How Social Media Can Enhance Your Event
Social media has taken the world by storm in recent years. As of 2017, over 2.46 billion people use it around the world and that number is said to grow to over 3 billion by 2021. It is no wonder then that social media has become a powerful tool to be used in promoting all sorts of events. But as most of us know, it’s not enough to simply post something on social media and hope it will catch on. The best way to get to your consumers is to also get them actively engaged with your event by encouraging them to share and contribute to it. User-generated content (UGC) is, after all, the best way to spread stuff around. Here are a few tips on how to use social media to enhance an event.
The Big Four Social Networks
Depending on the nature of the event, the industry you are involved in, or your target audience, some social media outlets may be better than others. But as a general rule of thumb, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin are the four main social sites that can cover a broad audience.
Facebook is the most versatile of the four, allowing users to create the main event pages, engage followers, share event updates, and target to specific groups via paid promotion. Twitter is perfect for building up excitement prior and during the event itself. As an image-oriented social platform, Instagram allows you to get your brand noticed through visual means. Finally, Linkedin is where B2B interactions take place and the platform is good for posting company news or event announcements.
The Hashtag
By making use of a hashtag campaign, UGC will work for you during both the promotional phase, as well as during the event. Come up with a short, unique, and easy-to-remember hashtag where you will post related content. Promote that hashtag on all social media outlets and other communication channels (e.g. website, emails, printed materials, etc.). The hashtag is one of the easiest and most engaging ways for your audience to be kept up-to-date, interact with the event, as well as to influence passive communities with the buzz generated by UGC.
In order to get your audience to share the event online, it could be smart to run a social media contest with various prizes based on their level of engagement. These may include simple ideas like enter-to-win sweepstakes, a hashtag contest, retweet-to-win, tagging a friend, or even filling out a short survey with the winner being chosen at random.
The Live Social Wall
The attendees will be your best promoters, but it could be somewhat difficult to get them to post at the event, let alone tag your brand while doing so. But with a live social wall, they will be more than eager to do so. People generally love to see themselves on the big screen and if you’re posting their hashtagged social media content live for everybody to see, you can be sure that people will be Tweeting and Instagramming like crazy. And the more people are posting about your event at once, the better the chances of it becoming a trending topic.
Sparking discussions is another great use of a live social wall. By posting regular topics and ideas onscreen, you will be able to run and moderate the conversation taking place. Social walls can also be used to display real-time updates, various contests, upcoming events, other related content, as well as promotional and sponsorship material.
Conclusion
Social media is the perfect place to promote and generate buzz. You can do it before, during, or even after the event by having your audience and attendees be actively involved in spreading the word.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
