Many businesses and organizations regularly plan and promote events. Traditionally, you might have mailed invitations, published an ad in your local newspaper or trade magazines, or perhaps even advertised on TV and radio. Particularly if you're limited in your marketing budget, Social Media represents a tremendously effective and inexpensive way to get the word out about what you're doing. Whether it's a conference or fundraiser or just a party, here are ten surefire ways to promote your event using social media, plus some activities to be thinking about during and after your event to help you prepare for the next one.

For most small business owners, your social media activity may be limited to just one or two posts a day. If you're active all day, then "optimum post time" may not be as important. But if you have just one or two shots to catch the bulk of your followers when they're potentially listening, you need to be aware of that time.

Last week, Twitter acknowledged that their systems had been breached, and that at least 250,000 Twitter users may have had their account information shared with the hacker. According to their blog post, Twitter revealed that the attack may have revealed usernames and email addresses, along with encrypted/salted passwords. While Twitter immediately secured the breach and took steps to reset the passwords for every affected account, the event should still serve as a warning to all: Your Social Media Accounts Are Vulnerable!

Statistics have shown that when posting updates and content to social networks, use of an image will improve your engagement significantly. That's partly due to the fact that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. In fact, according to SimplyMeasured, just one month after the introduction of Facebook Timeline for brands, visual content -- photos and videos -- saw a 65% increase in engagement.

We have talked in the past of how business owners can use the Twitter List functionality to help themselves. In your Twitter account, you can create lists and add Twitter profiles to those lists, allowing you to view a list and see only updates from those Twitter users. These lists can be public or private. Other social networks like Facebook and Foursquare have similar capabilities, and some businesses are using these tools to provide extraordinary value to their clients.

Have you ever uploaded an image to Facebook, Instagram or Google+? Are you using LinkedIn to make business connections? Are you sharing links to articles and other resources that your followers may find helpful, and you as well? If you answered Yes to any of these questions, then it's time you looked into getting a backup of your social media accounts.