How to Use Social Media to Drive Event Attendance

Social media plays an essential role in event marketing, from generating awareness about your event to creating FOMO to providing a better attendee experience. But just like every other aspect of planning an event, having an effective social media strategy is critical.

Because event attendance significantly impacts event ROI and your other social media efforts during and after the event, promoting your event on social media to attract attendees is essential.  Below we look at a few social media tips and tools that you can use to effectively market your event.

3 Tips to Drive Event Attendance Using Social Media 

1. Be Strategic About Where You Post

To promote your event effectively, you need to understand your audience and what social platforms they use. At a minimum, you should create a Facebook event page that includes your event details and pertinent information. Facebook event pages are easy to set up and easy to share. They can also help you reach a broader audience because when a user responds to an event, the response is viewable to others. 

Besides Facebook, you should consider promoting your event on LinkedIn (especially for B2B events), Twitter, and Instagram. If you’re targeting younger generations, you may want to consider adding TikTok and Snapchat into the mix.

2. It’s All In the Details

A barebones event page or post isn’t going to get as much engagement as a detailed, well-thought-out page or post. Besides including the important details — event overview, location, time — consider adding:

• Visuals. Text-only content is boring. If you really want to grab your audience’s attention, you should add visual content to your posts, including photos and videos from past events, funny memes, photos of speakers or performers, and so forth. Creating attention-grabbing visual content will most likely garner more interest and increase engagement.
• An event hashtag. A clever, short event hashtag is a great way to promote your event across social channels while building excitement and boosting engagement. Make sure the hashtag is visible, easy to understand, and easy to use so that attendees will add it to the content they create.
• A direct link to purchase tickets. If you’re selling tickets for your event, add a direct link for users to buy tickets. Make sure to do this on all the platforms you’re using to promote your event. Taking this extra step is likely to boost ticket sales.
• A contest. People love a good contest, and running one on your event page can help generate interest in your event and aid in word-of-mouth exposure through shares and likes. Share the contest details on all platforms, but stick to one platform for entries to streamline the process.

3. Use Paid Social Media Ads

Although social posts and pages are an essential part of event promotion, most likely, only a small percentage of your audience will see your posts. But with paid social media ads, you can reach a much larger audience – one targeted by location, interests, and other specifications that you provide.

When crafting a paid social media ad, details and creativity are key. Create a unique ad that’s short and to the point, addresses important information (such as location and dates), and includes a call-to-action button or link. And be sure to use photos or video in your ad to maximize impressions and engagement.

Keep the Story Going

Once you’ve attracted a crowd to your event, your social media efforts shouldn’t end there. Keep the story going during and after using live streams, social stories, user-generated content, and more!

ATN Event Staffing is a pioneer in the experiential marketing event staffing industry. We take the time to match our clients with the perfect staff to ensure their campaign goals are met and that the event executes flawlessly.