Guide To Success — Social Media for Events
Social media is an asset to every organization. Not only can they help promote community and create relationships with their consumers, but they can advertise events and create buzz.
Social Media Buzz: “ a viral technique used to maximize word-of-mouth potential of a campaign or product”(Caveney, 2020)
Buzz is almost always good and will put more eys on your product or service. When aiming to have a successful event, the more people you can get to show up, donate, or participate will be a direct correlation with the amount of buzz created before the event.
When planning an event, it's vital to optimize your free resources so your turnout is bigger and your profits are larger.
For a little more in-depth article with “42 strategies, ideas, tips and tactics to use social media to promote events”(Solaris, 2018), visit EventManagerBlog.
Case Study: World of Water Day Festival
Play Hard Florida, an online directory of all the outdoor adventure providers and non-profits in the state, hosts World Water Day Festival annually to promote ecological rehabilitation along with supporting local non-profits.
This one-day event occurs on the fourth day of “The State of Water” art exhibit which aims to provide artists around the state a platform to make a statement and even sell art. These two events culminate to provide a fun and informational atmosphere to families and outdoor activists.
Social media plans:
Three goals need to be achieved to make this event successful:
- Find Sponsors
- Find Artists
- Create a buzz
Finding sponsors is tough when working to promote non-profits. Having to claim brand image success and community goodwill will not always cut it to these organizations. Targeting these organization’s marketing directors prior to the release with solidified plans of the event help guarantee they expect success. We can use social media to establish Play Hard Florida as the “go-to” for the outdoor community by showing our social media following and the engagement we get. Having an account that is connecting people to the outdoors and fostering a loyal community tells the sponsors that their money will hit a trusting audience. As long as their target audience aligns with PHF’s, we can hook them with a solid email or ad.
Finding artists rely on a different route. With prizes for the winners, we can create flyers for social media that incites participants to apply. By running ads to people who follow artists, like certain pages, or have bought from art stores, we know they are the right fit. Along with that, finding key influencers to participate and spread the news will yield high results.
To create buzz on social media, our first strategy would be to focus on Niche audiences like “Florida Spring Lovers” or “Florida Beach Clean-ups” in their Facebook page. We would first create a handful of videos calling directly to those groups to come out and support the cause. When filming these videos, we will create ones that are posted a month out from the event down to a day out. This will help the content stay fresh and remind these people to participate. Posting these video two months prior to the event help people mark their calendar and posting a week before guarantees they remember.
Take example this video: https://fb.watch/1RpPZ9c7FO/
One way that we also planned to create buzz was to hold a contest. This will help people be guided to your event page and likely follow to be entered. Now with more people entered, the amount you can raise outperforms the cost of the giveaway or contest.
One other great way to create buzz for this event would be relying on traditional outlets. By reaching out to news organizations and asking them to repost or help spread your event, the general public hears about it.
Conclusion:
After the event, hoping online to see how people reacted is the next step. Hoping people used the catchy hashtags you created(Grace, 2020) for it or posted photos at the event helps spread the news of success. Along with counting the dollars and receiving thanks from the non-profits, it's nice to see a shift in the community. Having a greater following or more engagement after the event shows success. Take that opportunity and run by being more efficient and posting high-quality content to retain those viewers.
If you want to learn more about finding and fulfilling your marketing goals this year, hit the subscribe button for more informative articles coming soon.
References:
https://www.sema.org/sema-news/2019/12/seven-tactics-for-creating-social-media-buzz
