A strong social media presence is one of the best ways you can build trust and strengthen relationships with your audience. Engaging with your audience on social media is key: The more you do this, the greater your organic reach. Algorithms love content that is full of likes, comments and reposts.
How can event marketers and social media managers engage their followers on Facebook and promote their events and brands? Here are seven steps to help you reach your audience via social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Regularly Post To Engage Your Audience on Social Media
It’s important to be consistent when it comes to social media. To plan the posts that you will use to engage your followers on social media, create a social media calendar.
Don’t just post to promote your event. Your posts should be flexible, interactive and personable. Value should also be included.
- Show the faces of your team and the time you spent together. Also, show how you prepare for future events behind-the scenes.
- To drive sales, use countdowns or urgency marketing strategies.
- Video performs more than photo-based posts.
- Teaser posts will keep your audience interested.
- Go live to talk to your followers in-real-time
- Encourage your followers to reach out via social media platforms.
Don’t be too formal and distant. Funny, Emotional, Relative are the best types of content that work well on social media platforms.
Get your followers involved with polls & AMAs
Engage your audience on social media by engaging with them and including them within the overall storyline. It would be a good idea to create polls every once in awhile. Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn support polling. You can also use Instagram for AMA (ask anything).
Create & Use An Event Hashtag
Make an event hashtag. It should resonate with your audience. It can be used repeatedly before, during, or after your event. It is best to have it included in the copy, rather than adding it at the bottom.
Encourage your attendees and colleagues to include it in their posts. This will give you a great overview of user-generated material. You can also quickly respond to them and make sure they feel heard.
Engage your audience on social media with an AR filter
Snapchat was the first social network to introduce AR filters. Anyone can create their own custom AR filter for Instagram and TikTok. This is a great opportunity for businesses to promote their events or brands.
Your brand logo, or the event name can be used to create your own AR filter. It should be fun and engaging so that your attendees enjoy sharing it.
Display Social Media Activity on A Social Wall
Social wall display social media content, including user-generated content! All social media content (including user-generated content) can be displayed on a large screen. Attendees can share their posts and content to help create your brand voice. A social wall can be used on your website for all kinds of events, even hybrid or virtual.
Event Gamification: Giveaways & Raffles
An giveaway is a great way to get your audience to share your event on social media. Encourage your attendees to share the event with their friends and tag others who might be interested. Giveaways can make a huge impact on organic reach, and increase brand awareness.
Promoting your next event during the event is the best time. Organise giveaways and raffles via social media. You can offer tickets to your next event, or a subscription for a year to your online community.
Use Influencers to Engage Your Audience on Social Media
You can improve many of the tips above by using an influencer to market campaigns. You can let a thought leader or a famous content creator spread word about your giveaways and photo booths, hashtags as well as the event itself.
Engagement in Social Media After-Event
Engage your audience via social media immediately following the event.
- Highlights best user-generated material.
- Share any press information about your event.
- Ask attendees for feedback via social media.
- Give those who missed the event a taste of it.
Your event footage will be your best marketing material for future events. Don’t let this valuable content go to waste.
Conclusion
If you want to engage your target audience effectively, your social media presence must be strong. Keep your content fresh and relevant to your audience.
Use hashtags, AR filters and giveaways to promote your brand. Keep an eye on your social media analytics. Keep track of how many people you have reached and what posts are performing well. You can emulate the most successful posts. If your audience enjoys AMAs, you should host more.
Although event planners may promote events using social media, they can still use platforms to help them. However, social media remains one of the best ways to reach your audience organically and in exciting ways.
Endless Events has helped many event marketers produce and manage events with great success. Endless Events helps organizations plan, organize, produce, manage and design events to maximize their event ROI.