Social media plays an undeniably important role in any business. Not that many years ago, social networks like Facebook or Twitter were only the means to connect with your friends, share cute cat pictures and post selfies.
However, nowadays, businesses use it to open two-way communication with their customers.
Now, more important than ever to have a conversation with your customers. Social media allows businesses to have a face, establish a relationship, and make themselves available for their customers.
And you can leverage it for your business as well. Using social media to promote events is a very effective strategy that can bring you more exposure, brand awareness and help you sell out tickets much faster than using any traditional marketing methods.
Mistake #1 – Understanding the difference between social media channels
It’s important to understand that every platform is different from one another.
The biggest mistake you can do is treat them equally. A lot of the times event organizer posts the same content on their Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest.
You must understand that people have a different focus when they’re using these platforms.
By actually adjusting your content, and tailoring it to fit every platform, you will see much better results. Sometimes it will mean that you may post something on Facebook, but skip posting it on LinkedIn, and vice versa.
- Facebook – friendly environment, you can keep things casual and conversational. Videos play a really important part in Facebook. Engaging content that asks user questions also works very well, as it’s easy for the user to interact.
- LinkedIn – professional environment, maintain the expert tone. Brand storytelling and knowledge in the field content pieces work best.
- Instagram – visual platform primarily used by a younger generation (largest age group is 25-34, followed by 18-24). Creative, visual, exciting, unexpected content works very well.
- Pinterest – a social platform primarily used by women (over 77% of users are women). Pinterest is visual, discovery-based. Content can be more detailed than on Instagram. Infographics work very well (you can easily create awesome infographics for free with canva.com)
- Twitter – surprisingly Twitter is primarily used by men (over 68%). Content is direct. Twitter is a text-based platform, where text posts perform better than images, and images perform better than videos. How-to type of the content works best.
These are just a few of the most popular ones. There will always be new platforms, and jumping on them early can be beneficial. Maybe TikTok, or Snapchat would work for your industry better.
Mistake #2 – Abandoning your social media
Using social media to promote events can backfire if you forget about it.
Users use social media to check the pulse of the company or event. If you have been posting the content, and suddenly you’ve stopped – it may be a red flag for the user.
Is everything okay?
Is the company still active?
You don’t want to raise these suspicions and doubts. If you don’t have the time to manage your social media channels as actively as before, you can reduce the pace, but post something at least once a week.
Also, you can start with fewer social media channels in the beginning. Get the processes running, and you can always add more.
It’s always better to have a few, but active ones, rather than having a bunch of dead accounts.
What you can post if you don’t have a lot of time
- Meme from your industry. Reddit is usually a good source for memes. Just check appropriate subreddits of your niche.
- Infographics. Attribute the original author and share an infographic.
- Interesting fact. You can quickly google up an interesting fact, and turn it into a pretty social media post with Canva. You can always post that fact on various platforms, depending on the format it favors (for example – posting a text-based post on Twitter may work better)
- Quote. A good quote can generate great user engagement. It’s easy to find a great quote on GoodReads quote directory.
These are quick-fixes when you are in hurry, and you don’t have anything to post.
However, creating original and unique content always works best, as you can reach out to your audience and connect with them.
Mistake #3 – Not having a posting schedule
Wise Benjamin Franklin said once “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”.
The same goes for your social media.
While it’s easy to get started and post something on your social media without any schedule, it will become a mess very quickly. Especially if you’re working with a team.
You’ll suffer from email, social media accounts, and instant messenger nightmares. The information will be all over the place.
Simply using a collaborative tool (as simple as Google calendar), creating a different calendar for every social media platform will make it organized much better.
That’s a quick and easy solution.
It’s quick. It’s free. It’s easy to use, and anyone can access it, who has got a Google account.
It’s always a good idea to use some social media manager because they offer a lot of quality-of-life improvements when it comes to using your social media.
A few that may be worth your attention:
- Buffer – they have a free plan that includes a few different social media channels, and you can schedule posts in advance.
- Hootsuite – another great tool, that offers a free trial for your first month.
They are quite similar. Buffer is a little easier to use, and if you’re looking for a fast solution, you can go for that one.
Mistake #4 – Not leveraging all platforms
You need to understand that people who use Facebook may not be using Twitter. Those who use Instagram may not necessarily use Pinterest.
Everyone has got their favorite platform.
Which is good for us! That allows us to stand out from the crowd, and reach more people.
However, a lot of the time event organizers only use a few channels to reach their potential clients.
- Their landing page
- Email list
But what about the other channels?
By limiting the number of channels, you are limiting your exposure.
Although, you must remember – never forget about your social media channels. If you don’t have enough manpower to tend to all platforms, you may skip it.
However, I strongly suggest you don’t!
It doesn’t take a lot of time to re-purpose your content. You can take the same piece of the content, and find creative ways of using it on different platforms.
You can turn a text-based quote into an image, which you can turn into a small infographic, or search for a related meme.
The tools, we have reviewed previously will greatly speed up your social media work, and it takes just a little bit of creativity to come up with the content.
You can always look at your competitors, and borrow the ideas that are working for them.
Using social media to promote events
Social media is an excellent channel to generate laser-targeted content for free.
The content is the main driver. Whenever you’re posting the content think about the person on the other end.
It sounds simple and obvious, but a lot of the time it’s actually what is missing!
Think – whether this content provides value. Whether it’s share-worthy. Think about the goal of every post.
Your posts should build brand or event awareness, build trust, tell a story, engage, teach or entertain. If it’s just a post for the sake of posting it – you may want to spend a few more minutes.
Providing value is the key. When you will provide the value, you will generate a lot of free traffic from re-posts and shares.
