5 Essential social media tips to boost your event

Conferences and events are perfect activities to share with others via social media. But not all social media platforms may work best for your audience. With our tips, you’ll be able to customize your social media posts to best boost your event.

Distinguishing between types of events

Just like how a venue sets the mood for your event, the type of your event determines which social media platform will work best for you.

• Professional conferences with a heavy emphasis on learning — with workshops or academic presentations — will want to make good use of LinkedIn.
• More social events, such as fundraisers and meetups, can be better served by sharing content through Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
• Cultural events and those with visual focuses — art openings, music festivals, fashion shows, etc — do better on Instagram, Facebook video, and YouTube.

Of course, there are many similarities between these platforms as well. You’ll want to share posts on the ones that your attendees use the most. And, remember, the content itself matters too.

Make social media work for your event

We will go into that in more detail below as we share our 5 Essential Social Media Tips to boost your event.

1. Pick an event hashtag. Check this hashtag on multiple social media sites — primarily Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — to be sure you won’t have a competitive event or business also using it. You want it to be for your audience to use and talk to each other on. And you’ll want to easily be able to monitor it so that everyone posting to it is abiding by your Code of Conduct.
2. Share content early and often. Be sure to have a few photos of the planning process and any conference swag ready to go and post them in advance of the event, using that hashtag. Promote all speakers and presentations using the hashtag. And share it in all correspondence with attendees. Post it on-site as well, and include it in intro slides to presentations.
3. Choose someone familiar with a social media platform to post on it. You don’t want someone who writes and posts exclusively for Twitter to suddenly be your Facebook manager. The humor and irreverence unfortunately won’t smoothly transcend platforms. Different audiences deserve a different approach to sharing content. And now isn’t the time to try out a new intern; you want to keep a consistent voice throughout your posts, and definitely know in advance that they know the difference between they’re, their, and there, or your and you’re.
4. Use popular platform hashtags. If you’re looking for more potential attendees or buzz around your event, check out what’s popular on different platforms. For Instagram, there are day of the week specific hashtags that could work: #mondaymotivation, #mondaymood; #tuesdaythoughts, #traveltuesday, #transformationtuesday; #wednesdaywisdom, #wellnesswednesday, etc. …
5. Take videos, but keep them short. You don’t need a fancy camcorder or DSLR when you can use your iPhone or Samsung smart phone. Practice shooting videos that do not need editing that showcase your event. The more footage you get, the better. Because you’ll be posting just a few seconds of a lot of things. This lets you share more, and pique people’s interest more often. If you have a budget to do so, hire an editor to put together a compilation video of highlights from the event. You can use it to promote the next year!

Next week: 5 things event planners often overlook