If you’ve ever worked in events, you know how challenging it can be to make everything run smoothly and according to plan. Even if you’re doing everything right, sometimes things go wrong that you don’t expect that are also often out of your control. Speakers often change, venues fall through, and prices are unpredictable. Fortunately, the marketing process is in your control, which is why it’s important to take advantage of all the tools you have at your disposal.
Using each social media channel the right way to market your event at the right time to the right audience increases the chances of getting a good return on your conference investment. The beauty of social media is that, if used correctly, you can effectively market anything for free. It’ best to leverage multiple social media channels to market your event, platforms like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook.
Why Facebook?
With over 500 million users, Facebook is the most popular social media site in the world, which is why you can’t afford to ignore it when marketing your conference. Creating a Facebook Event page gives you free Newsfeed placement so that when somebody signs up for your event, it’s posted to their wall for their friends to see. Facebook gives you this high-traffic ad space for free, and you can get your friends to deliver your ad to their friends on your behalf. Overall, Facebook is one of the most effective ways to share event information.
Create a Facebook Event Page
The first step is to create an Event page for your conference. Be sure that you upload a cover photo and be mindful of the focal point—it’s mportant to send the right message about your conference to your audience.
Leverage Your Fans and Friends
After you create your Event page, it’s time to start inviting people. If you already have fans or friends on Facebook, reach out to them first. Inviting people to an Event page encourages them to sign up for the conference. Consider asking them to like, share, and RSVP to your conference. Another benefit of marketing with a Facebook Event page is that everyone you invite will automatically receive a reminder as the conference draws near. Moreover, if your make an update to the event or post on the page, they will also be notified. These updates and notifications are a great way to nurture those you invite and entice them to eventually sign up to attend the conference.
Run a Facebook Ad
Eventually, you’ll run out of friends and friends of friends to contact about your event. It’s important to find some way to break outside of your bubble and reach further.
Running an ad is a great way to do this. If you know your buyer personas, you can use Facebook’s tools to deeply target particular demographics. Facebook even offers a specific advertising campaign for promoting events called “Event Responses.” Two approaches are usually better than one, which is why it’s more effective to run both Newsfeed ads and sidebar ads for event promotion. Images are also critical when promoting on Facebook. Use any images you have prepared for event promotion, but as a rule try to avoid designing ad images containing more than 20% text.
Promote Outside of Facebook
Using Facebook to market your event is an effective strategy, but don’t let it limit you. You should leverage all your materials and every channel possible to raise awareness about your conference. Don’t limit yourself to online channels. You could create postcards, banners, or flyers and distribute them to people who might be interested in attending. You can also explore ways to integrate offline and online promotional activity on your Facebook page, such as posting pictures of flyers or other handouts that you create.
A Critical Channel
Facebook is one of the best social media channels for event marketing for a few reasons. First, it allows you to create an Event page that you can leverage to promote your event to your friends and contacts. Second, it’s the largest social network there, which allows you access to the largest pool of people relative to other networks like Twitter or Instagram. Lastly, with Facebook you can run inexpensive but effective targeted ad campaigns to break out of your contact bubble. Each social media channel has unique merits when it comes to marketing, but Facebook is a channel that definitely shouldn’t be ignored.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 4 Tips For Using Facebook to Market a Conference
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