Tips on How to Promote Your Event on Social Media

The premise around social media is to basically get noticed by people that are following you. Or better yet, to promote your event and/or yourself so that people want to follow you on social media. Which begs the question – how do you go about promoting your event on social media to both get noticed and get attendees to your event? If you are using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. then no doubt you have seen ineffective ways that people use these mediums to promote their events. The number one turn off on any of these social media mediums is when people start promoting their company, themselves and their websites blatantly. That is not what social media is intended for. At least on the surface.

Using Social Media to Promote Your Event Correctly

Ultimately our goal with using social media in our businesses is to draw attention to what we are offering. But those of you who think that you can simply put links to your website or promote that you have simply the best product out there, etc. are setting yourselves up for failure. As I’ve mentioned before social media is a slow build. Things will not happen overnight. However when used effectively social media is a great way of letting people know you exist. But in today’s world you have to be better than simply letting people know you exist. Make sure you have something of value to offer any potential followers. The best way to use social media effectively is to offer advice or information about the industry you are in. Talk about latest trends, link to other relevant sites, and offering your opinion – all without making an obvious sales pitch – will eventually will build trust and people will want to start following you. But be very careful once you establish that trust. I wouldn’t recommend changing midstream just because you have a lot of followers and start putting links to products or services that you’re selling.

When you have an event to promote, using social media properly can be an effective tool. On LinkedIn, for example, in addition to letting your connections know about your event, it’s also recommended that you search for like-minded groups where you can post your information. On Facebook it’s very important that you don’t mix your personal and your professional “friends”. Your personal friends are probably not interested in your professional events so be careful that you’re not wasting time or more importantly wasting their time by promoting something that they’re not interested in. Find corporate pages that are similar to your industry, “like” those pages and then offer comments. On twitter, in addition to promoting your event to your followers, the use of hash tags (#) can be effective for finding groups that share similar interests. Start following like-minded lists and in turn get yourself listed.

Using social media to promote your event needs to be a calculated process. In addition to promoting the event itself it’s important that you have an area where people can sign up and register with the ease. EventBrite, as one example, is a free service that allows you to track, send reminders, and even collect payment. Using social media correctly can be a very effective way of getting the word out about your event. The take away advice from here is to make sure you do things right the first time – as the old saying goes – you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Don’t blow it.