Social Media Marketing: where to start to create your event!
When you are hosting an event, think of social media as free advertising. Yes, organic doesn't give you what it used to, but it can still be a valuable tool for event marketing. But, just like with any tool, you need to know how to use it.
Event marketing can be relatively easy, especially in the entertainment industry. After all, a rock music festival will get a lot more publicity than the annual Quantum Engineering Conference. Social media marketing of events is all about using social media to reach and market to your niche audience. There are passionate fans of Quantum Engineering - quite a large community of them in fact. But they will not be as loud or as widespread online as rock music festival fans.
That said, here are five ways in which you can use social media for event marketing.
Use your speakers
Who is speaking at your event? What is their audience like? Do they have a large following on social media?
Events do not take place in a vacuum. Use Social Media Marketing!!
Ask your speakers to publish what they are doing to be ready for the event. Are they preparing their presentation? Can they show a preview? The more your speakers are involved, the more you can expand your audience.
Think about it. People who follow your speakers on social media create a pre-engaged audience. They follow your speaker for a reason: they are interested in what that person has to say. Use this to the advantage of your event marketing and ask your speakers to encourage their followers to come to your event.
Not only can you reach your target audience when speakers create posts about your event online, but it also allows you to quadruple the reach of your post. For example, suppose you develop a post about your next event and share it online. You reach maybe a third of your followers, get some shares and reach some people who are not yet actively following you. But if your event has four different speakers who can also share your post, your coverage is now quadrupled. You reach a different audience that might still be interested in attending and you get impressions in addition to your captivating audience.
When you post an event on your timeline, you are probably preaching to the choir. But if your event is shared by several people, you are going beyond the choir. You are reaching new faces and expanding your community.
Develop a hashtag
The hashtags of the events were the trend for weddings in recent years. Most of them are rather campy, i.e. # promdate2lifemate, but hashtags are really effective. Not only do they provide a catchy “slogan” to use when posted during and before the event, but a hashtag also creates a kind of running live feed for participants to follow. Live tweeting can easily be followed with hashtags in an appropriate manner. Participants' images can be easily rounded up on social via a quick hashtag search.
Hashtags are also useful if you want to create a trend with some momentum. You can promote a hashtag on Twitter - at a rate of 200k per day - or you can try to evolve the hashtag organically. Don't be disappointed if your hashtag is not trending enough to be in the Twitter sidebar. It is rare for a #ingegneriaquantistica hashtag to trend on a platform like Twitter. But register with your target audience. Are there groups you hang out with on Facebook or LinkedIn? Does anyone use the hashtag there?
Keep track of where your event has the most traction by checking with where it is most frequently used.
Building Anticipation
The fear of losing. It is powerful Use it to your advantage.
Show your participants why they should fear missing your event. Take a quick look at behind-the-scenes photos of the things you will be giving away during the event. Speakers can post videos on why they are so excited to present and even share sneak peeks of their material.
Behind-the-scenes footage of your organisation preparing for the event is not the only way to create expectations for your event. Host free gift cards or contests on social media. Invite people to share or comment to participate, then choose a winner who will get free tickets or swag. This increases your event's audience and engages potential participants. People love free stuff. Giving away free tickets encourages participation and builds anticipation for the event.
Were you lucky enough that your event sold out? Make a big deal out of this. Announce that you now have a waiting list and no more tickets will be sold, but wait! You have two more tickets to give away. A sold-out event has a certain air of exclusivity that attracts enthusiastic people and makes you wish they had bought their tickets earlier.
Engaging with participants
Who shares posts about events on Facebook? Tweeting about when they are going? Directly engage participants who are involved with you. Like, share or retweet posts where your event is mentioned. Comment with an interesting detail about the event. Follow participants who follow you.
The more you engage with participants before the event, the more exciting the audience feels their presence is. When you engage with participants, you increase event marketing by encouraging social posting and pre-event sharing.
Create a Facebook event
When you are planning an event, make sure you use all the tools available in your event marketing toolkit. Is a large part of your audience on LinkedIn? Create a LinkedIn group around your event. Invite your customers, colleagues and connections to join the group to stay updated on the latest news when it comes to your event.
Is your Facebook company page more active than your LinkedIn account? Create a Facebook event that can be shared, where participants can ask questions and you can advertise any pre-event contests or giveaways. A big advantage of Facebook events is the RSVP portion. You can get a good idea of who will be there through the participation function. Consider incorporating it into a contest.
Whether you choose a Facebook event or a LinkedIn group, engage your speakers. Quick messages introducing their background or simply saying how excited they are to introduce themselves gives speakers the boost and creates more anticipation for your event.
Social media algorithms also place a different emphasis on events. The Facebook algorithm collects data from you to better recommend events to users it thinks will be interested. Take advantage of the algorithms in your event marketing and put some care into setting up your Facebook event.
Marketing events on social media takes dedication
When marketing an event on social media, you need time to create updates, create events, interact with participants and organise your own speakers to promote the event. Marketing events on social media requires time, dedication and consistency. If you are not sure how to market your event on social, it may be time to contact the experts.