Social Media Event Promotion
Since social media became an inseparable part of our lives, it is no doubt that they would be the most effective platforms to promote anything, including events. It is also a great way to interact with your attendees before, during and after your event.
In this article, we will focus on "how-to" subject for every aspect and every type of social media channel to promote your events.
Have an hashtag
The most crucial element is consistency. And for achieving that consistency, have a hashtag! This hashtag needs to be the same in every platform including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
Having a hashtag is also a great way to build your brand in sync with your event. You can use your brand name as a hashtag, as well. It is in your hands to be creative in choosing a hashtag for your social media event promotion purposes. In other words, #skyisthelimit!
Don't sell tickets, sell your event's value
One of the most important elements of your event is the benefit you promise to give to your participants. So, as an event planner; you need to sell your speakers rather than selling tickets of the actual event. This way, you would also be giving your speakers to become ambassadors of your event as well. After all, they are probably the influencers who are going to collect attendees for your event.
It is possible by publishing their biographies on your website and use social media effectively to promote them. This way, not only you are flattering your speakers but also introducing them to your participants so that they are acknowledged of their existence and reason why they are a part of your event.If you do not have any speakers included in your event and planning an exhibition or a contest or something else, you can still apply this rule to your event promotion process. Here are some ideas to use "Speakers" mentality on your event web page while promoting it on social media:
- Put your exhibitors' valuable information
- Put your contestants
- Write about your events' destinations and so on.
So, the magic here is to give your attendees an idea of what they will be getting or doing in your event if they attend.
BEFORE THE EVENT STARTS:
Pre-launch
Before the actual launch time of your tickets, create yourself an audience by pre-launching your event. Teasing your audience is a good way to build a buzz. To be able to achieve it, we would suggest you to include your audience in your preparation for the event by posting "behind the scene" images from your event's social media accounts.
Countdown is also a great way to create that buzz. And it is a great excuse to post on daily basis to keep the interaction during social media event promotion.
Have a flash sale
You see, you have created your hashtag, the buzz and built your audience. Now, it is time to create your actual selling promotion. Applying period-based pricing would help you a lot if you can execute your social media event promotion properly.
This way, you can keep up the daily-based posting sequence and see the actual reactions on-time by scanning your ticket sales. To mix it up a little at this point, I would suggest you to post visuals like gifs or images. And don't forget to make them relevant and worth to share for your audience so that they can spread the word for your event, too.
*By having this exciting flash sale, you would also be creating your own FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) campaign.
DURING THE EVENT:
Make it live
There are many apps such as Scorp to broadcast your event live as well as feature of commonly used social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Also, you can edit and share videos and photos of your events; during the event. So that you would create an environment in your social media accounts a "live-like event image".
According to recent studies, people are more likely to spend more time on live videos rather than the uploaded ones. So, it would be a huge advantage to leverage from it.
Interview with attendees/speakers and post those interviews as short videos
To have an idea of what impacts are given during the event on attendees and speakers is useful in various aspects. First, you will be collecting feedbacks regarding your event in a fun way. Second, it will be an excellent success story for your organization to show as a hard evidence. Third, your attendees and speakers would bond with your event on a personal level since they will be the faces of your event on social media. Lastly, it would get you more participants attracted to your future events. As an extra, those videos would be great memories!
AFTER THE EVENT:
Repost the contents from other people's accounts
It is always a good way to show off a little bit on social media. You have put so much effort to it, I imagine. So, it is your time to have some fun of yours!
Summarize your event's most important memories
Don't forget to include the important details as benefits your participants got from your event so that they would want to come to your future events as well as attracting more for the same reason.
Post your event's success with numbers
You could either put the participant amount or your ROI as well as donation amount you have collected, etc. It is in your hands to get creative at this point.
Bonus Tip: Don't forget to thank to your audience and include the details of your next event