How to Successfully Promote Events with Social Media?

Long gone are the days when printing and handing out hundreds of colorful flyers were the only ways to promote events and draw traffic to an event. Nowadays there are more people online than in the streets, so you can judge yourself which promotion tool is timelier. And the best way to reach those people online is social media. Before discussing the actual ways to promote events with social media, there are a couple of things you need to do beforehand;

• Create a well-optimized landing page for your event; it can be a whole new website, just another page or a subdomain, containing complete event info, online registration link and a compelling description.
• Register your event at online event management services (especially if your website doesn’t support ticket sales) to get better online visibility.

Now you can promote events with social media without worrying where to lead potential attendees. Social media has tons of useful tools to help you reach your prospects easily and effectively, you just need to have a well-thought social media promotion campaign running on every possible platform. Let’s start with the social media giant and see how you can benefit from it.

social media event

Facebook

In order to successfully promote events with social media and particularly via Facebook, you need to set exact goals and design a strategy to reach them. But whatever goal you set, there are 5 easy steps to get Facebook work for your event;

• First of all create a fan page for your event and use custom welcome tab encouraging users to like your page. I would suggest doing this a few weeks before the actual event in order to manage to gather necessary number of likes.
• Create an event inside the fan page and fill it with information, details and a link to the website and/or ticketing platform.
• Send out RSVP invitations to your friends and page fans.
• In order to better promote events with social media I’d suggest adding a like box and a share button on your event website.
• Spread a word about the event using targeted Facebook ads; cheap and incredibly effective.

Twitter

Though Facebook is the market leader in social media, but my personal affection goes for Twitter as a best way to promote events with social media. But you will need to invest more time and effort in Twitter promotion than that of Facebook, however the juice will be worth the squeeze!

• Create a unique event hashtag and start using it in your tweets.
• Don’t overwhelm your followers with too many ad tweets; try to mix them up with some useful tips and info on upcoming event.
• Ask for ReTweets in a few tweets in order to reach more prospects. (Again, do not overdo)
• Share exclusive content and spice it up with giveaways.
• Promote events with social media LIVE tweeting interesting info during your actual event.

LinkedIn and Google Plus

Although not as powerful as the latter two, LinkedIn and the newcomer Google Plus have a plenty tools to promote events with social media. Using LinkedIn you can create events and invite your connections; note that once someone RSVPs to your event, it shows up on the home profile of everyone that person is connected to, spreading the message for you. Another great way to promote events with social media is Google Plus; create a business page for your event and share it with your circles, place Gplus and Plus 1 icons on your website.

Blogging

Last but surely not least way to promote events with social media is blogging. Start blogging preferably on your website and share news, info, details, photos, anything connected with the event. Address your prospects directly and show them those huge benefits of attending your event!