7 Ways to Boost Event Attendance with Social Media

Hosting a company event or function is a great way to spread brand awareness, increase profits and sales, promote products or services, and establish connections with both existing and potential customers. Event attendance plays a huge role in the overall success of the function. Whether the event is a conference, product launch, seminar or company celebration, the key to a promotional business event is maximized interaction between the company and its customers.

In order to gain the benefits from a successful event, there needs to be a high attending rate to ensure this high engagement between customers and the company is met. While traditional marketing methods still have their advantages, using social media for event promotion has shown to be a highly effective way to boost event attendance.

Navigating social media promotion for an event or function can be tricky, however, there are plenty of avenues and wide-spread platforms to promote in order to increase attending numbers. Here are seven ways we’ve come up with to boost event attendance with social media.

1. Create Great Media

Video provides a unique opportunity to convey the energy and excitement of an event. Creating a highlight reel from prior events that your company has hosted will give the viewers an idea of what to expect and the overall vibe of the event. The higher the quality of the content you create, the higher the engagement your brand will see. According to Event Management Melbourne group Polite Promotions, matching your footage with attractive visuals and catchy audio will increase the number of times the video is shared over social media platforms. Great media and content will extend your networking reach while also increasing brand and event visibility.

2. Set up a Facebook Event

Creating a Facebook Event is one of the best ways to get the correct information about your event to your target audience. Ideally, your business already has a Facebook profile in which you can create an event with. Facebook events are a great tool to spread the word on your event, provide attendees with valuable information, interact with attendees directly through comments and increase event visibility with those who’s friends are attending.

Once your Facebook Event has been set up, be sure to share it over multiple platforms. Linking it to your other social media profiles and cross-promoting the Facebook event will drive more people to the profile and increase the overall traffic your event marketing efforts receives.

3. Most Frequent Content in The Lead-Up

Use your business profiles with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and relevant blogs, to trickle out content that is relevant to your event, in the lead up to the big day. You should be posting on multiple platforms in the month prior to the event, with exciting promotional content that gets your audience talking.

That being said, quantity does not equal quality promotion. Overposting self-promotional content on your event may come across as spammy or overbearing for users. Focus on creating posts that engage your audience and make them want to learn more about your event, without overloading them with advertisements.

4. Create a Hashtag

Hashtags are very much a relevant and powerful tool for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Having a branded hashtag to promote your event will make it easier to do just that. Once attendees begin to pick up the tag and use it themselves, they will be organically promoting your event for you.

A hashtag can be used to generate conversation and excitement around the function and who will be attending, which will create a hype around the event and brand and increase the number of people interested in attending. Make your hashtag catchy and relevant to your brand. This way, the hashtag can continue being used after the event to promote your brand or products.

5. Use Social Media Ad Campaigns

Social media ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram can be especially helpful in promoting an event. The further these ads reach, the further your potential attending list extends. Facebook Ads gives you the opportunity to target the promotions towards people who are already connected with the brand, who are likely to interact with the brand, and also give you the option of a customized audience. Once people engage with the event ad and click ‘attending’, this is visible to their network of friends, which is essentially further promoting the event.

Using Social media ad campaigns will also provide you with the opportunity to evaluate and measure your event marketing efforts. While these ad campaigns do come at a small cost, heightening event visibility will boost customer engagement and in turn, increase attending lists.

6. Retarget

Facebook Pixel is a social media tool that allows you to re-target people who have previously shown an interest in one of your ads. By tracking the users, you can see who has been on your site but not bought a ticket. You can remind them of your event with promotion and give them another reason to consider attending. This is a great way to narrow down promotions to those who are genuinely already interested in attending. To ensure you’re not targeting those who have already bought a ticket, you can customize these campaigns to exclude those who have already visited the ‘thank you for purchasing’ page.

7. Testimonials

Use what guests from previous events have had to say about their experience to promote your next event. Create content that is based around quotes from previous attendees to post on multiple platforms. Potential customers like to build trust with a company before making a purchase and highlighting positive reviews from others will do just that. People trust other people’s recommendations, don’t be afraid to include those testimonials in your event promotion campaigns.

Conclusion

While traditional marketing methods are still valid strategies to boost event attendance, social media event marketing lets you engage with your audience in creative ways that build relationships and increases overall brand and event visibility.

With several platforms to leverage, you can get the message to different segments of your audience according to where they are active online. This allows you to extend your reach and boost your event attending numbers while also spreading brand awareness; it’s a win-win!