As an Event Manager, I cannot tell you how important social media is in the event world! From concept to implementation, social media is not only imperative in the initial promotion of the event, it is an important element in the whole event process. Successful use of social media can mean people are still talking about the event long after it has finished. Many people think simply advertising their event on Facebook or tweeting a few links back to their website will suffice, and it may well do for now however, your competitors will always be thinking ahead of you and if you don’t keep up, you’re going to lose out.
Take a simple community run car boot sale. Let’s call it “Egham Car Boot Sale” I would start with a simple Facebook page. It’s easy to do and will take no more than 10 minutes to setup. I would then send the link to this page to my Facebook network to encourage them to like and share. I would make sure I included pictures, and encourage people whom are coming along to do the same.
Next, I would setup a Twitter account, using hash tags such as #Eghamcarboot, #carboot or #egham. That way anyone searching for any of those hash tags would see my car boot sale.
I would also use pictures of the venue or post pictures of a past event as again, people are attracted to visuals on Twitter. Visuals on the timeline of Twitter has only just launched and it’s
proving very useful in engaging your Twitter followers.
I would then use the same hash tags and take pictures of the car boot sale on Instagram, so again people looking for anything to do with #egham #carboot or #eghamcarboot sale would see not only my pictures of the event, but links to my Facebook page, my Twitter account and in return may be tempted to come along to my next event.
Post event you could use all 3 mediums of social media to talk about the event, encourage attendees to post pictures and start the promotion of your next event! There are a multitude of other social media types you could also incorporate (Pinterest for example) however to start of, these are the 3 I would go for!
For a more in-depth look at the way social media can help boost your event traffic and attendance,this infographic from Eventility shows 4 easy ways to use social media to boost your event!
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