10 Tips for How to Promote an Event on Social Media

by-ve3
Virtual Events

10 Tips for How to Promote an Event on Social Media

68% of B2B marketers feel live events are what generates the most leads for their companies. It's no doubt that events are useful for not only brand awareness but getting people into the sales funnel as well.

But there's so much more that goes into corporate event planning than just arranging things with vendors. The way you promote your event is vital as well. And today, with so much technology, it may be overwhelming and confusing when it comes to event promotion.

In this article, we'll give you 10 tips for how to promote an event on social media.

1. Start Early

It's never too early to promote your event, but there always comes a time when it's too late.

You may think promoting your event months before the actual date is too soon, but it's not. This gives your potential attendees time to plan ahead and clear out room in their schedule so they can make it to your event.

This also gives them the opportunity to spread the word, as they're not likely to attend alone. Whether it's to their coworkers, friends, or their social media network, your attendees can help spread awareness, provided you give them ample time to do so.

By starting early with your event promotion, it'll definitely pay off when you get free advertising through those who are interested.

2. Create a Hashtag

Hashtags are great for event promotion on social media. Instagram posts that use at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement! Boosted engagement is definitely something you want for your event.

A branded hashtag can help people remember not only your brand but also the specific event you're throwing. That way, when they're talking with their coworkers or friends, they can easily recall the event if they're trying to get others to attend with them.

An event hashtag also allows people to follow along with your progress and helps get them more invested. Remember to keep it short and sweet!

3. Use Your Hashtag

It's easy to create a hashtag for your event, then forget to use it. Obviously, this defeats the purpose if you use it once, then never again.

Considering Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter use hashtags, use yours frequently throughout all 3. Put it on your website, include it in your newsletter emails, and if you have an event app, put it there too!

You might think it's overkill, but not all people are on all platforms. Parts of your audience can easily miss the hashtag if you only put it on Facebook and Instagram, but the only platform they use is Twitter.

As soon as you have a hashtag selected, use it on all your social media accounts, even if nothing's been set up for the event yet. You can create buzz and excitement around it, and even create a bit of mystery by making a "coming soon" post.

4. Create a Facebook Event

Creating a Facebook event is a great way to promote your event for free. It gives your Facebook audience a clear view of when, where, and what your event is about.

You can use this feature to gauge how successful your event will be. Considering people can click "interested" or "attending," you'll get a real-time number of how many people you can expect. This can help you adjust services from vendors if you put up the event early enough.

A Facebook event is also very easy for people to share on their own accounts. If they're interested, all they have to do is press "share as post." They can even invite their Facebook friends to the event.

This takes a lot of marketing work off of you and you don't even have to pay for it!

5. Sell Tickets Through Your Facebook Event

If your event is ticketed through Eventbrite, you can link up the ticketing system with your Facebook event. Even if the tickets are free, you can still use this feature.

When you make it easier for your potential attendees to purchase tickets, you'll see a higher conversion rate. In fact, it's been proven that you can get double the amount of free registrations and a significant increase in ticket purchases if you link up your ticket page with your event page.

6. Have a Landing Page for Registration

If you already use something like HubSpot or WordPress, it should be easy to create a landing page for registration. This link can be shared between your employees, and you can even attach UTM tags to keep track of how well each employee or team is doing in regards to promoting the event.

The registration page can work well to automatically capture information for your sales funnel. In addition to asking for their full names, contact information, and the company they work for, you can also have a field for their position so you can further segment your marketing efforts.

This link will be handy, as you can link it from any social media platform you wish. You can also cut down on the characters by using a URL condenser, such as TinyURL.

7. Consider the Limitations of Each Social Media Platform

Every social media platform has its own limitations for both image size and number of characters per post. For example, Instagram has a character limit of 2,200, 30 hashtags, and 10 images per post. Plus, the optimal size for pictures on that platform is 1080 x 1080 pixels.

Compare that with Twitter; this platform has a character limit of 280, no limit on hashtags, and 4 images per post. Their optimal image size is between 440 x 220 pixels and 1024 x 512 pixels.

As you can see, you have to carefully consider both your words and images for each platform you use. If you try to copy and paste to each one, you'll end up with cut-off posts and blown-out (or squished) images.

8. Think About Your Posting Schedule

On each social media platform, there's a certain posting etiquette you need to follow. What might be seen as spam on one platform may be the norm on another.

Take Facebook and Twitter, for example. On Facebook, it's slower-paced, so people only post once or twice a day, max. On the other hand, Twitter is extremely fast-paced, so it's not unusual to see some people post 10 times or more in a day.

This means every day, you can promote your event 5 times on Twitter, but just once on Facebook.

Definitely do your research on the posting frequencies of each social media platform so you don't end up alienating your audience instead of attracting them.

9. Buy Ads on Social Media

Organic reach is great, as you spent little to no money on these efforts. However, there are limitations, considering you can't really control the spread of information in this way.

The best thing to do is to combine organic with paid promotions. For instance, Facebook allows you to buy ads to promote events. With this feature, you can choose a specific demographic to serve the ads to.

While you'll have to spend money on this, it'll be worth it. Since you can target your desired audience, you won't be wasting marketing efforts on people who don't have any use for your event. 

10. Do Live Promotion During the Event

You shouldn't drop the promotion of your event just because it's started. Continual promotion is important, especially if you're hosting a multiday event.

Keep using your hashtags, posting pictures, and making interesting posts to show people what they're missing out on. Make sure to highlight key speakers to pique their interest even more.

Not only can this drum up interest for the next few days, but it can also convince people to attend in the future if they can't make it this year. Current attendees may also interact with your posts, which can provide further engagement during the event.

Basically, the worst thing to do is to drop social media activity during the event. It may leave people feeling like they're in the dark and may even cause scepticism about the success of your event.

Know How to Promote an Event on Social Media for Better Success

By knowing how to promote an event on social media, it can mean all the difference between it flopping and being a huge success. You can do exemplary planning, but without proper promotion, your event may not get the exposure it needs.

So embrace technology and utilise the above tips we've outlined for you. By harnessing the power of social media, you can ensure your event is promoted through every channel possible.

If you need help planning and executing your next corporate event, please get in touch with us.