Using Social media to help you promote an event
When planning an event, you will most likely be trying to stretch your budget as far as possible, and this usually results in the marketing taking a hit.
While it may not seem important, marketing can quite often make or break your event, and getting your message in front of the right people is vital to drawing in the crowds.
This is where social media comes in. With the increase in online activity over the past few years, social media is quickly becoming one of the most cost effective forms of marketing around in terms of spreading the word and reaching your target audience.
Below we are going to look at a few of the most common social networks and how each of these can be utilised to help you pack out your event.
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Forums and Niche networks
Facebook allows you the option to set up fan pages for your business in order to help market your product, which in this case will be the events you want to promote. In general word of mouth is often the highest converting method of promotion, and Facebook fan pages are a perfect example of word of mouth in action. By exposing people to your events and getting them to “like” or become fans of it your age is then exposed to their friends.
- Image via Wikipedia
This can be a very effective method for promoting your event, when people see an event that a few of their peers are going to they are more likely to attend as in their minds it has been “recommended” by people they already trust.
For this ripple effect to occur, you need to get a few fans in the beginning to set the wheels in motion. There are a lot of creative ways to do this. Think of promotions, competitions or even rewards for liking an event. These could be along the lines of “free tickets for the first 10 fans” or some other variation.
Facebook do also offer an advertising feature, and the USP they provide is the ability to target the demographic that the ads are delivered to. Facebook have a huge amount of information on their users and all of this can be used to your advantage as an advertiser. By giving you the option to target people of a specific gender, age and location you can really out your event in front of a large, but very relevant audience. The only downside to the advertising is the fact that you have to pay, but hey, not everything’s free!
Similar to Facebook, Twitter gives you the ability to build up a collection of followers and communicate with them via short posts to your account. This can be very useful in updating people quickly and like facebook, tweets have the ability to spread via your followers retreating your updates and in turn exposing them to a whole new audience. This can lead to you building up quite a big network which can be reached in just a few seconds every time you post a tweet.
While not being as interactive as Facebook, Twitter is a lot quicker to set up and use, however, you will need to have something interesting to say each time you update or people wont follow you, or retweet you and your message will not spread.
A lot of DJ’s have implemented Twitter as a way of marketing themselves and fine example of generating online interest is the methods of Above & Beyond.
Podcasting has greatly helped them in marketing themselves and getting their music out to new audiences, and the way they have been marketed online must have greatly contributed to their success. They have used Twitter actively to promote events and upcoming albums, and have provide a place for fans to interact and talk about them moon their website.
Have a look at their twitter stream to get an impression of the kinds of things they are doing and see how you could make it work for you.
Forums and niche networks
Perhaps more time consuming and less effective than twitter and facebook, forums do still provide a place for you to contact people who are actively engaged in relevant online communities.
When thinking about events, an example that comes to mind is don’t stay in. They have managed to create an online community based around club nights, and it’s a great way to get talking to you target audience and get a bit more exposure for your event.
“But my event isn’t a club night!” I hear you say. Not to worry, there are so many online communities that there is bound to be somewhere useful to promote your event. Think of the categories your event fits into and get searching. Think location, type of event, genre of music, and get looking for online communities in your niche.
As mentioned before, these communities may not be the best way of promoting your event, but by having a look round, and getting involved you may just unearth some gems.
So there you have it, a few additions to your marketing plan at no additional cost. The only thing you’ll need to invest is time and once you’ve done the initial groundwork, you should be on your way to growing a targeted and reachable community that can be called upon time and time again to help you promote your events!