7 Creative Ways to Use Social Media for Your Events

Are you tapped into all of the creative ways to use social media for your events?

Your strategy should go beyond simply creating an event on Facebook, and range from creating a buzz when you promote your event to attendee interaction during the event itself.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are 7 creative ways that event planners can use social media to create outstanding events.

As an event planner, you may already be using print media, marketing, and promotional materials, email, or direct engagement to promote your event planning business. But do you need a social media strategy to promote your business or events?

Why Event Planners Need a Social Media Strategy

Aside from being inexpensive or free, social media is a great way to promote events, lead customers to your business or a virtual store where they can purchase event tickets, and is a quick way to find out what’s really important to your customers. However, it should not be used solely to push promotional items or your event services on your audience, but used as a tool to inform, educate, and entertain them.

For example, follow the 10-2-2 ‘rule’ on your Facebook fan page – 10 entertaining posts, two educational posts, and two sales or promotional posts per week. The main purpose of social media is to build relationships with your perfect client, which will allow you to gain valuable insights and engage with them on a regular basis.

Tip: if social media overwhelms you, choose one platform at a time and OWN it before moving on to another networking site. I personally love YouTube and offer a free video each week to my subscribers. It’s best to choose a social media site that suits your personality, your business, and your audience; Once you’ve decided which platform works best for you, dedicate time to it and stay involved.

So, what are the 7 creative ways to use Social Media to plan your Events?

1. Get Their Attention!

With so many options, our clients are flooded with information and it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. To get their attention, make your posts personal and always remember, your audience wants to know “What’s In It For Me”, so if it’s not valuable to them then don’t post it. Keep your posts brief, make them personal, and be consistent. Short and sweet is best when it comes to your social media strategy. People respond more when the content interests them and it gets right to the point. After all, most people are on social media sites to be entertained!

2. Start Engaging Your Audience

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to building a Twitter following (in my opinion, this applies to any social media site) is to create content and then promote the heck out of it. Instead, give to the network, rather than go out there and sell. The reason why event planners need a social media strategy is to tell a story and to create a community by listening to your fans, asking them questions, and asking for suggestions and feedback – even if it’s negative. When someone comments make sure to reply 100% of the time.

3. Use Pinterest

Using Pinterest to plan your event is much more creative and visual than traditional methods. Creating a Pinterest board is perfect for brainstorming, and getting all of your creative vision in one place.

Using Pinterest to promote your event also works really well. Pin inspiring photos of the location, guest speakers, sponsors’ logos, and pictures that fit in well with your theme. Photos and videos of past events are another effective option and are a great way of maximizing the hype for your upcoming event.

4. Facebook contests

Holding a Facebook contest linked to the event is a wonderful way to reward your Facebook followers and promote your event at the same time; just make sure you’re aware of Facebook’s rules surrounding contests! Asking entrants to share your post as a condition of entry may seem like great PR, but it’s against Facebook’s rules so could cause you problems.

5. Twitter strategy

You probably already know that Twitter is fantastic for getting news of your event out there, but do you make full use of its functionality to really make the most of the exposure it can give? It’s easy to set up tweet buttons on your website so visitors can click to tweet a customized message, let everyone know they’re attending, and promote the event at the same time.

Having a real-time Twitter wall displayed at your event isn’t just great promotion; it also helps people at the event connect and network with each other. There are a number of options for Twitter walls, both free and paid, so do some research and decide what will work best for you.

6. YouTube for event planning

As we all know, YouTube is a great tool for procrastination, full of funny videos of cats and all the latest music videos (come on, that’s not just me, surely?). If you create a YouTube channel for your event planning business, it becomes one of the wonderfully creative ways to use social media for your events. You can even share your video across your other social media platforms, and visitors to your channel can share it on their own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

7. Event Hashtag

The mighty hashtag; used effectively it can maximize the visibility of your event, and it isn’t exclusively used on Twitter anymore. Now other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram also make use of clickable hashtags to trend words and phrases – so make your hashtag count! Choose one hashtag that’s memorable, and that relates to your event, as you don’t want to dilute the effectiveness with a number of different hashtags. An example that I could use for an ‘Event Planning Blueprint Week’ would be #EventBlue. Make sure that you use your hashtag on everything to do with the event, your website, social media pages and any printed literature.

About the author:

David Hoang works as a copywriter for customer writing service. He used to be a web designer, but he decided to change his career. In this case, David has an opportunity to tell others how to create a perfect website design.