There’s something of a misconception of social media being the fastest, cheapest and easiest means of building your event brand. Yes, it’s the fastest in terms of being able to just dive straight in, and cheapest due to the lack of costly barriers to entry. Easiest? Well, for starters it definitely isn’t is a set-and-forget solution. Social media’s nature is immediate and requires daily monitoring at the very least, along with timely responses to messages and comments from users.
If you don’t have the staffing resources for a dedicated social media manager, or are just curious how to maximise your social media effectiveness, here are a few tips:
1. If you’re new to social media, start by picking two platforms to focus on and work your way up from there. Not only will it make the learning curve easier, but you may also find your event doesn’t need to engage across every social media platform. Take a look to see which platforms events similar to yours are engaging their attendees on. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to be on a platform when your audience isn’t.
2. Still confused about which platforms to start with? Each has its pros and cons, but it all depends on knowing your target audience, the tone of your brand and what tools you currently have at your disposal. For example, Facebook is widely used across a number of generations, whilst Snapchat tends to be relegated to Millennials and Gen Z. Instagram is image based, YouTube is a video platform and Facebook allows you to post a multitude of content including videos, images and polls. We’d highly recommend Facebook being one of your initial choices for the reasons outlined above. Facebook acts as a natural extension to your company website and with Facebook Messenger built in attendees will have an easy way of contacting you.
3. Make sure your responses to messages and comments are timely. Social media users tend not to treat communication as written correspondence but more like a conversation. These days social media apps are often the first thing checked in the morning, the last thing checked at night and devices are never usually more than a few feet away from the user. Alerts are generated when someone has replied, commented or liked a post, so chances are your attendees will be keeping an eye out for when you respond.
4. Put together a style guide laying out tone and language. You probably already have something like this for your traditional marketing, so it shouldn’t take much to adapt it for social media. You’ll find this particularly handy in keeping things civil if you’re dealing with a negative review or comment, but more importantly it will help maintain consistency of your event’s brand message across platforms.
5. Remember it’s not the number of likes that’s important (although we get that it’s a nice feeling when you see those numbers rise), but instead the conversion of traffic and user engagement into transactions as well as data gleaned from tools such as Facebook Insights as to how your content is shared by users.
Like all things, there’s often a period of trial and error place before you fall into your social media groove, but hopefully this guide will condense that period. We’d love to hear any feedback you have on social media strategies you’ve implemented for your event. Drop us a line here.
