At Preferred Events we work with many companies trying to maximize their events. Part of this includes helping others know about what we do as a business through social media channels. After speaking with many event planners in our space, we have learned numerous tips to help others better engage on social media.

Turn your audience into advocates

Who will care about your event? You need followers to be raving fans! We recommend creating personas for your clients (a fictional representation of their audience) to help the team understand exactly who the audience is, what they care about, what will motivate them and what pain points your event helps to solve. We use this to help create the most effective theme, engaging entertainment and in creating marketing collateral.

Make it easy to share

Again, put your audience at the forefront of this decision. Is your audience active on Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Post information about your event where your audience is active and they will be much more likely to engage. We advise you to create a hashtag for your event and tweet before, during, and after the event to engage with your audience. If you use an event hashtag, put the hashtag on all marketing collateral as well as your Twitter handle so people can start tweeting about the event.

Start before the event

Don’t think that you need to wait until the day of your event to engage with your audience online! You can create places for your attendees to get event information or start conversing before the event even starts. You could establish a private group on LinkedIn exclusively for your event and invite your potential attendees to the group to start a dialogue. Then you can share relevant information or a teaser to get your guests excited about the event.

Engage online during the event

Engaging online during your event can spark some fun conversations and is an easy way to connect your attendees to one another. Encourage your attendees to live tweet your event by sharing fun quotes, images, or other things going on at the event and remind them to use the event hashtag. If you want to get people really excited about live tweeting, put up a screen at your event that has a live feed of the tweets from those using the event hashtag. Everyone loves to see their name and thoughts on the big screen, so giving them this opportunity will make them feel like a superstar!

Follow up after the event

After the event, send out a quick 1-5 question survey asking the guests to rate their experience at the event. Asking for direct feedback will not only help you make future events better but will also make your customers feel like they are being heard.

These tips are just a few ways from our clients’ experiences along with our own, that can take your social media to the next level for your upcoming event!