Your guide to THE MOST POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Feeling pressure to create a TikTok account because ‘everybody else is’? Knowing which social media platforms to use isn’t always obvious – until you look at the data. This is why we’ve created this easy-to-understand breakdown of what each of the most popular social media platforms has to offer.

According to Webex Events, nearly 40% of event planners state that social media exposure is a key metric of event success, and 58% of marketers use social media to promote before, during and after the event.

This makes sense when you consider how ingrained social media is in most people’s lives –and very likely your target audience’s too. (But take a look at our infographic to make sure this is the case!) And as more of our lives move into the digital realm, it seems wrong to not ensure your brand is there too.

There is lots to think about when promoting your events, venues and services on social media. But here are some of the most important things:

#1

WHICH ONE/S?

The first key decision is which social media channels, and how many? First, identify where your target audience is most strongly represented, so you don’t waste time and energy talking to the wrong people. Next, pick one or two to start with. You can test adding more, one at a time, later. This allows you to perfect your delivery.

If you are using multiple social media profiles, remember to have a consistent brand identity across all of them. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to post the same content, just that it must be clear that they all ‘speak’ the same brand message.

It’s also critical that you set goals and objectives for what you hope to achieve on each platform. These can include things such as: grow your brand awareness, attract new followers, sell more event tickets, engage with your attendees, and so forth.

As always, make these goals SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timespecific). So instead of a goal to ‘sell more tickets’, you could say ‘sell 50 tickets through my Facebook event listing within the next three months’. This way, you will know with certainty whether you reached your goal or not. This knowledge will help guide you when creating your next SMART goal.

Ah, yes, the big question. Here, there are so many possibilities – but always bring it back to your goal (e.g. to sell more tickets), your brand (the tone of voice and style of your posting), and also the social media platforms you are on (whether videos work best, or perhaps an educational blog link or quote).

David Hartshorne, a freelance writer working with leading software-as-a-service and tech brands, adds that, as well as chasing your goal, aim to post quality content rather than quantity, and to post consistently.

So, if you only feel like you have enough great content for three Facebook posts a week, work with that. Ignore the posting frequency advice of three posts a day, for example, because, honestly, no one can agree on what the ideal frequency of posting is! (Just google around and see for yourself.)

If you run a small business and this is starting to sound a little overwhelming, remember that there are many tools to help you with content planning, scheduling and more. The best part is that many have a free basic plan, which should work well when you’re starting out.

Here are some effective social media marketing strategies for events:

• Find an influencer in your industry with a solid social media presence and hire them to help you market your event. Ask them to suggest what they would like to post, so that they can be authentic. If they are so popular, they know what they are doing, so tap into that!

• Collaborate with other brands on social media, such as your event sponsors. Don’t simply share and like each other’s posts. Instead develop a strategy on how you can best work together, and cross-market to each other’s followers.

• Share ready-to-post social media content with your speakers and other stakeholders, so that they can easily share these with their audiences.

• Do short video interviews with your speakers. These can be done live, so viewers can also post questions. Remember to have some valuable takeaways, but leave your viewers wanting more – giving them a reason to come to your event.

• Share some behind-the-scenes content. This could include inoffice photos, a short video clip on-site preparing for the event, or pictures of event swag.

• Find ways to build suspense preevent, e.g. with a countdown clock or even just making a big announcement. You could also post a teaser question, such as: ‘One of our just confirmed speakers is a highly accomplished surgeon who developed a new way to do XYZ. Can you guess who she or he is?’ Poll options could be used, or simply let people answer as a comment. And remember to share the correct answer.

• Offer prizes, giveaways or discounts. Using the teaser question example above, you could give a free ticket or 50% discount to someone who answers correctly. You can also offer prizes during your event as an incentive to encourage more live posting with the event hashtag.

• Share post-event content, e.g. speaker quotes or infographics from the info they shared, interesting audience poll results, videos, photos, attendee testimonials or the results of the post-event survey.

• Don’t forget to consider running some ads. Organic reach tends to not get very far, and ‘going viral’ is a rare phenomenon. On the other hand, paid-for content has a far better reach rate and you can set measurable goals (such as website clicks).

Check out the next spread for our social media situation report!