How To Drive Event Engagement With Social Media
Social media marketing can be a fantastic tool to use in a variety of campaigns, especially in event promotion. This tool has not only changed the ways people promote events, but it has also changed how influencers and consumers can engage with brands and events associated with them. Social media marketing strategies allow for an open conversation between a brand and the consumer, and this is one of the most crucial steps in ensuring a successful event with high engagement.
Whether your event is a corporate event, an influencer party, a festival or concert, social media marketing can be a driving factor in your success if used correctly. Here are several ways you can use social media to drive engagement before, during, and after your event.
Pre-Event
Content Strategy
In the initial stages of event planning, you will want to have a rough outline of social media content for the months, weeks, or days leading up to your event. Your company may already have an existing content plan in place for event management, but it is always in your best interest to customize the strategy to your specific event.
Social media content should be centered around the concept of your event, and all of your posts should match the tone, whether that be serious or more creative. Anything you create should also drive consumers to a landing page for sign-ups, donations, or anything related to the promotion of your event. Be sure to include educational pieces about featured speakers, sponsors, and any topics the event will be covering.
Influencer Involvement
Get your sponsors and speakers involved! Most times influencers will be excited to help you push your event on social media, especially if they are a featured speaker. Create graphics and other messages that are easy to share on all social platforms, and also create content specifically related to sponsors that they can easily share as well.
Sharing, in this case, is caring for the success of your event. Be sure that any social content you post and push to consumers is readily available to share among event attendees. Don’t under-estimate the power of social share, this will increase your visibility with little to no cost associated.
A great strategy would be to invite a sponsor or influencer to take over your Instagram account or do a Facebook Live feed. It’s a place for your own followers to get excited about the event that you’re hosting, and it also gives the fans or followers of the influencer a chance to be directed to your page for more information on what they are sharing.
The Day-of
Vlog
Especially if this is event is annual, creating excitement around the event for years to come will be based out of any content and footage you have from years past. Occasionally, this may not be allowed depending on the privacy or overall tone of the event. However, if your company allows you to do so and it makes sense in your content strategy to create footage for the upcoming years, we absolutely recommend filming as much as possible.
Live Stream or Social
This is an example of a live Twitter feed wall shared by Social Media Today, which are typically big hits at any conference or event. Common tools that will help you build a live-feed for your event are: TweetBeam, Twitterfall, Twubs, and HootFeed from Hootsuite.
Live Updates On Your Social Networks
Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are perfect platforms for this strategy. A unique content idea you could do at a convention would be to interview guest attendees on your company Instagram or Snapchat story. Tweeting live updates from the event is also a great way to interact with any attendee using the event hashtag that you create. This will allow you to retweet easily, and Instagram also has the new feature of being able to share photos on Instagram stories with credit to the user.
Post-Event
Gratitude Via Social Platforms
The content strategy doesn’t end at the event, the really successful conventions and events will always take it one step farther. Here are where the opportunities to engage with your attendees with give you the maximum value of social media marketing. Starting with gratitude, it will always go a long way to thank speakers, sponsors, and guests via social media to ensure they know that their presence was appreciated by your company. This will in turn help you build bonds and gain lifetime customers.
Creating Promotion For Next Year
Now that you have all of this material and content, it is time for your social team to get to work on compiling a promotion video or more social content for next year’s event. This can include testimonials from this year’s attendees, quotes from speakers and sponsors, and any footage of your guests having a great time!
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We would love to work with you and help you optimize your social media strategy for any event your company is hosting. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!
