So, the time has come to promote your event, and you have all your ducks in a row—but are you using all those ducks to their full potential? Today, we break down how to use social media to your advantage when organizing your event:

#Tagging your Event: Most event teams know by now that a vital piece of the promotion puzzle is creating a hashtag specific to their conference, but some might not know how to best utilize that hashtag. Here are a few tips: 

• Add it everywhere: Add the hashtag to the event sponsor company’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn bios. It draws more attention from their followers and showcases that the event is a large part of the company’s brand—they care about it and they want you there as an attendee!

• Use it often: You made a hashtag, now use it! Any time you post about the event, use the hashtag. It will only create more content for the hashtag’s following. As a social media user, if you click on a hashtag and see only a few posts, you will likely think “OK this is actually not that big of a deal,” but if users view the hashtag and see hundreds of posts attached to it, it will make your event buzzworthy and enticing. 

• Spread the word: Ask the event speakers, emcees, and vendors to use the hashtag whenever they are posting on social media about the event. Help them help you.  
  
  

Go to the Polls! Several social media platforms allow you to poll followers—and you should be taking advantage of that. Do this through any social platforms for the event itself, or the event sponsor’s pages—we suggest using whichever has a larger following.

Depending on how far out the event is, there are several different questions you could poll the audience on:

• Who do they want to see speak? After all, you might be paying big bucks to secure one or two keynote speakers so you should take into account the opinions of the very people who will be tuning in. 

• If it is a live event: Where do they want to travel for the conference? 

• If you’re still trying to figure that out: Are they up for traveling, or would they prefer to have it be virtual, or both/hybrid?

• How long do they want sessions to be? 

• What type of content and sessions are they most looking forward to? 

You really have the opportunity to curate most of your agenda here if you want to. These and many similar questions could also be dropped into a pre-event survey but we all know it’s more fun to click through on social media!

Blog or Pod about it: Use your own content hubs as a way to promote your event. Just mentioning the event on the sponsor’s podcast or writing general posts about the event is great, but you can jazz it up by:

• Interviewing speakers: Inviting event speakers to contribute through a “Meet the Speaker” series. You can schedule a mini-interview to collect their answers in audio/video, or send questions over email to get their responses. Create a written blog post with the story, or share during a podcast.

  • Prompts can vary from their views on the topic they’ll be speaking on (without giving too much away, of course) or their best work-from-home tip.

  • To give it more energy, ask how they’ve entertained themselves at home during the COVID-19 pandemic (tv series, new hobbies, etc.).

• Profiling attendees: Use information gathered from your registration analytics to create content focused solely on “Meeting the Attendees.” In this attendee snapshot, you can also reference any responses from your social media polls to curate a full story of who is attending. You can go one step further by linking this blog post on your event website under the Attendees section.

• Name dropping: Does the sponsor company have a podcast? If not, do some of their leaders go on podcasts often? Ask them to promote the event during any appearances. 
  
  

A picture —or video—is worth 1,000 words: They say your brain processes images much quicker than sentences, so use that to your advantage:

• Attendee testimonials: Ask registered attendees to record a video explaining what they’re most looking forward to at your event. You can merge all submissions together and use the content to promote on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 

• Tap in big-name speakers: Request that they submit a short 15-second video “inviting” attendees to their session. Sharing this on all social platforms will have your followers feeling they received a personal invite, and it builds a more intimate rapport between attendees and high-profile speakers. 

• Reduce, reuse, recycle: Recycling is good for the planet—and your event! Use past event photos, tweets, and social posts as promotion for the next upcoming event. With themes like “remember when” or “Flashback Friday,” you can remind attendees how much they enjoyed their experience last time and to come back again for the next one!

• Use infographics: Using responses from emails and post-event surveys, put attendee and speaker quotes or testimonials onto a graphic. Share that on the event’s social media platforms and you won’t have to write much else in your post. The quote will speak for itself. 

All of the tips above can be incorporated into a post or story on any of the big platforms—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Clubhouse, or even TikTok!

Use them to your advantage to create buzz for your event and drive up registration. And if you feel you need it, make some room in your budget for paid ads on those platforms. You likely won’t regret it!

Have any questions about using social while planning an event? Get in touch!