Social media: our guide to before, during and after your event

Which social media channels should you use? The best thing is to use all of the ones that you think will reach your target audience and tailor the messages to the audiences on different channels. You’ll quickly find out which ones work best for your event and after an initial campaign, you’ll know which ones to focus on. Don’t disregard Pintrest which has 250 million active users every month.

The objective is to make your event a great experience for attendees from beginning to end and to achieve that you’ll need to be creative.

Here are our tips for social media activity before, during and after the event.

Before the event

• Create a unique #, or if it is a repeat event continue to use the previous one to maintain momentum and pick up previous attendees
• Make your social media schedule available to everyone, so that they know what is going on and like, share etc, to get your message to as many people as possible
• Consider if it would help to work with an influencer, who can endorse your event and bring it to a wider audience
• Boost posts – look at what’s working and target that audience
• Create a Facebook Event page
• Share good content – a constant drip feed of information works well

Content

• Tailor content to each platform
• Tell everyone what’s new and why they should attend
• Publish interviews with speakers
• Become a guest on a relevant podcast
• Use videos, particularly with speakers, particularly if they have controversial views
• Do something different to attract attention

During the event

• Run a social media contest to get everyone involved and active
• Feature interviews with speakers
• Use testimonials from attendees and quotes from speakers
• Carry out live podcasting
• Publish photos of the day
• Post a video recap of the day

After the event

• Publish testimonials from attendees
• Use comments, responses and answers to questions from speakers
• Post an event podcast
• Circulate a video of the event and round up of photos

Throughout the process it’s a good idea to monitor Return on Investment. You’ll be able to see what has worked and what hasn’t ready for other events or if you are repeating this one at a later date. Eventbrite’s research has shown that 30% of people who watch a livestream of an event will attend the same event the following year, so it’s well worth incorporating some live streaming in your activity.