How to Best Integrate Social Promotions into Your Event

Social media has become a cornerstone of most marketing strategies. Companies maintain numerous social media accounts for every channel possible in the hopes of expanding their reach to potential customers instantly and exponentially. But in addition to generating overall brand loyalty and working to increase site traffic, how do you attract users to specific events and encourage them to attend? There are several key factors to ensuring a successful social media campaign. Fine-tuning that campaign for an event can add an extra challenge. Technical savvy combined with a little creativity can go a long way to bringing in the users you want to see at your events. First and foremost, creating the right visual concept is a make-or-break requirement for social media promotions of any kind. Finding or designing relevant and attractive imagery immediately brings people to a post. There are too many other more enticing images to click on to bother clicking on a post with a lackluster photo. Along with an inviting image, the text in a post promoting an event should be short and concise. Including shortened links, through bitly for example, can help create a post that is not confusing to the reader and can encourage clicking through to learn more. Another technical aspect of posting that cannot be ignored is determining the right messaging for an event. Think about what the goals are behind the post. Are they to grow event registration, to increase page traffic, or maybe just to drive interest in a topic? The goals you choose can set the tone for a post. Use your own special hashtag for interest and traffic and create an unforgettable slogan to spread word of the event through sharing. Companies tend to be repetitive in descriptions and actions (“check us out!” or “click to learn more”). Get creative, be interesting, and show personality in postings to let readers in to who you are as a company and even just as a group of people sharing the same interests. One of the most advantageous qualities of social media channels is the ability to target and retarget. Initially, you can target your posts to those you know would be interested based on known demographics. You can then retarget visitors that engage with your post, as these groups are most likely to actually attend an event and be active followers. By searching keywords within a social media channel, you can also target new groups that might not have been included in your original selection. This can quickly and easily boost site SEO by driving search traffic to your page. Customer interaction are buzz words that most companies pass over when relating to social media, given that it takes a rather large time investment to stay on top of replying to comments or resharing other’s posts. However, learning and following customer behavior can not only help maintain a strong customer base but can also steer marketing strategies based on what is being said about you and who is sharing what post. Don’t be a passive poster… Be active and engage with customers, and you will watch your brand loyalty skyrocket. And finally, when promoting a specific event or webinar, do a little research. Integrating hot news topics of the day into social media promotions can increase click throughs in a snap. Building on what readers are already interested in and integrating your event into current news will not only bring in more traffic to the site but might attract new users and interest to your event.