5 ways to make your event pay with social media

Image credit: Teemu Paananen on Unsplash.

Although your marketing and media experts can guide you through this, you may want to know yourself about these five ways to make your event pay with social media.

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Make pre-event contacts

Don’t wait until you get to a live event to see who you happen to run into. Use your social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to try to establish if any of your prospective clients or contacts will be attending and make firm arrangements for them to meet you at the event.

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As a sponsor, you can ask for a list of other promoters and attendees from the organisers and see who you can make contact in advance. Ask your social media experts about using social media listening tools and search functionality to find out who else is posting and getting excited about the event.

Boost pre-event brand familiarity

This is one time when familiarity definitely does not breed contempt and research has shown that event attendees tend to gravitate towards those brands with which they are most familiar.

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Use VR or live streaming to invite those who are unable to attend

One of the greatest innovations in recent times is the advent of virtual and augmented reality. One of the advantages is that you need no longer physically be somewhere to attend!

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Ask AR and VR experts about setting up live streaming or VR to allow prospective clients to view your stand from the comfort of their offices. Have some running on your social media platforms if possible too. This can and is being done. It is a great brand-building exercise as you are seen to be using cutting edge technology to engage with customers.

Establish and follow up leads

During the event, you should have been using the event hashtag or keyword listening to list prospects you have met and engage with them via social media. Follow up of these leads after the event is crucial as it is the whole point of the exercise.

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The best follow up is via direct email, but use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter connections as well – if email response is not forthcoming. Also, do a follow-up brand-building campaign by posting stuff about what transpired and what you achieved at the event.

Use the professionals

Ultimately the services of an expert digital marketing and brand building company would help as all the aforementioned would be professionally and proficiently handled by them as a part of your overall brand building and marketing strategy.

The difference is, they would also have used the latest state of the art technologies and years of marketing experience to ensure the whole effort maximised your spend. Do therefore consider using professionals to help with this kind of exercise.

Either way, I hope these five ways to make your event pay with social media have helped and I’ll see you at the event!