Learn about the value of making your events insta-worthy and let your event participants do your marketing for you.
If you’ve read my articles in the past, you know that I’m all about working smart, not hard. Now, let me clarify that I don’t mean “don’t do work.” Still work hard. But find ways to do things that supplement your hard work to make the work even more powerful.
Making your event social media-worthy is one of those things. Because honestly, if your event doesn’t have a presence on social media, did it actually happen? Well, maybe…but there’s a good chance you have a lot of missed opportunities come up at your post-event post-mortem.
These missed opportunities can cost you in outreach, engagement, and even securing future attendees. Here are some things you can do to prep your event for its social presence.
Tighten up your visual assets
This may sound silly, but if you’re going to take the time and budget to have eye-catching visual assets, you should make sure that people can actually see them and photograph them (unobstructed). I went to a conference that had this REALLY cool blown-up logo on the stage, but the only people who could photograph it properly were the ones right in front of it – kind of a waste, IMHO.
Cover all your social platform geotagging bases
If you’re sponsoring a live event and you don’t have that event hooked up to your Facebook Page’s Events, you’re really missing out on some serious exposure. Not just pre-event tagging capabilities, but while the event is going on, when people check in to the event location, it’ll automatically give them the option to be “attending” the event. You can also set up a specific geotag for your event on Instagram (via Facebook). Here are a few more cool geotagging tips.
Make things pretty
From the food, to the happy hour cocktails, to the programs, to the directional signs – things that look pretty or unique are going to catch the eyes of social media users. I’m also a huge fan of humor in marketing, so anywhere you can insert a bit of sarcasm, puns, or just flat-out jokes is gonna get you noticed and posted.
It sounds boring, but just make a hashtag
I know, I know. Are hashtags still a thing? For live events, YES. Specifically for Twitter discussion and engagement, but they’re also super important on Instagram. Don’t try to be overly creative or cute with this. You should think about hashtags as information indexing, so you’ll want it to be simple for a participant to remember. Additionally, you’ll want to differentiate it from last year’s event hashtag. My favorite examples are literally the event name (or even better – acronym) and the two-digit year.
This article by Kadi McDonald was published on Top Nonprofits. Read the original article here.