Utilizing Social Media Marketing for Your Event
Utilizing social media marketing for your event.
Social media has essentially taken over, everything. Both the older and younger generations cannot see themselves without it, whether they grew up with it or it is new to them it has become a prominent feature in their life.
Different generations flock to different social media sites, for example, the older generation tends to use Facebook as their main social media, but the younger generation is using Tik Tok more, while the in-between one seems to be migrating towards Instagram but in the end, it seems like every platform has a mix of everyone on it! Since the increase of social media use companies have used it as an advantage to promote themselves through advertisements on all social media platforms. Below shows the user data for each social media we will be going over to see what one will work best for your event.
Social Media | User Data |
| Age Range: 18-24: 30.1% 25-34:31.5%
Female: 49.3% Male:50.7%
Monthly Users: 1.393 billion |
Tik Tok
| Age Range: Under 18:28% 29-29:35%
Female:57% Male:43%
Monthly Users:1.398 billion |
| Age Range: 25-34:59.1% 35-54: 17.7%
Female:43% Male:57%
Monthly Users:66.8 million |
| Age Range: 18-24:22.4% 25-34: 30.1%
Female:43.2% Male:56.8%
Monthly Users:2.936 billion |
Information is spread like wildfire on social media, especially if it is written in a way that is meant to become viral. You may have heard of success stories like how a teenager launched a business from their Instagram account and now is running a six-figure business or how people have started online companies out of the side hobbies they do after their 9-5 job. Whatever is it social media always seems to spread news efficiently.
So why not use social media in your next event?
As we talked about, every generation seems to be using a different form of social media. This will make it easy for you to target your audience correctly.
The first step is knowing who your demographic is. If your attendees are younger you may want to consider using Instagram or Tik Tok. If they are older use Facebook. If your event is targeted to more of a business professional crowd using LinkedIn will allow you to reach them better.
When posting a social media ad you must make them readable and make them work as an ad but not come off like one. I know this doesn’t sound like what we always learned about creating an eye-catching advertisement but if a post looks too much like an advertisement it will be overlooked.
An example is how some clothing stores market. They stay simple and just re-post pictures of customers wearing the clothes. This creates a more organic feeling, not a picture where you can tell a photo shoot was scheduled with hair, makeup, and stylists. People like to relate to ads they see.
Below is how to advertise on these four popular social media platforms mentioned.
Most of these tips below are following the same idea but are formatted differently to fit each social media platform, there are paid and free marketing practices for each one that will be covered.
But, before starting to market on any of these platforms create specific, time-sensitive, realistic goals catered to your event. This will make the process much easier and less stressful for both you and your team.
Facebook- Facebook has done a lot to allow business users to market correctly on the site. Just like other social media platforms, Facebook has created features to enhance marketing. Facebook Pages, Facebook Ads, and Video Ads are helpful features for businesses. For an event, you can utilize all three of these features.
To market free of cost create a Facebook page that includes all the information about your event including pictures and videos of previous events or any feedback from attendees. From here you can use your content on this page to make an ad. You can share the page you created or a post on the page you created to your personal page and have all your employees, friends, family, and attendees share it.
For a paid option you can either use the “Facebook Ads” or “Video Ads” is will promote your event to people who don’t follow your Facebook page or are friends with anyone who has shared it.
Another feature on Facebook that is great is that people can see how many people are going and how many people marked your event as “interested” this helps with making others want to go. If you have an event with 100 people already going and 1,000 interested in going it will draw more attention to your event.
Instagram- Instagram has been a leading social media application for many years. There are many different ways you can market on Instagram.
There are paid advertisements through the app for businesses where you can either boost a post or a page. Also, many paid partnerships, this is where you can hire an Instagram influencer to have them post to their followers about your event. This can be a great way to reach a much bigger audience than you could alone.
When picking someone to promote your event you need to make sure their following is the demographic you’d like to reach if it is not the correct demographic it does not matter if they have millions of followers, it will not work. You also want to investigate who is promoting it, have they done anything, past or present that does not align with your values? Picking someone who is controversial could do the opposite for your event and make people not want to come.
If you’d like to choose the free route you can create a business profile, creating a business profile on Instagram is very easy and allows you to see insights into how many people saw, shared, or saved your posts and gives you information on the traffic of your page, the demographic of your followers and more.
After creating the page, posting ad campaigns consistently helps grow a following both on your Instagram story and feed posts. You can create your feed to look like anything you want. If you are hosting a gala have more professional high-quality photos on there but if you are posting for a fun outing for friends posting candid real photos might fit your aesthetic more. You don’t need produced photo’s anymore for your followers to take you seriously. Other than posting, commenting and liking others posts also helps more people reach your page.
Tik Tok- Tik Tok has gained huge popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is still gaining users. Many use this app for fun, but others have created careers by becoming viral on TikTok whether it was for posting their cooking videos or dancing, anything can go viral on Tik Tok and instantly become the next thing, this is why posting about your next fundraiser on Tik Tok is a great idea.
When posting to promote your event is it a good idea to use the latest trends happening on the app or trending sounds, these are things that users are watching closely so there is a better chance of more people seeing your post.
Since many have posted typical Tik Toks to promote things they are doing or selling Tik Tok has taken notice and has launched a new feature called “Tik Tok for Business” that charge for promotions. Here you can create business profiles and pay for ads or boosts on videos. Many have seen how impactful a viral video can be on Tik Tok therefore Tik Tok business has been created.
LinkedIn- LinkedIn is a way to connect with professionals both in and out of your field. It is not a social media where people go on to mindlessly scroll or post pictures of dinner with friends. This is a great thing when it comes to marketing your event, when people go on LinkedIn they are engaging and truly interested and reading all their posts on their personal timeline.
To post about your event it can be made on both your business page as well as employees’ personal social media accounts. A great idea is to post it on your official business page and encourage your, friends, family, volunteers, and employees to post. This way they have a post that is created the way you want it to be with all the correct information on it that you can then push out knowing that it will be represented and shared the way you want it to be.
LinkedIn has also created a paid campaign manager feature marketed as an all-in-one advertising platform where you can create ads, run campaigns, and more.
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