Hosting an event can have great benefits for your organization. Besides meeting new people and dispensing information,you get a lot of personal interaction with your customers and get to show them a live part of your brand.
For your event to be successful, you have to not only plan it well, but you also have to plan how you will push people to attend. Social media is one of the best weapons you have in your event promotion arsenal.
These five tips can help get you well on your way to boosting your next event attendance:
1. Understand your potential attendee audience.
Social media is a major part of any event that is created in today’s world. It is a great way to not only reach your audience, but also to get to know who your audience is and who could potentially attend your event. Without this type of insight, you could be creating an event in the dark which no one will plan to attend.
Establish a profile for your intended audience. Identify the types of content they share and what they care about the most. You can typically gather this from their social profiles. Building an ideal event attendee profile can help you not only build relationships but deliver an event that is truly important to your audience.
2. Create visuals that stand out.
For social media, text only content will only get you so far down the road. To gain and retain attention online, you need eye-catching visuals that will drive your audience to pay attention from start to finish.
The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” is very true when it comes to social media. According to the book and website, Brain Rules by John J. Medina, people only remember 10% of what they read just three days after they read it. But, if an image is connected to that same text, they will retain 65% of it after three days.
3. Build anticipation.
This is quite easy to do on social media. One of the best platforms for building anticipation for an event is on Facebook. Within Facebook, you can create an event with all of the details and invite your current friends and contacts on Facebook in a matter of minutes. Additionally, you can communicate directly with those who plan to attend and those who have questions about the event.
Creating an event page on Facebook can serve as a planning mechanism as well, depending on the expected size of your event. Attendees can mark themselves as “Going” to the event or even thinking about the event by marking themselves as “Maybe.” You can then tailor messages to these specific audiences.
4. Run a contest on social media.
You want more people to come to your events, right? Well, you can’t just share it on your social media pages. You must encourage your followers to get involved and spread the word as well. If you just have 10 people who each have 1000 followers or friends, you can easily get your message out to 10,000 people. The number of people interested and number of people who decide to attend automatically becomes exponential.
Running a contest is the perfect way to encourage promotion by word of mouth without a major monetary investment. Before running a contest, be sure to create a strategy that will help you to reach the most people and yield the most engagement. A poorly executed contest could land you in serious legal trouble and not be effective.
5. Incorporate influencers.
According to one Think with Google study, fans are more engaged by social media influencers than they are with celebrities. Top ranking YouTubers receive 3X the number of views on their videos when compared to videos done by celebrities.
Source: Shane Barker
Working to build strong relationships with people in your industry can help you and your brand influence prospective attendees to make plans to attend and register for the event ahead of time. Influencer marketing can be challenging as it takes the right people and the right strategy to pull it off. But, if you do, it can drive attendance to your event.
Creating your event is one side of the coin. Promoting your event and getting people to attend is the other. Events are perfect ways to meet people and build a community of loyal customers for your brand. These five tips can help you boost your engagement and attendance through social media efforts.