The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many changes in how a business run their daily processes. However, because of the strict health protocols, event planners are among those affected the most. With live gatherings on hold for a bit, social media has helped event planners stay relevant to their desired audience. One should always keep in mind some best social media practices to survive this ordeal.
In recent years, the progress of social media networks has been surprisingly rapid. The ‘hashtag boom’ has had an enormous effect on nearly all forms of industry. Online advertisers increasingly take platforms like FB, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to attract more and more customers and have a worldwide audience.
The B2B events industry has benefited from this sustained increase in social media site popularity. Overall, social media have become an excellent tool for businesses, and they are continually using it.
In the events industry, social media plays a significant role. Platforms, such as Instagram, have long been avenues for event planners to share their work and discover new clients. It can effectively market your upcoming event, help plan your notable events, or encourage attendees to participate. When used correctly, it can help your event planning business generate customers, improve your reputation, and assist in your promotional strategies.
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Social Media Practices You Can Adopt
Social media has emerged to be a primary tool in promoting your business and events. As your core strategy option in helping your events reach your desired audience, you need to make sure that you do excellent social media practices.
1. Share Your Past Events
While the world is undergoing a significant shift because of the recent pandemic, it has taken a toll on the events industry. Most events are discouraged from following strict health protocols. However, it does not mean that you will allow people to forget about you. You should always stay on top of their minds, so when things return to normal, they can remember to get in touch with you for their upcoming events.
Use pictures from previous activities or inspiring photographs that resonate with your brand to keep your fans and a wider audience talking during this period. Older images and content will also boost the value of the face-to-face event industry. Posting your past events enables reflection on especially significant moments and celebrations that will matter for your desired audience.
2. Create Branded Hashtags
As an event planner, establishing and sustaining a distinctive brand name is essential. Digital media and the internet, in particular, can be a profound location to develop your reputation. Advertised hashtags can be critical for generating a ‘recall effect’ and achieving optimum visibility for an upcoming occurrence.
An event planner is always expected to build, post, and, most importantly, remain compliant with event hashtags that can help your brand and events become well-known. These hashtags can be included with all content posted on social media networks. When the event is over, the hashtags can be used when reacting to comments and suggestions from the participants.
3. Enhance The Visual Appeal
Many consumers make a buying decision after seeing something on social media. More than 60% of consumers like to see a commodity more than twice to be confident of their buying decisions.
Digital material such as photographs, videos, and small teasers about the forthcoming event can be shared on various social media sites available these days. You can also use Instagram and Facebook, on the other hand, to share engaging material like survey stations, polls, comment boards, and more. You can also share photos of past events that can help enhance your social media networks’ visual appeal.
4. Understand Opportunities
As an event planner, you could wonder why you need to bother and focus on your business’s social media. However, you need to keep in mind that social media has become a decisive factor in achieving your desired events. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and others, can be an effective instrument in improving your event’s facets online. You can use for promotion, site marketing, exhibiting sponsors, and more.
Event managers should post high-quality content on social media platforms to attract audiences and in an attempt to capture potential leads. You can also find opportunities for new and mutually beneficial business contacts that can be made via social media.
An example of this is LinkedIn, which is suitable for forging business connections. There are approximately 3.5 billion active users on social media. There is a reasonable probability that many of them will be involved in the upcoming event or conference when things are back to normal.
5. Treat Each Social Network Uniquely
Not all social media platforms are the same. Implementing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to social media promotion of an event is unlikely to succeed. Event advertisers should use Instagram specifically for visual ads of future conventions, the subjects to be discussed, and the meeting’s location. It is essential to study and use appropriate, high-traffic hashtags for each IG post on the event page.
Twitter is the perfect forum for exchanging brief posts, making fast updates, and monitoring regularly. Planners can use Facebook to post video teasers, same-day edits, write-ups, and press releases about their activities and upload related photos and videos.
LinkedIn is for the more extreme, more informative, and thought-provoking material that can indeed be posted on the website. To keep the excitement about the forthcoming event up, event promoters need to update regularly, and the contents need to be engaging.
6. Share The Latest News In The Industry
Professional event planners may use ‘off-season’ like the recent pandemic to access Facebook and LinkedIn communities, engage in ongoing forums, post questions, and generally gather the latest industry details. Following the related hashtags is another simple way to contact what’s going on in some given social channels.
Event planners also can conduct polls, extract insights from the findings, and use the evidence to make their event planning efforts more effective in the future. Social networking is not only a content-sharing site – it doubles as potentially the best tool to acquire information, communicate with prospects, and learn how to manage activities properly.
Final Thoughts
Social media has grown to be massive in recent years. It has become an essential tool in providing a positive effect on any niche in the industry. For event planners, social media can be detrimental to the success of forthcoming events. With the proper and best social media practices, you can become one of the sought after event planners and always deliver an exceptional event.
AUTHOR BIO
MARICAR MORGA
Maricar worked as a marketing professional for almost a decade and handled concerts, events and community service-related activities. Leaving her corporate job for good to pursue her dreams, she has now ventured in the path of content writing and currently writes for Softvire Australia and Softvire New Zealand. A Harry Potter fan, she loves to watch animated series and movies during her spare time.
