Social Media Marketing for Venues: A Complete Guide
Social media marketing for venues is one of the most important contributing factors to successful online marketing. Particularly in the case of complex decision making processes, like purchasing tickets or customer registrations.
Every picture, update, presentation, post, video, update, or action that you upload on your venue’s profile on social media will impact the viewers.
Event planners have reportedly used social media marketing for venues commonly for pre-event attendee engagement by 89%.
Content is the currency of social media.
Use it wisely to create a substantial impact on your search engine optimization. The shares and click-throughs directly impact your venue’s search engine rankings.
That being said, social media can be greatly overwhelming and resource intensive.
It may sometimes get difficult to use it correctly. However, you can leave your worries aside as it can be learned, and that is why we are here with a complete guide on social media marketing for venues.
ABCs of social media marketing for venues
Before we begin, keep in mind that there are a few simple but essential steps you need to follow in order to achieve the desired goals:
1. Define your goals: You can do this with the social media handle of your venue. Be clear about what you want to do. You might want to increase your followers or drive more leads. Making clear objectives and developing the perfect strategy is necessary.
2. Identify your target audience: Make up your mind on who you want the target audience to be. You could be looking for potential clients, event managers, or the general public. The clearer and defined these segments’ are, the better.
3. Develop the appropriate strategy: Now that you have defined your goals and identified your target audience, driving those goals in a suitable manner is vital. Are you wondering about how to do it? Read ahead to know more!
Developing the right social media marketing strategy for your venue
The age old saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, holds a hundred percent true when it comes to crafting a social media marketing strategy for venues.
The word ‘strategy’ can seem complicated, but we have laid out the basic rules for you to understand easily.
1. Make use of social media to build a relationship with your followers
You can use social media engagement to provide value for your followers. How do you do that?
For every promotional post about your venue, you should share 3-4 posts that do not sell anything. Simple, isn’t it? Now, what can you share apart from those promotional posts depends on your imagination. You can take a cue from our ideas below:
– Photo/caption contests
– Shout outs
– Testimonials
– Surveys and polls
– Funny moments
– Infographics
– Videos/photos
– Announcements
– Countdowns to big events/news
– Quotes and articles
– FAQs
– Post-event highlights
– Memes/funny gifs
– Social media takeovers
2. Draw on visual storytelling
Whether it is LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, it is a usual trend that the posts with maximum user engagement are the ones that feature elements of multimedia – image/video/GIF.
The reason behind this is simple; those posts with multimedia attachments are more eye-catching and dynamic compared to those which only have text/URLs.
If you are running short of images or videos, you can visit websites like Unsplash, which offer photos of high resolution for free.
Having said that, it is always preferable for your imagery to be a high quality reflection of your actual venue.
If you have the budget, employ a professional photographer and get pictures taken that you can use to flaunt on your social media profiles.
When it comes to visual storytelling, we want you to consider marketing your space to potential customers and planners.
Use the visuals to narrate the story of your venue space. How flexible is it? What types of events can be hosted there? How different can they look?
Engaging the viewers with pictures will give the planners the creative spark required to visualize their event at your venue.
You can try to #hashtag your #localevents and persuade your viewers with photos to crowdsource your visual content.
Generate engagement through hashtags as much as you can. Although you might want to post all your pictures at once, use them to post on recurring events as a way of creating content at the appropriate times of the year.
This builds a new level of brand awareness with event attendees who have never visited your venue.
In addition, you can offer incentives to your guests who show off their experience on social media platforms in return for perks and privileges during their stay. In case of event planners, you can entice them with exquisite catering options for their upcoming event.
3. Respond authentically
Remember that social media platforms are not billboards. While posting is essential, the engagement needs to be kept interactively. The desired traction cannot be achieved when social media posts are made without authenticity.
Your preparation and dedication to your venue’s social media presence will not be useful if you do not respond to your followers and fans.
Therefore, engaging, interacting, conversing with your followers, fans and other people of your industry is more fetching in comparison to using social media for pure self promotion of your business.
Also make sure that the content you regularly upload is consistent with the aesthetics and message of your brand.
For instance, if your business is all about sustainable ingredients or your venue boasts of a colorful interior that features beautiful murals from a local artist, then these are things that are absolutely worth publicizing and shouting about.
The key takeaway here is that you should make viewers feel like they are experiencing content from a fellow human being and not just a business/brand.
4. Blogging actively can be appealing
A blog can show potential clients, guests or event planners what business with you looks like and what takes place behind the scenes.
Blogging makes social media marketing easier, and you can share all the content you have for an enriched experience.
You can begin with easily producible content like recaps of events, client testimonials or team interviews and then follow up with complex topics.
It greatly helps and adds to your value if you respond to comments, include links to your site, be consistent with the posts by adding new ones periodically, and thereby putting your best foot forward to engage your audience.
5. Create raving advocates across all your social media platforms
One of the best ideas for good social media marketing for venues is using follower generated content, i.e, likes, comments, and reviews. It is via word of mouth that most traction is built from.
The happier your clients are upon completion of the event, the more certain you are going to receive a “thank you” message, comment or review on social media.
Encourage your clients/guests to add a review/photos about their experience as these reviews lead to further bookings.
Worried about finding such advocates? Do not worry. You can reach out to celebrities, social media bloggers, and influencers.
With an envious number of followers on their social media accounts, you can get them to make posts or blogs that highlight your venue by offering them lucrative incentives.
Do not forget to cross post their blogs and images across your social media accounts to advertise your property.
6. Maintain consistency for your handle names
In case your venue’s name is not super unique or quirky, it is highly advisable to keep all social media handles the same. It will make searching for your business easier and simpler.
For example, if your venue is named ‘Gather’, it is not surprising that the handle was taken previously by somebody else. Thus the addition of words like ‘GatherTech’ or ‘Gather.org’ at the end will make your business’s name stand out.
The Best Social Media Platforms You Can Make Use of for Marketing Online
1. Facebook
With an ever increasing number of daily active users on Facebook, garnering the traction is relatively easy. Stats show that around 1.56 billion users are active daily on Facebook. It is a no brainer that most companies/venues use Facebook for social media marketing for venues.
Here are some secrets that you can use to succeed on Facebook:
– The more your followers tend to engage with your content by liking, sharing or commenting, the more they tend to come across your posts on their feed. Find out which posts attracted the maximum number of likes and comments and post similar content.
– Use the groups on Facebook to foster engagement within them and potentially reach newer audience.
– You can use Facebook Messenger to build a personal relationship with your customers.
– Give your guests/followers the opportunity to become co-content creators and also share their posts on your feed.
– You can also use Facebook’s targeted advertising to promote your venue.
– Facebook Live feature is a great way to grab the attention of your viewers. Your audience also gets a notification when you begin streaming. Take advantage of the Facebook Insights Page to know when the majority of your followers are online and get the timing perfectly right. Remember that you need to stay “live” for 10 minutes at the least to optimize reach.
2. Twitter
Twitter is another social platform with a massive number of active users. With around 350 million users and 500 million tweets per day, it is great way to promote your venue.
Are you looking for ideas to use Twitter for social media marketing for your venue? Read ahead for ideas:
– Twitter is known for the ease of resharing and retweeting content and hence it is used by many people as a great source of news.
– You can add visual content and create higher engagement. You can also tag people while using images and it does not count towards the final character count.
– Did you know that you can embed your twitter feed onto the website of your venue. This lets your visitors know that you are active online.
– A “twitter live wall” on a big screen can be used for greater engagement with attendees at the event.
3. Instagram
Instagram, especially popular for visual content, is an ever growing platform with over 95 million posts and 400 million Instagram stories in a day.
Not sure how to use Instagram to build the appeal? It is simple. People buy from brands that they trust in. Instagram helps build trust.
Visuals with a combination of captions and hashtags make the platform an ideal place to begin building such a relationship.
Following the recent update, Instagram users can now follow not just profiles but hashtags also. This broadens the prospects and opportunities for planners/potential clients to come across your venue on Instagram.
You can promote your venue with stories on Instagram and also add some of them as highlights to your profile. This lets your fans and followers discover your venue in their leisure time.
4. Pinterest
Sample photos of your space can be uploaded on Pinterest to show off your venue and inspire planners to consider your place right for the event.
Make sure to add images that highlight the versatility of your space. Create individual boards for association, corporation or social events.
What’s better? Add unique images that showcase the venue during day and night events. Keep exploring and trying different styles of viewer engagement on Pinterest.
5. LinkedIn
Did you know that LinkedIn is a great place to devote some strategic efforts in case your venue can host corporate events? You can easily establish connections with clients and past customers by posting effective content.
6. Bloc
Bloc is a social events app where people can check-in to venues and be rewarded financially for attending.
Users can also connect and chat with people who are also checked into the same venue so people can make friends and start relationships.
Venues can take advantage of Bloc by encouraging check-ins on the app and making their venue look like the most popular place in an area.
When a particular venue looks popular on Bloc, more people will attend due to social proofing.
Bloc also has a pay-per-result advertising platform where venues can improve their customer base and only pay if a Bloc user actually attends their venue (via geo-location).
Wrapping Up
While it is essential to create user engagement, do not forget to assess the performance of the strategy used for social media marketing of your venue.
Every social media platform, from Facebook to Snapchat, offers accurate data about how well your posts are doing. Take advantage of this to follow the numbers and track your progress. Hence, you can work on the areas that need tweaking and improve your profile even more.
As mentioned earlier, devising the right strategy and creating interactive content can be learned and mastered.
Though it may seem overwhelming, we promise you that you can do it. Keep our tips in mind, use them to your advantage and make your life easier! Happy marketing!
