It’s no secret that social media is an extremely powerful marketing tool. At this point, it’s nearly impossible to imagine an event that hasn’t been promoted at least in part by social media. Whether they attend them or not, everyone has received Facebook invitations to events. Of course, successfully using social media for events is not as simple as just creating a Facebook event and inviting a few contacts. There are a number of ways by which you can effectively plan and run a social media campaign to increase the reach of your event.
Generating Buzz Using Social Media for Events
Setting up a Facebook event page and inviting relevant contacts is a great way to get started promoting your event. A Facebook event page will allow you to post all information relevant to your event. Be sure to use photos and even videos to encourage engagement from your audience. You will also be able to interact with people on the page. They may post questions right to your event page which you can promptly answer. Creating a Twitter hashtag specific to your event is essential to using social media for events. A hashtag will provide users with a streamlined channel to keep updated about your event, and will provide you with an outlet to flood with information that is pertinent to your event. When creating a hashtag, it’s important to think of something clever enough to align your brand with your audience, while keeping it short enough to not take up too much of your 140-character per tweet limit. Also, make sure you pick something unique that other people are not using. This way your hashtag will not be flooded by information that has nothing to do with your event. Be sure to promote your event often on Twitter using your hashtag. Provide information about your event across several tweets including its location, date and time and a link to the official event page. Schedule tweets so the event is promoted at different times on different days. Instagram is also a prime piece of event marketing real estate. It has been determined that Instagram’s engagement per-follower is exponentially higher than that of any other social network, which makes it crucial for Instagram to be included in your event marketing campaign. Use Instagram to give your audience something to look forward to. What kind of food will be served at your event? Do you have a well-known guest speaker? Will you be raffling anything off? Post pictures of these and use your unique hashtag so your audience knows about the great things to come!
Keep On Keepin’ On
Don’t give up on using social media for events once they begin. Promotingyour event as it takes place will help expand its reach and grow your brand’s audience. Take this time to live tweet notable quotes from speakers and post Instagram photos that show off how much fun your event is. Encourage attendees at your event to engage with it on social media as well by offering opportunities for gifts if they post using a hashtag catered to the event or check into the event on Foursquare. Interact with both attendees and absentees of the event that are posting using hashtags relevant to the event. Answer questions, thank people and just have fun! If your business uses Snapchat, post live moments from your event using the “my story” feature. Show the people that missed out on your event why they should be sure to make it to the next one!
Social Media for Events in the Future
Keep the buzz generated by your event going even after it ends. Upload highlight videos to your social media profiles to remind people of what a great event it was and to encourage others to attend future events. Make sure you monitor your social media channels to understand where you were successful. Are people commenting on the success of your event? What did they like? What didn’t they like? Take into consideration what the attendees of your event are saying and act on their recommendations during your next event. Make an effort to reach out to people that did not comment on your event unprompted to see how they felt about it, as well. If you have any questions about using social media to market an event, we’d love to help you out. Contact us at 516-535-5353 or email us at sales@fatguymedia.com for more information.
