There are many sources of information about how to use social media to boost event attendance, but less on how to use social media to increase the impact of your event. Your goal is to transform your audience into brand ambassadors. If you’re hosting a corporate event, you want guests to share the amazing experience they’re having to generate additional interest in your company. To get guests to share information about your event, you must make it as easy as possible. Here are 5 strategies to effectively leverage social media to enhance the impact of your next event:
#IncentivizeParticipation
A proven way to get guests engaged is to tie participation to an incentive. Based on a study conducted by Event Marketing Institute, 92% of people are willing to engage with a brand when incentivized. One way to engage guests at your next event is to display social media interactions in real time to all of your guests. One of the most popular tools for doing this is called LiveWall. A LiveWall provides a great opportunity to conduct a contest to increase sharing and boost participation. For instance, posts on the LiveWall with the most amount of likes or shares could win the poster or an exclusive meet and greet with the night’s entertainer. Or similarly, anyone who posts could be entered to win a prize (even just a free t-shirt!)
#HashtagBlast
This might sound extreme, but you should treat your event hashtag as a full blown marketing campaign. First, start promoting your hashtag early and often. It should be incorporated on your social media, your website, your event app, your direct event emails and all other marketing materials. Hashtags are a great way to not only collect content from your event, but it also allows your attendees to have access to event photos and gives them a way to communicate with other attendees. If you treat your hashtag campaign as an after thought, you’d be missing out on a great opportunity to spread your event’s reach. Promoting your hashtag early will allow you to amass pre-event buzz, generating RSVPs. During the event getting guests to use it will broaden the reach of the event beyond just your attendees. When deciding on an event hashtag make sure it is concise, specific, unique, and memorable.
#GenerateQuestions
If you plan to have a guest speaker at your event, allow attendees to weigh in and ask questions through social media to improve the level of engagement. Often times attendees are too shy or timid to ask questions in large groups, so offering this option will entice those who would otherwise not participate. Additionally, the public sharing of questions illustrates what non-attendees missed out on, promoting attendance in the future.
#OfferProfessionalPhotos
Hire a professional photographer to take photos of your attendees having a great time at your event and then post them to your social media profiles. This entices your guests to visit your profiles and look themselves up. Many will tag themselves and share with their connections, boosting the event’s exposure to a wider audience. Additionally, having a database of images to pull from will give you more promotional material for your next event.
#SocialMediaCommandCenter
Having one person in charge of gathering content and managing your social media during your event can become overwhelming and occasionally limiting. It is more effective to distribute the responsibility among a designated group of people. For small and medium size events consider having a team of people authorized to post each aspect of the event. For larger events, split up the responsibilities amongst a larger team. For instance, choose a trained group of people who are authorized to post, another group in charge of collecting content, and another group responsible for enticing and engaging people to follow your social media accounts. This is a great way to utilize your young, enthusiastic volunteers who have a trendy, millennial perspective on social media. Also, it can be compelling to have your guest speaker or celebrity performer do an account takeover, where they promote your event from their unique perspective.
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