Social Media is undoubtedly the best place to create a buzz around any event. Whether it is a humble local event or a mega convention or a concert, Social Media definite can act as one of the biggest stage for advertisement. The interaction on the social media will help you understand the audience better. All this would help you in elevating your event to another level.
The key to success in social media is a good strategy to use social media as the use differs during different stage of your event.
Figure Out Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is the first and perhaps one of the most important aspects of your social media promotion plan. If you fail to completely understand what your target audience wants, the intended message ceases to be useful. Target audience can be distinguished by geographic location, age group or similar interest. If you put in decent effort to understand your audience will pay rich dividends.
Here are some helpful tools and resources that’ll help you determine who your target market is:
Google Analytics provides a depth of knowledge about who’s visiting your website, how they got there (by keyword, referring site, etc), how much time they spend and so much more.
Facebook Insights – If you’ve got a Facebook Page for your event and it has over 30 Likes, you can access Facebook Insights. Insights provides data about who’s interacting with your Facebook Page including Like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views. Mashable offers a great Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights here.
Pick up the Correct Tools
Manually uploading posts to social media is so old school. It takes time and is prone to human error. There are numerous tools that automatically upload the posts and even monitor them. Spend some time researching the right kind of tool for you and use them effectively.
When looking for a tool, it’s a good idea to try a couple of them and choose the one that suits your needs best. This list might come in handy.
#1. SocialOomph
#2. Rignite
#3. SproutSocial
Create Engaging Content
Stop feeding your audience with repeated posts that only contain basic information about the event. If you want your event to stand out, your content must stand out as well. Only post the information that is useful and urge the participants to take some action. The idea of selling the event every time a post is made is quite counterproductive. Earn their trust and then advertise your event.
During the Event
Many novice organisers make the mistake of not updating their social media pages during the event. Constantly giving updates in the form of photos, tweets and posts will help create a buzz about your event to the audience who could not participate in it.
After the Event
Monitor you social activities. There are plenty of analytics tool on the internet that will help you analyse if your social media strategies worked. If they did not, sit down and troubleshoot your strategies. Try to find out what went wrong. If your strategies worked, still sit down, point out what went right.
In conclusion, you need to understand your audience and your event inside out to successfully execute a successful social media campaign. Go without a plan and you might even end up losing the audience you already had.