How to Use Social Media to Market Your Virtual Event

These days, distributing flyers and relying on word-of-mouth doesn’t guarantee a successful event.

Promotion is the most important aspect of your event, and if you want to increase audience reach and generate a real buzz, you need to be utilizing social media.

In this article, we’ll cover 8 tactics you should know about when looking to use social media to market your virtual event.

1. Create a Facebook event

By creating a Facebook event, you can gain exposure, hold attention and manage engagement. Most users these days will have their Facebook account synced to their smartphone, meaning they’re unlikely to forget the date of your event once it’s in their calendar.

Once you’ve added an event name, location, description and created some gorgeous imagery, ensure that there’s always someone keeping an eye on the event page.

Use this as an opportunity to post, engage and update your audience with interactive and relevant content to retain interest and anticipation for the upcoming event.

2. Invest in videography

Video is an extremely potent content marketing tool; in fact, by 2022, it’s thought that online video will make up more than 82% of the internet.

Utilizing a strong video marketing campaign in your event promotion strategy can help to push engagement for those who are going to be in attendance, as well as persuading those on the fence to sign up.

Videos are far easier to consume than written content since the human brain is capable of processing visual cues 60,000 times faster than text. This means that a video is more likely to connect with your audience on an emotional level, helping you establish trust and credibility.

If you don’t have any video content available, consider creating a ‘teaser trailer’ where you set the scene for the upcoming event by recapping what your event is about, what people can expect and what surprises you have in store for them.

3. Reach out to influencers

Is there a better way of promoting your event across social media than leveraging the audiences of a popular figure within your niche?

Take a look at this example when Spotify launched a collaborative project with a range of grime and hip-hop influencers that resulted in considerable press coverage, extensive shares across social media and a completely sold-out event:

The most significant benefit of partnering with an influencer for your event is the bigger audience you’ll be able to reach.

The example outlined above illustrates just how powerful partnerships in the music industry can be, and this influence can be applied to any niche.

Influencers in your field don’t necessarily have to be a celebrity; they can be journalists, entrepreneurs, CEOs, thought leaders and anyone else in your industry that has significant sway.

4. Create an event hashtag

Creating hashtags to establish your brand on social media is just as important in 2020 as it was three or four years ago. It’s crucial for building your event across social media too.

Whether you’re sharing them on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn, hashtags are an essential factor across all the social platforms that matter in 2020. What’s more, any event that has been planned correctly will be using their own too.

Before you formulate your hashtag, be sure to abide by these key rules:

• Keep it short and sweet – after all, is anyone really going to identify with a hashtag like #businesssalesandnetworkingeventlondon2020?
• Don’t overthink it – your hashtag should include the keywords related to your event
• Make it memorable – be sure to stand out from the crowd

Acronyms are always great for hashtags, so for instance, if your event is called London Business Sales and Networking 2020, you could go with something like #LONBSN2020.

Once you’ve established your event hashtag, be sure to share it across social, press releases and any subsequent marketing material.

5. Use Facebook ads

Now that the foundations of your event are beginning to take shape, it’s a good time to put yourself in front of the people that matter to gain as many sign-ups as possible.

Facebook Ads allow you to hone the audience you’re targeting, whether you’re looking to speak to those in your niche, those that have visited your website, or the geographic area surrounding your event location.

6. Don’t forget LinkedIn

We’ve already mentioned LinkedIn briefly, but when up against the likes of Facebook and Instagram it can be quickly left by the wayside when it comes to promotion and branding.

However, LinkedIn has over 660 million users worldwide, making it the perfect place to find a captive audience in your niche.

To fully realize the power of LinkedIn, you should be posting updates regularly, joining groups related to your industry and reaching out to professionals to generate leads that turn into attendees or even speakers at the event.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that there’s a good chance that most of the people in your organization are using it themselves, so ask them to share and like your posts to reach a bigger audience.

7. Take a peek behind the curtain

Taking your followers behind the curtain to see how your event is being produced is fantastic content to share with your audience leading up to the big day.

This is because it humanizes your brand and shows what hard work went into to creating the event. It establishes a trust and you can even afford to add a light, humorous touch if it suits your brand too.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and LinkedIn are all ideal places to share this kind of content.

8. Instagram and Facebook Live

Engaging with an audience on social media will give your event further visibility, and most importantly, give your followers a range of exciting content to get their teeth into. So when you’re event starts, make sure you’re using live videos.

Instagram launched Live four years ago, and it took less than six months before the feature could boast more than 250 million daily users.  

When a user first opens the Instagram app, live videos appear at the top of their newsfeed – which gives your business a chance to really catch their attention.

On top of this, your followers will receive push notifications whenever someone starts a live video.

During the event, use live videos to:

• Interact with your followers by providing them content which really gets them thinking
• Interview your speakers and attendees or create Q&A sessions with your speakers and influencers
• Film snippets of keynote speeches, performances and product demos