of people who will want to go – Much better than handing out fliers outside a pub, Facebook event check-ins target the friends of people who already go to your events – people very likely to turn up to the next one.

4) Makes people more likely to RVSP and keeps the event conversation going Instead of your customers just seeing a notification about the the event, this encourages them to engage a lot more with you. For event check-ins to work, you need to have invited the person, they need to have RVSP-ed Yes or Maybe, and then they check in, maybe add a picture, maybe tag some friends. The conversation is longer, the engagement is better, they are more likely to RVSP. It’s a win for you.

5) Real time analytics for your events As Facebook builds up services around check-ins, it raises the possibility for real-time analytics for your events – letting you know the ages, genders, interests of people who turn up at your event. Do women come earlier? Do your fans prefer Mika to Lady Gaga? What other places and events do they go to? Anything married to Facebook’s store of personal data is going to be interesting.

We don’t have an exact date but we understand that this will be released in the next version of the Facebook app for iPhone – 4.3. No announced plans for the Blackberry or Android apps yet.

Related: How smart are your Facebook fans? LikeAudience app unlocks treasure trove of personality info

[via TheWallBlog]