You can’t expect people to buy tickets and attend your event unless they know about it. This is where many event planners fall short. They assume word of mouth alone is enough to spread the message. While there are dozens of ways to generate buzz for an event, social media is arguably the most effective.
Behind-the-Scenes Photos
Show guests and prospective guests how your event works behind the curtains. You can snap some behind-the-scenes photos of your event, uploading them to social media. Doing so captures a different perspective of your event — a perspective that would otherwise go unnoticed by guests.
Post During the Event
When you’re busy managing the event and making sure everything goes smooth, it’s easy to overlook the importance of posting content on social media. Besides, how much of an impact will it really have since guests have already bought tickets? Well, posting content during an event offers several benefits: it gets people talking about your event, provides guests with real-time information, and builds greater brand exposure, all of which can prove useful when planning future events.
Ask Followers for Suggestions and Feedback
Promoting an event on social media isn’t a one-way street. Event planners should ask followers for suggestions and feedback. The annual film and music festival South by Southwest (SXSW), for instance, is known for its PanelPicker, a user-generated proposal platform where guests submit proposals to the festival’s organizers.
Create a Posting Schedule
It’s also a good idea to create a social media posting schedule, detailing what posts you’ll make, on what networks, and when. Rather than manually logging into each social media network to make those posts, consider using a service like HootSuite. It allows you to schedule your posts in advance, on all of the leading networks.
Include Social Profiles on Media
When creating media for your event — brochures, flyers, posters, etc. — include the links to all of your social media profiles and pages. Upon creating a Facebook Page for your event, you’ll have a long and generic URL, which isn’t exactly easy to include on media. Once your Page has 25 likes, though, you can choose a custom (vanity) URL by following the steps listed here.
Quotes and Multimedia
Don’t focus your social media content strictly around text. According to a study of more than 25 million event-related social media posts conducted by BufferApp, 85% were multimedia such as photos, videos and quotes. In comparison, only 15% were pure text. You should follow a similar approach with your digital marketing strategy, focusing on multimedia instead of text.