Anyone who has worked with me or been following me for long enough knows that I will always emphasize the importance of social media when it comes to marketing your events, so I’ve compiled my top 3 social media tips.
You may not use it personally (and that’s totally fine) but you’re doing yourself and your event a HUGE disservice if you’re not on at least one platform relevant to your target market and industry.
Now this is where I guiltily divulge that I don’t really maintain my own private social media profiles and probably wouldn’t even be on social media if it wasn’t part of my career.
But – and this is a huge BUT – I am 1000% aware that being on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (to name just the basics) is absolutely critical to the success of both my own brand and the brands and events of my clients.
I also know that social media trends and best practices change and it doesn’t hurt to occasionally get a refresher on things like what my team and I should be doing to maximize our reach, targeting specific demographics, and how to increase engagement during those all-important weeks leading up to an event.
When I found out that Eventbrite had put out an e-book called Essential Guide: Social Media for Events, I curiously downloaded it to see what “essentials” I might not know about. It turns out there were a few! Even though I’ve been in the event planning and marketing game for over a decade, it was a good reminder that you can never stop learning and even when you think you’re up to date, it doesn’t hurt to do a little refresher course. After all, things change!
The e-book is simple, straightforward, and comprehensive. It demystifies social media (for those who are still skeptical and/or unfamiliar with it) and goes into how and why you should be using it for your events.
These are my top 3 favorite takeaways from the book:
Figuring out which social media platform(s) is for you.
There’s a fantastic breakdown of all of the relevant platforms, from Facebook to Snapchat, that gives you user demographics (gender, age, education/income) which allows you to choose the platform that best matches your own target audience. For example, if you’re hosting a medical conference for senior health industry professionals, being on Snapchat (which boasts a whopping 71% of users under the age of 25) isn’t going to do you much good in terms of marketing your event!
Tailoring your content to each social network.
This is a biggie. Even though I’m well-versed in how to approach posts for each platform, it was great to go through the basics again because I realized that I’d forgotten a couple of things. There are side-by-side examples so you can see what remains consistent and what should be different on Facebook vs. Twitter, for example.
This section also gives a simple summary of what each audience is really looking for when they go on a specific network. For the very visually-oriented Instagram, you want to make sure you give your audience the most visually stunning and impactful photos you have (say ‘no’ to blurry or low-quality images!). Meanwhile, LinkedIn is all about business and users here are looking for professional advice and updates…not details about that Retro ‘90s party or the Halloween Zombie Run.
Optimal posting times.
Did you know that on Instagram, videos perform best at night between 9pm and 8am?
This is one of those things that I always like to double-check when scheduling out content. Believe it or not, knowing whether you should be posting on a Tuesday afternoon or a Friday evening really does have an impact on your reach and engagement. The data here has been pulled together from the analytics of each platform and it’s interesting to see the peak posting times for each audience and network and how timing affects engagement levels.
Although it seems like everyone is on social media all the time and that your post will eventually make it in front of your audience’s eyes no matter when you publish it, why waste an opportunity to get it seen faster and by more people?
There’s actually a lot of great information in this e-book and it’s honestly a fabulous resource to have on hand. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about social media, you’ll probably still manage to learn a thing or two.
Disclaimer: This post was written in partnership with Eventbrite but all opinions expressed are my own.
