Using Social Media to Promote Your Event

If it’s your job to pull together an event, you may be so wrapped up in selecting a venue, creating a theme, hiring vendors, and arranging transportation, that it can be easy to overlook a very important part: publicity.

Besides hitting up the local media, creating a dedicated website, sending emails, and issuing announcements, you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck if you promote your event through social media. Not only do 84 percent of people use at least one type of social media, but social media publicity is free. All it takes is a little planning and a bit of strategizing to create a dynamite social media event promotion campaign.

To boost attendance

The old-school way to publicize an event was to send out a news release to the major local media providing all the pertinent info: type of event, when and where it was taking place, major speakers and so on.

But social media is a different kind of animal. It lends itself to releasing details in bits and pieces to build anticipation.

In the weeks leading up to the event, you highlight aspects of your event to build anticipation

    • teaser videos or intriguing images of the venue
    • speaker lineups
    • registration reminders
    • early-bird specials
    • event countdowns

To encourage sharing

During the event, attendees will naturally be posting images, videos, and memorable quotes to their social media feeds. Encourage them by providing shareable content and photo opportunities.

Set up a branded photo booth, for example, allowing attendees to take photos of themselves enjoying your event. Provide quotes from your speakers that can be shared on social media. 

Of course you’ll want to livestream your event on the main social media platforms. One survey found that 67 percent of a livestream audience was more likely to attend the next event after watching a livestream of a current event.

And be sure to create a catchy, unique hashtag to promote your event that focuses all of the event posts in one location.

By the way, if you’re looking for an event venue that photographs like a dream, you won’t go wrong with holding it at the Historic Alfred I. duPont building in downtown Miami. 

Its dramatic, history-steeped backdrop will immediately brand your event as unique and memorable. Its Art Deco interior, crafted in the 1920s, looks like it was custom-built for sharing on social media today!