We live in the digital era. The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic further transferred personal and business interactions on the web. In turn, social media platforms have become one of the greatest assets and channels an entity can have. So, the question is, how to use social media to promote an event and go viral?
See, you might want to improve your revenues, generate buzz around your event, or build a loyal community. Either way, going viral can help you achieve your objectives. Here’s how you can use social media platforms to do just that.
3 Tips on How to Use Social Media to Promote an Event
You can already find several tips for promoting an event on social media on our blog. However, today, we’ll take things to another level. In continuance, you can find three superior tactics on how to use social media to promote an event in 2021.
Always Start With Your Profiles
You can have business profiles on various social media platforms, starting from more business-wise, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, to more entertaining ones, such as TikTok or Snapchat. Still, it would help if you created all profiles with a single goal in mind – they need to communicate your mission and vision.
When one of your existing or potential customers visits your social media accounts, they need to understand the concept of your business. What does your company do? What it aims to achieve in the long term?
When you incorporate a change in real life, the rule of thumb is to also add it on the Internet.
Furthermore, all your social media accounts must be aligned. For instance, you cannot be an eco-friendly company on Twitter and completely forget about it on Facebook. Also, if you have an early-bird ticket discount or some other promotion, you should communicate it equally across all platforms.
Then, after you refill or brush up your ‘About’ sections, you can link the profiles. For instance, you can add links to your Instagram, Twitter, and other accounts on your Facebook page. In turn, your potential attendees can navigate through your content for hours.
Focus On Organic Social Promotions
Now that you have set out the base, you can get to work. At this point, you need to develop an event calendar listing the different post types and formats you plan on using.
The different types of posts might include general information about your industry, event schedule, guest speaker updates, sponsors or partners, marketing efforts, promotions, giveaways, and so on. Still, our focus is how to use social media to promote an event and go viral? Is there a secret to it?
There sure is! Your 360° integrated social media event strategy should cover all relevant channels. Your bouquet of platforms should fit in well with your industry, niche, event themes, and target audience. While some social media networks are great for sparking discussions (say Twitter), others have a higher engagement than platforms that drive more direct traffic.
Great examples at this point are TikTok and Instagram reels. They create an addiction, as we have never seen before. So, don’t be afraid to create out-of-the-box content. It will help you engage with your clients before, during, and after the event.
Furthermore, your different post types should appear at regular intervals in your calendar. For instance, you can announce one guest speaker per month or a promotion per week. These news releases will create a continual buzz you are aiming for around your event.
At last, it would be best to start much in advance before the big day. This way, you will have time to experiment to test what works and what doesn’t for your target audience. Then, you can appropriately direct your resources to the proper channels.
Paid Ads As The Cherry On Top
Now we get to the third tactic on how to use social media to promote an event in 2021. See, marketers, and people in general, have pretty divided opinions regarding paid advertising.
However, when done right, it can be especially beneficial. Paid ads can reach the people you didn’t even know existed within your area or worldwide. Still, to achieve this effect, you will need to take several things in mind.
First, your paid ads should properly target your potential attendees on various channels. After all, there’s no point in spending your money to appear on an elder’s feed if you try to sell to teens and vice versa. Here, it would be best to think about demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic segmentation.
In other words, your marketing efforts should always reflect your target audience. If your existing and potential attendees mostly use Instagram, you should advertise there. If they tweet, then you should redirect on that platform, and so on.
Furthermore, it would be best to always create at least three different ads per campaign. This way, you can analyze them with the proper metrics and see which one performs the best. Here, it would help if you determine your ROI value per click or participant sign-up.
At this point, you can choose between multiple payment options like pay-per-impression or click or conversion. These criteria will help you determine whether your paid advertising is worth it or not. Does it create the engagement you were looking for? If yes, you can continue pursuing it. If not, you might test another approach in the future.
Final Thought on How to Use Social Media to Promote an Event
As you can see, digitalization has opened so many opportunities for us, event marketers. Social media platforms are flexible tools. You can adjust them to your liking; still, you need to know how to do so. The tactics mentioned above can set you on the right path!
First, it would be best to start with your profiles, as all your clients eventually get there. Then, you can start developing your content calendar. At last, you can go for paid ads, as the cherry on top. In theory, it’s a simple three-step process. Once you perfect it, it would be the same in practice!
