How to Promote an Event on Social Media

Social media has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives. It has not only changed the way we communicate but also how we do business. The realm of events is one such area where social media has had a significant impact.

Social media events have grown in popularity in recent years, and it’s critical to understand what they are, how they work, and how they can help your business as an event organizer. A social media event is a virtual event that is promoted and marketed primarily through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

These virtual events can take many different forms, such as webinars, virtual conferences, live streaming events, and others. Facebook Live is one of the most popular ways to host a social media event. Facebook Live enables event organizers to stream live videos of their events to their target audience, providing attendees with an immersive and engaging experience.

Event marketing is an essential component of any event planning process, and social media marketing can be an effective tool for reaching out to potential attendees. You can generate buzz and interest for your event by creating compelling social media posts, using event hashtags, and leveraging your social media channel.

Social media event promotion can be a low-cost way to reach a large audience while also allowing you to interact with your target audience in real-time. To ensure the success of your social media event, you must have a solid social media strategy in place.

You must first identify your target event attendee, learn about the social media platforms they use, and create social media content that speaks to them. You can track the effectiveness of your social media strategy and make adjustments as needed by using social media analytics tools.

Event registration and event engagement are critical components of any social media event’s success. You can increase audience engagement and build a sense of community around your event by creating a social wall where attendees can share their experiences and interact with other attendees.

Creating valuable and engaging event-related content can also attract potential attendees and build excitement for your upcoming event. Another effective way to promote your social media event is through influencer marketing.

You can collaborate with famous influencers and thereby, you access their audience/followers and promote your event to a larger audience. Choose credible influencers who don’t only have a large following but also resonate with what your event tries to achieve.

When organizing a social media event, keep your target audience in mind. Understand their needs, interests, and pain points before creating social media content that addresses them. Furthermore, providing event swag bags can be a great way to increase event engagement and give attendees a tangible reminder of your event.

Finally, social media events have gained traction as an effective way to reach a larger audience and engage with potential customers. You can increase engagement and attendance rates for your virtual event by using social media channels, live video, influencer marketing, and content marketing.

Build a social network and a loyal following for future events by engaging with your target audience and providing valuable content. Social media events are here to stay, and they are a cost-effective digital marketing tool and an effective social media channel for event engagement.

Facebook is a pretty unique social media platform that offers both free and paid options for promoting your event. When leveraged properly, you can increase awareness, drive ticket sales, and even connect with vendors or other groups that might want to partner up.

• Less is more. It can be tempting to create a massive wall of text about your event, but that tends to turn people off. Have a few small paragraphs at most (1-2 sentences per paragraph), and utilize short bullet points when you can.
• Always have a great picture and a link to accompany your social media post.
• It’s smart to put out several posts about your event, but make sure not to overwhelm and spam your followers. Too much of a good thing can work in reverse.
• Create a sense of urgency. Pointing out things like limited tickets, closing registration, or rising prices are great ways to drive signups and purchases (as long as you have a way to capture those which we cover later in the guide).
• Promoting a post instead of running an ad is a creative way to circumvent the character limitations with ads (if that’s something you need).
• Add your event to the sidebar of your business page
• Categorize your event properly
• Use a custom event hashtag
• Make use of the localization feature for where it will exactly take place. You have the option of entering the venue name or the exact address. This way people within the location of the event will be made aware and will be able to attend.
• Use Facebook search to find and engage with conversations, enter a keyword or phrase in the search bar, filter results by selecting “Groups” or “Posts”, scroll through the results, click on a post or group, and engage with the conversation by leaving a comment or reacting to the post while following Facebook’s community standards and guidelines.

Instagram is an image-heavy social media platform that is great to connect with users of all ages. What’s neat about the platform is that it’s really set up to work with any and all types of events, unlike something like LinkedIn which may be more limited to professional-type events.

• Pictures, pictures, pictures. People flock to Instagram for the imagery. If you’re not properly leveraging that in your ads and posts, you’re not going to have much success. If you need to pay a few dollars to get some professional images made, it could be a wise investment.
• Consider connecting with influencers. Whether through paid promotion, bargaining, or just goodwill, you may be able to get Instagram users with a lot of followers to help you promote your event.
• Paid Instagram marketing is run through and paired with Facebook. If you’re looking to use social media to promote your events and have limited time, that’s a way to cross off two of the largest platforms in one fell swoop.
• Participate in conversations by opening the Explore page, searching for a keyword or hashtag, picking “Tags” or “Places,” scrolling through the results, clicking a post, and posting a remark or reaction according to community norms.

Most people think of LinkedIn as a resume-style, business-focused platform. In fact, if you asked most people if they considered LinkedIn social media, they’d say no. However, the platform has made major strides over the past few years to be more interactive and give users (and event planners like you) better ways to connect.

• Gauge the appropriateness of your event. If it’s not something that fits well in a professional environment, it might be better to focus your efforts on other social media platforms.
• Craft your message to appeal to the user base. For example, if you’re promoting a fundraiser on other social media channels, you might push more of the fun aspects. However, if you’re promoting it on LinkedIn, you could see benefits from mixing in subtle nods to potential networking opportunities.
• Through the mutual connections feature, you can make an excellent CV for yourself. By using this feature, you’ll find mutual connections on some of your connection’s profiles with many people connecting from a similar field. The feature is ideal for promoting your event to similar professionals.
• To use LinkedIn search to find and engage with conversations, enter a keyword in the search bar, select “Content,” scroll through the results, click a post, and leave a comment or reaction while following community standards.

Brevity is the soul of wit, right? Twitter is a fast-paced social media platform that gives you a limited 160 characters to get your message across to potential event attendees. And while this might seem like a drawback, it’s actually a great exercise in helping you dial down your core message for more effective results. 

Additionally, Twitter has a lot of backend technology that can help you through both free and paid avenues to get your message out.

• Your goal with Twitter marketing should be to inspire the people that see your message to click on a link for more information.
• When crafting your message, focus more on the benefits and less on the details. Instead of using your character space to give all the nitty-gritty details, talk more about the exciting aspects of the event. You can include all of the additional details on the event page through the link.
• Utilize hashtags. This is a great way to get people who don’t follow you to see your message.
• Reach out to people who are involved in your event and ask for a retweet. The more eyes you can get on your message about your event, the better.
• To locate and participate in Twitter discussions, search for a keyword or hashtag, pick the “Latest” tab, scroll through the results, click a tweet, then respond or retweet while adhering to Twitter’s standards.

It’s never too early to start building your social media audience. The larger you can build your audience, the less you need to spend to reach more people. Effectively using social media to promote events generally involves a mix of free and paid campaigns. The larger you can drive your audience size (which does take time), the fewer financial resources you need to put toward the paid side of the house.

But the most important part of using social media to promote events is to have somewhere effective to drive traffic. If you successfully get someone interested in the event but you have no way of giving them more information or selling a ticket on the spot (online), you may miss out on getting them to attend.

A great way to solve all of these issues under one roof is with Event Espresso. The user-friendly full event management program lets you easily create full event listings with all the details and even sell tickets and take registrations right on the spot! It’s the greatest way to get your message out and capitalize on your social media promotion efforts.

And the best part? You don’t need a degree in computer science to use Event Espresso. It’s extremely intuitive, takes only a few minutes to set up, and comes with the best support staff in the business. If you’re ready to take your event to the next level and ensure you capitalize on your marketing efforts, it’s time to check out what Event Espresso can do for you.