How to promote your event with social media

When it comes to putting on an event, more often than not you’ll want to spread the word as far and wide as possible. If you’re trying to cultivate a certain culture however, the goal may be to reach a specific demographic. Whatever your goals, the ubiquity of social media platforms in our daily lives means that when it comes to promoting your event it just makes sense to use them, providing you use them wisely.

Check out our top tips for promoting your next event using social media:

1. Choose your platforms:

Your social media event promotion strategy will in part be dictated by the platforms you use to reach your customers. With 2.45 billion active accounts at the time of writing, and the most wide-ranging functionality of any of the social networks, Facebook is a very strong place to start promoting your event. More on how to promote an event on Facebook later.

Clocking up 1 billion monthly users, Instagram picks up a slightly younger audience and is a great way to give your audience a feel for your event with striking imagery. Twitter is also a popular platform in the US, UK, Spain and numerous other European countries, with its hashtag function allowing you to monitor the buzz around your brand effectively.

Aside from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you may also wish to target fans via Snapchat or - if your event is corporate - LinkedIn.

2. Create your business accounts:

Each of your social networks needs to be set up with your business account. Use headers, photos and descriptions in a consistent manner across your platforms, altering the message slightly for each. Bios on Instagram, for example, are limited to 150 characters so it’ll need to be a truncated version of your Facebook page.

3. Create your Facebook event:

Along with your business page, it’s good practice to create a Facebook event to promote your event. This event can be promoted via your business page and will contain all the details specific to that particular event rather than one of a series, for example. Your Facebook event will cover the event date and time, the location, the event host, and a ticket link.

Facebook events are also a great way to keep your community and potential event-goers engaged and up-to-date with the latest news.

Once you have built up the community within your Facebook event, you can also continuously promote and upsell other products to that audience throughout the entire campaign in the lead up to your event without spending a penny.

You’re much more likely to achieve higher organic engagement rates on your posts inside the event than you would through your main branded social channels if you grow a significant audience within them. Every time someone joins your Facebook event, it’ll reach the newsfeed of a percentage of that user’s Facebook friends, which organically increases the reach of your event. Facebook events also allow the audience to invite their friends meaning those users will help amplify your event even further!

Your audience inside your Facebook event have consciously decided to join because they are genuinely interested in your event and are highly likely to purchase tickets. Focus on engaging and nurturing the community within these FB events.

4. Develop your following:

The majority of social media platforms will now only show your posts to a small proportion of your followers, which makes accruing new followers organically more difficult than ever. Research estimates that only 2-6% of your followers will see your organic posts. Ensure your profiles on each platform have a consistent aesthetic and theme, display your event hashtag prominently and post interesting, engaging content that is shareable.

This may include pictures and video content, asking questions using a poll format, sharing content relevant to your industry or demographic and so on. Running social media competitions is also an excellent way to bolster your following across platforms. Offer fans the opportunity to win tickets to your event or a free bar tab in exchange for following your profiles, sharing your event or tagging friends.

5. Use ambassadors:

The Ambassador App by Ticket Arena is an important tool for many of the biggest promoters in the UK. A cost-effective way to increase awareness and sales for your events, the idea is simple; event organisers offer incentives like commission or free tickets to fans prepared to sell tickets on their behalf via WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, SMS or Email. Developing a network of ambassadors to sell tickets can be a valuable tool. Good ambassadors will regularly post about your event on their own social media channels giving you an additional advertising stream.

6. Use Social incentives:

Reward customers who share your event on Facebook or Twitter with a small discount that can be configured using our social incentives module. Each discount is limited to single use and automatically integrated into your ticket revenue information so you know exactly how much you’re spending on marketing your event

7. Invest in paid advertising:

Your organic reach on social platforms is limited by the algorithms they use, but a small amount of paid advertising can go a long way. Try boosting your most engaging posts to reach a new, larger audience and draw in followers.

Worried about over promotion and ‘spamming’ your followers and prospective customers with too many posts and ads? Chat to your account manager about investing some of your social media budget into ad campaigns run through Ticket Arena social media channels.

8. Review your marketing metrics on the Event Genius dashboard:

Clients using our self-service Event Genius ticketing platform will now be able to see a breakdown of visitors and sales by channel answering questions such as what channels drive the most interest on your events? Which channel drives the most sales? Review and adjust your marketing tactics accordingly.

9. Co-host your event with Ticket Arena or Festicket:

If you find it difficult to bring people to your Facebook event page, then why not consider co-hosting on Facebook with Ticket Arena (or Festicket for music festivals)? You can keep your customers and the Ticket Arena community updated on news, new accommodation or travel product launches and promotional activities (cost covered by Festicket, etc.)

Ticket Arena or Festicket will also spend marketing budget on Facebook to acquire a new audience for the event (discovery) at no cost to the promoter, achieving more marketing coverage via the event than the Facebook page due to Ticket Arena and Festicket working with thousands of events simultaneously.

This type of hosted event typically sees +180% more engagement on posts within the event due to the audience being more segmented and specific and acts as an additional marketing channel for you to communicate with fans.

——

If you’d like to speak to one of our friendly team about how to better promote your events, through social media or any other avenue, please get in touch and subscribe to our newsletter below:

Related Content – Learn what channels are most important for your event marketing with Event Genius’ new acquisition metrics