Social media is a powerful promotional tool. With over 4.62 billion users around the world, you can promote your event to a bigger audience than ever before. Whether you’re promoting a virtual author meet, an outdoor festival, or a business conference, social media can help get your message out there.
In this article, we will share the top social media strategies you can use to successfully promote your next event.
Summary
1. Optimise your social media profiles
The first step in any successful social media promotion is to optimise your social media profiles. If you want to attract the right audience and sell tickets to your event, your social media profile needs to be on point.
There are many ways you can optimise your social profiles. If you want to give your event the best chance at success, we recommend carrying out a full revamp. This includes updating your images, redesigning headers, rewriting descriptions and ensuring all your contact information is up to date.
You should also add your event logo and hashtags to your profile. This will make it easier for people to know what you’re promoting so they can engage and share it with others. We also recommend interlinking your social media profiles, as this will help you cast a wider net and ‘catch’ the biggest audience possible.
2. Create an event hashtag
According to Hootsuite, “Using hashtags is essentially a way to group together conversations or content around a certain topic, making it easy for people to find content that interests them […] This can lead to greater engagement, boosting your brand’s social media engagement through likes, shares, comments, and new followers.”
Creating your own event hashtag is a great way to widely promote your event whilst ensuring all relevant information, imagery, and conversations are stored under the hashtag. Event hashtags are also a great way to ensure your event page has a steady stream of content, both user-generated and your own, that is promoted across your social channels.
If you’re thinking about creating an event hashtag, our advice is to keep it short, simple, and easy to spell. The last thing you want is people forgetting the hashtag or spelling it wrong when they post. Keeping it simple and memorable helps boost engagement and will ensure your event sees a lot of promotion online.
3. Create engaging content
The best way to promote your event on social media is to create engaging content that will attract new audiences. According to KAU Media Group, “If current trends continue, the average person is projected to spend 6 years and 8 months of their life on social media. That speaks volumes for the global opportunity.” And creating content users want to engage with plays a big part in that.
To maximise user engagement on your social profiles, you need to offer a variety of different content types. As humans, we all respond to different things. We always recommend that content creators create a variety of posts, from live videos and image-heavy posts, to articles and infographics. Varying the content you share will help increase interest, boost engagement, and promote your event successfully.
4. Launch social media competitions
Social media users love taking part in competitions. This interactive form of content attracts huge audiences, boosting your brand reach, and widely promoting your event. Social media competitions have become a widely used strategy to help promote events, sell products, build brand loyalty, and launch new businesses.
Social media contests have a conversion rate of 34% which is higher than any other type of content shared on social media. So, if you haven’t already, it’s time to run a social media competition. You could offer free event tickets, meal vouchers, or VIP passes (to name a few ideas) to promote your event and increase interest.
5. Create connection with live video
Social media users are engaging with live video content like never before. This form of content is a great promotional tool and something you should use before, during, and after your event.
According to the Social Media Examiner, “One of the biggest advantages of going live on video is that it cuts through everything. It brings your conversation to the forefront and hosts it in real time. You’re no longer putting content out and then waiting to see if it resonates with your audience. You get feedback right away. And you can have a real conversation in the moment.”
Live video is a unique form of content that helps create one-to-one engagement with your audience. It gives a behind-the-scenes look into your event and is a great way to encourage a higher level of engagement, drumming up interest in your event, and increasing brand loyalty.
Final words
As you can see, there are numerous social media strategies you can use to help promote your next event. We hope this article has provided you with some inspiration. There are so many tools you can use to promote your next event, but social media is by far the most powerful.
Discover all the features of our online ticketing, access control, cashless payment and CRM tools by clicking on the button below:
