Event Social Media Marketing – How to Get Results from Social Media For Events
Implementing event social media marketing is the key to success for getting people through the doors.
Social media is probably the most common channel of communication these days.
Anything – news, announcements, rumors, obituaries, job ads, etc. – appears and is seen on these platforms first.
This only makes more sense to advertise your upcoming events on social media.
And that leads us to the not-so-novel idea of – event social media marketing.
Brands see a lot of potential to harness these platforms and, therefore, use ads for marketing their events.
Whether you are in – the pre, during, or post-event- stages, you can always leverage social media to gain a lot of input and drive the point home.
Read on to understand ways to best utilize social media for events and how you could leverage social media marketing to promote your events.
1. Paid social promotions
2. Use the appropriate tools to manage events
3. Scheduling tools
4. Event tracking tools
5. Giveaways and contests
6. Product demos and videos
7. Live event videos and images
Ways to boost your event social media marketing
There are ample ways to deploy social media tools and tap their potential to make your events happen in a big way.
This is what event social media marketing is all about!
1. Paid social promotions
Most event planners use paid ads to market their events.
Ads are a powerful tool to publicize your events and create more awareness. Best of all, ads let you focus and target the niche audience who are “definitely” interested in the event.
Paid ads allow you to narrow your choices to the right audience based on various factors, including demographics, interests, and preferences.
While organic content posting certainly helps generate leads and increase your website traffic, ads manage to permeate through Google’s algorithms and grab the audience’s attention.
You could go to the next level and use retargeting and remarketing the ads to increase conversions.
So, what’s retargeting?
Well, often, there’s a chunk of people who interact with your social media profile, but not completely.
For instance, you learn that certain people visited your event registration page on social media but did not register.
As a shrewd salesperson, you could retarget the ads to them, offering some discount on the event, which may let them buy the ticket and increase your sales revenue.
Retargeting is an effective marketing strategy as you only target those already interested in your brand.
2. Use the appropriate tools to manage events
Social media for events can boost your productivity in planning various programs – notable speaker events, webinars, etc.
However, if you have more than one social media platform, managing them pre, during, and post-event could be time-consuming and overwhelming.
Each social media platform works differently, employing its own set of metrics and stats.
Only if you hold the knack to manage them all efficiently can you reap the benefits. Well, no worries. You just need to use the tools below correctly.
3. Scheduling tools
Social media tools let you schedule, post and comment on all the social content from all profiles on a single interface.
Thus, these tools bring all social media campaigns on a common footing, making management much easier and streamlined.
Some examples of social media management software are HootSuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social.
4. Event tracking tools
These tools are not just limited to social media management; rather, they let you collect data throughout the process and measure the ROI by tracking your event attendees’ activities.
Event social media marketing couldn’t be easier with these event tracking tools. From event registration to post-event surveys, everything can be managed using a tool like Webex.
5. Giveaways and contests
To advertise your upcoming events in a swankier way, giveaways on social media are an incredible tool.
In particular, doing this a few days before the event could make followers throng in large numbers and enhance the event’s exposure.
Likewise, amazing and exciting contests with huge cash prizes or goodies to bag could also significantly increase the audience count and make your event popular like never before.
For example, in one of its events, Webex partnered with McLaren and organized a contest wherein one lucky winner would be rewarded with an opportunity to design the US Grand Prix flag for Austin.
At the same event, Webex engaged with McLaren to allow all registrants a giveaway where a lucky winner would receive a virtual greet with McLaren F1 racing drivers.
Such examples of giveaways and contests could go a long way in popularizing and making your event social media marketing a grand success!
6. Product demos and videos
If your event aims to advertise a product, create brief product demos and self-explanatory yet interesting videos.
These demos and videos should focus on and talk about your product’s positive aspects, benefits, and essential features.
Social media for events is a robust means to showcase the features of your new product and bring it closer to your target audience.
The more social media channels you are into, the greater your chances of increasing your product awareness.
Ensure to include hashtags and CTAs so prospective customers can gain more info on your innovative offering!
Product demos and introductory videos greatly enhance the audience’s interest and grab their attention, thus proving to be a solid event social media marketing instrument.
7. Live event videos and images
Besides product demos, live-stream your event and post the videos on social media platforms.
Make sure to click and post images of post-event happenings, event swag, interactive polls, and more.
Post the best event pictures on Instagram stories.
To keep your target audience engaged, you could organize “best photo caption” contests and encourage them to come up with unique captions for your event pictures.
Event social media marketing finds its true essence only when pictures and images are “suitably” captioned!
Interview the attendees and tag the notable speakers in the videos or pictures.
Summing up
With social media platforms becoming the most sought-after and accessible means to advertise, event social media marketing is at its helm.
The frenzy is on and shows no signs of slowing down.
Most brands use social media for events as anyone and almost everyone has a social media account, making their chances of visiting the event page as likely as never before.
To know more about this, feel free to reach us here.
