When people think of marketing an event, they usually think social media. There's a good reason for this—studies show that online content, such as reviews, and connections on social media's opinions, increase faith in an event. In order to help you increase your event's social media impact, we've gathered five tips to get you started.
This is something that seems obvious, but is easier said than done. Building a solid base of real, organic followers is important. Whatever you do, don't pay for followers. They won't interact with your posts, and eventually that money will be wasted when the spam accounts used by the companies offering following services are deleted or become inactive. Instead, try to build a follower base full of people relevant to your business. Look at industry leaders and who they are following. Observe who's following them and follow those people and companies to get started.
Promoting an event on social media? A mobile app can help take you to the next level and get your social media messages out to your event's audience. Read more about how to get a free mobile app for your event here.
What are you supposed to do once you have all of these followers for your event?
Interact with them.
Simply following a few hundred (or thousand,) people and hoping they follow you back isn't enough—you have to be interacting with them (liking, sharing, or commenting on their posts, etc.) in order to foster a relationship. Obviously it's impossible to do this for every post each follower makes, but make it a point to interact with people via your social media accounts a few times a week.
To get the most impact on social media, you have to be accessible. Often people will send a Facebook message or a tweet to a company rather than emailing them because it is simply easier—especially for companies whose audiences are younger (18-30). Because of this, it is of the utmost importance to be regularly checking your social media inboxes and notifications and responding to every message in a timely manner.
Having a good social media presence is a great first step, but without content being created weekly—if not daily—then there will be nothing for your accounts to post about! This is where having a weekly blog comes in handy. Get your team members to write blogs about their role in your industry, as well as compile how-to lists in order to beef up your website's content.
In order to increase your company's social media impact, you have to have a constant presence online. Huge gaps of time in between posts, or times when your accounts go radio silent will hurt your impact. If the person (or people) running your event's social media is going on vacation or will be unusually busy for a few weeks, it's important to queue up posts to make up for the interim. And, if possible, have someone trained to respond to any messages or notifications that may pop up while the main person is busy.