How to Increase Event Attendance Using Social Media
- by Alyson Shane
Events like conferences and training sessions are a great way to build awareness about your business, increase sales and profits, and create a sense of community between your company and your customers.
Of all the tools you can use to increase event attendance, social media is one of the best (and in many cases, cheapest) ways of doing it.
Whether your next event has 50 people, or 5000 people, keep these tips in mind to help you increase attendance at your event:
Start Early
The trick to boosting event attendance using social media is to start building anticipation early.
Start promoting your event often, and early. Something as simple as “we’re planning something big for June 2020, can you guess what it is?” is enough to start generating conversation and interest.
Starting your event promotion early also helps attendees book off time to attend, which is important if your event is multi-day or out of town.
Starting early also means you have lots of time to build excitement about your event in advance, and to roll out important information as it becomes available.
Write down all your event's important dates, like when tickets go on sale or when the schedule is announced, chronologically. This will create a Event Timeline you can use to stay organized, and to make sure you always have something to build towards and promote on social media.
Share Creative Social Media Content Often
Once you’ve created your event’s website or landing page, it’s time to start actively promoting your event on social media.
When you post about your event, make sure to say more than just a call-to-action. Focus on creating quality content that gets people excited about attending.
Social media is a great way to give your audience a behind-the-scenes look at everything that goes into planning your event, which helps them feel connected and involved with you and your team.
If your event has a blog, social media is the best place to share your updates and drive traffic back to your website. Use your blog to publish guest posts by speakers and presenters, or share updates and information about venue details, sponsorship updates, schedule changes, and more.
Create Conversation Around a Branded Event Hashtag
Hashtags function like tags you can use to track and participate in ongoing conversations about the same topic across individual social platforms.
A “branded hashtag” is a hashtag dedicated to a specific theme, event, or business. It allows fans, attendees, and other people interested in the topic to talk to one another, and is an excellent way for you to drive conversation and excitement around your event.
Branded hashtags also work as free advertising, connecting users with conversations and content focused exclusively on your event.
Encourage your followers on social media to use the hashtag in their conversations. The more popular a hashtag is, the more hype it generates as people discover and tune into it - resulting in an increase in event attendance.
Make sure to use hashtags based on interests and reach that appeal to your ideal attendees, as well. For example, if you’re promoting is a networking conference for women in STEM careers, use #womeninSTEM in your posts to help women in that field discover your event.
Create Facebook Events
Facebook Events are one of the best tools at your disposal to promote your event.
Facebook Events earn higher organic reach on the platform, which means more people will see your event without the additional investment of social media advertising.
Creating Event Page gives you a place where you can collect and keep all the relevant information about your events in a single location on the platform.
Event pages also offer a place for attendees to ask you questions, and for you to have a public place to answer them. Users can also click on your venue’s address, which links to a map where you can include links and CTAs encouraging them to register or purchase a ticket.
When an attendee registers, Facebook will promote your event to their friends and encourage them to invite their friends as well, which can be an easy way to boost event attendance.
If you’ve never set up a Facebook Event page before, keep these basic steps in mind:
- Create Events from your Business Page (vs. your personal profile). This will allow your event to be associated with your brand or business.
- List your event under a ‘Category.’ Using Categories will help your event show up in relevant searches.
- Use keywords in your event descriptions. Keywords aren’t required, but help make sure your target audience find your event in their search results.
- Add sponsors and partners as co-hosts. If your event is a joint effort, adding the event to your partner and sponsors pages helps your event be discovered by users who follow them.
Schedule Important Posts Ahead of Time
Event planning is chaotic and stressful, and the first thing to slip when there’s lots of fires to put out tends to be an event’s social media promotion.
Neglecting your event’s social media has a direct negative impact on attendance and social proof, neither of which you want.
Instead, use a social media scheduling tool like Buffer. Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to write and schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. You can include hashtags, images, videos, and links in your posts, and even integrate it into HeyAlfa to automate the boring parts of your event marketing.
Increase Visibility Using Social Media Ads
If you want as many eyeballs on your event’s registration or Facebook Event page, you can always run some paid social ads directed at people who may be interested in attending your event.
Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads are two of the most powerful options available today, but Twitter Ads offer a lot of flexibility, and LinkedIn Ads is a great option for events targeting a professional community.
If you’re advertising on Facebook, you can choose the “Engagement” objective, and optimize it by choosing “Event Responses.”
This shows your ad to users who are most likely to interact with your event. Interactions are important for your event because when users interact with your ad their followers see that interaction, which helps increase awareness and excitement.
You can also Boost your event directly from the page, which is similar to a Sponsored Post on LinkedIn. Here, you can target by demographic, interest, location, custom audience, and more, but don’t have all the targeting and bidding options available through the full ad manager.
If you’re advertising on Twitter or LinkedIn, choose the “Websites Visit” objective to drive people to your event’s website or landing page.
Increase Word-of-Mouth Using Contests
Contests are a great way to gain new social media followers, increase engagement, and increase event attendance.
Keep things simple by hosting the contest on one social media platform, but promote it on all your other platforms, using your email list, and advertising when appropriate.
Choose contest prizes that are relevant to your event and generate conversation to get your followers excited about entering, and use an entry metric that helps boost your contests’ visibility, such as commenting with an @ mention, retweet, or re-post.
Whether you offer free tickets, backstage passes, free meals, or just a free t-shirt and some buttons from your event, everyone loves the adrenaline rush they get from the chance at winning something for free.
How to Increase Event Attendance Starting Today
Promoting your event on social media is one of the best ways to help people learn about your event and show them why they don’t want to miss out.
By starting early, regularly publishing creative updates, using scheduling tools to help you manage your workload, and using contests and ads to drive extra engagement, you can use social media to boost event attendance and increase awareness and excitement about your event, no matter what kind of event it is.
Do you have any favorite tricks to increase event attendance? Tell us on Twitter!
