Marketing Events Successfully With Social Content and Reviews

Marketing events doesn’t have to be a scary process. But it will be if you don’t know what you’re doing!

The worst thing you can do when marketing events is wasting your budget and time because you weren’t utilizing best practices.

I’ve marketed events for plenty of clients, including Fortune 500 companies that gave me a multi-million-dollar budget for marketing! This experience taught me exactly what strategies, tools, and tactics work best when marketing for events.

Eager to learn? Register for a live webinar with me, Ashley N. Cline, EVP of Client Strategy at TicketSocket. 

This hour-long training will focus on social content that converts. Learn what to post and when, how to be efficient, engagement hacks, and the important role Review Marketing also plays in your business. 

Marketing Events: Social Content Efficiency

Before you start marketing events on social media, you need to have a strategy in place.

I’ve found four types of social media content you need to have for an effective strategy. 

Those types of content are: Empower, Exhibit, Educate, and Entertain.

Let’s look at each one!

Empower Content

This content is supposed to embody authority and confidence. It should ignite someone else’s fire, motivate someone, and encourage them to claim their power and gift. You can also make this content thought-provoking, philosophical, and inspirational. Remember that people often have memories tied to events—whether those memories are tender or exciting.

Use Empower content to play up this “memory-making” aspect in your marketing. 

Will attendees make memories with the family at your event? Will they commemorate a loved one?  Will they accomplish something difficult?

Exhibit Content

This content should showcase who you are and what your event is. That could include event highlights, speakers or performers, who the leaders are, and so on. Your brand story and personal story (depending on what kind of event you’re promoting) should shine here. That’s what builds that human connection.

While you’re showcasing your event, be sure to incorporate a healthy amount of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

Also, take this opportunity to focus on the attendees. Who are they? What’s their story? Why are they coming to your event?

Educate Content

Educational content is especially important in marketing events on social media. After all, it shows that you are the expert in your niche. This type of content provides actionable advice. It’s not vague. It’s proven. Matter-of-fact. It’s the “Do this and get this result” kind of content.

This can include:

• How-to’s
• Step-by-step information
• Blueprints
• Action plans

For instance, if you’re promoting an upcoming race, you can offer a checklist of things to do the night before a race.

Entertain Content

Of course, don’t forget your entertaining content! We’re all humans behind the screen, so make sure you make space to create content that’s just fun. Be yourself, and be goofy. Do fun challenges, show bloopers or behind-the-scenes, host a challenge or post memes. TikTok is a great way to incorporate fun content into your social media strategy.

How to Create Content When Marketing Your Event

So now that you know what to create, how do you go about coming up with specific ideas for content?

I have a few tips for you. First, keep a document open that you fill with your ideas as they come. Take screenshots of content you like and make sure you pay attention to what’s trending. Also, be sure to listen to what your community is telling you. You can ask them directly or you can look at your top-performing content over the past 90 days. This is a good indicator of what your audience enjoys.

Also, just a tip for you: The Empower and Entertain content will get you the most engagement, so I recommend plugging those into your content calendar the most! And make sure you account for holidays when you’re creating your content calendar.

Batch Your Content Creation and Scheduling

Content batching isn’t necessarily a revolutionary idea, of course. But you’d be surprised how many people don’t batch their social media content. Some people choose to create their social content day by day. But this will consume so much more of your time. I promise. To batch, just block out a half-day every single week or a full day bi-weekly. Take that time to just work on creating social content.

First, write out all the copy you need for socials that week. Then start choosing images and graphics to go with it. Lastly, schedule out all your content for the week. And you’re done!

For scheduling, I recommend using Sprout Social. I like this tool because it lets you add a bunch of different platforms. The only one it’s missing is Pinterest, but you can use another tool for that. SproutSocial has fantastic reporting and insights, making it easier to optimize your content.

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Ashley N. Cline supports TicketSocket clients in selling more tickets. She focuses on the strategy and tactics it takes to acquire more customers at the lowest cost possible - without having to increase budgets. TicketSocket provides Race Directors with a customizable white label ticketing, registration, and event management platform and prioritizes organizations’ ownership of their own funds, data, brand, and functionality.

TicketSocket is the exclusive race registration provider for USA Triathlon. Request a free demo today.