THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT

Marketing and business development on and offline are an integral part of a professional services strategy. With social media now a major focus for businesses, it makes sense to combine this with more traditional marketing activities, especially for the promotion of an upcoming event.

Organising an event is not easy!

A lot of hard work and time goes into planning an event, let alone getting people to show up on the day. So, it’s important to utilise the power of social media to promote your event, expand your reach and generate an online buzz.

Social media can create real engagement before, during and after an event. Here are our top tips to help get people talking!

Pre-Event:

• Create a relevant event hashtag – incorporate it on all promotion for the event such as your website, email signature and all social media. Make sure it’s unique, short and easy to remember and ask speakers, exhibitors and attendees to use and share it.
• Reveal guest speakers – create excitement with hints and special reveals and use countdowns for teasers.
• Offer early bird discounts – sharing early bird discounts/deadlines will engage and encourage sign ups.
• As well as sharing your event on social media, create a Facebook event so you can share it with your followers and invite your friends. If you are using Eventbrite for bookings, remember that you can also sell tickets through Facebook.
• Launch a paid advertising campaign on Facebook or LinkedIn to attract the relevant target audience to your event.

During Event:

• Live stream your event on Facebook Live or Instagram Stories and interact with the audience by asking questions or polls.
• Invest in video and record the event so this can be used afterwards, for example for the promotion of future events.
• Think about offering a competition on social media and announcing the winner live at the end of the event.
• Take followers behind the scenes – go live on social media or take photos backstage and share speaker’s thoughts.
• Encourage attendees to post and share photos of the event using the relevant event hashtag.

Post Event:

• Share positive attendee feedback using eye catching templated designs.
• Produce a photo or video summary that can be posted on social media and drip feed relevant parts/throwbacks of the event.
• If your event is annual, send attendees a discounted early bird offer for next year’s event.
• Share and repurpose event coverage featured in local business/industry news.

Using social media throughout the entire event process provides opportunities to widen your reach and engage with your audience. Cal Partners is an award-winning specialist marketing, digital marketing and social media agency working with professional services firms. With traditional and online marketing closely linked, we have extensive experience in the full range of tools to build and deploy a successful marketing event. Find out more here.