BEST Event Social Media Plan | Only Successful Events

BEST Event Social Media Plan To Boost Attendance

Having a social media plan when promoting an event is an integral part of the event planning process. Whatever the attendance goal of your conference, workshop, retreat or trade show, it's nearly impossible to reach without a smart marketing effort.

That's why an event social media plan is one of the top items on any successful event planner's list.

A hand holding a phone showing social media icons displaying the importance of event social media plan

Social media is a highly efficient tool for event promotion. With 2.65 billion people using social media worldwide, it would be a big mistake not to take full advantage of it.

Let's take a look at several useful steps for your next event's social media plan.

1. Choose Appropriate Social Media Platforms

While promoting your event on each existing platform seems to be a great way to go, you may be spreading yourself too thin.

When creating your event social media plan, choose the networks your ideal attendees use, such as:

Facebook – has a wide variety of tools for event promotion. Facebook Event helps you market your program, sell tickets, share event updates, and much more.

LinkedIn – assists B2B event promotion by creating a project section, changing headlines, sharing news, and more.

Instagram – helps you connect on more of a visual level with your audience. Over 90% of instagram's audience is under 35 years old. 

Snapchat – helps you connect with a young audience by creating ads with Snap Publisher, connecting with influencers, and involving potential visitors in Snapchat contests.

Other platforms to take advantage of are Pinterest and Twitter. However, if you have limited time and resources, you can settle for the ones above.

2. Tweak Your Social Media Profile

In order for any social media campaign to be successful, you need to update your profiles.  When you start promoting your event, people WILL check out the profile attached to the post.  For instance, if you are running paid event ads on Instagram or Facebook, and someone is interested in your event - they will almost always want to learn more about the person or company hosting the event.

So what do they do?  First, they will click on the ad to find out about the event.  Next, they will click on the business profile. When creating your event social media plan you need to ensure you update you profile so it aligns with the event and brings credibility.

Here's how to fix your profile to maximize your event social media plan:

Does your company's profile page align with your event over all?

Let's say you are a gym but you decide to host a bridal show.  Although you may have a very good reason to host a bridal show - maybe your end goal is to help brides lose weight or get in shape before their wedding - when brides are looking at your profile, they may not see the connection.  The bride may think that the event is not going to be worth their time

On the other hand if you are a wedding photographer and you decide to host a bridal show. The bride will be able to make the connection easily.

So what do you do if your business social media profile does not align with your event? 


Create a new page or profile that will make sense to your target audience.  Be sure to add some content to the profiles.  It is okay if the page is new as long as you add relevant content to the page so your prospective attendee will see you as an authority.

Create banner images, profile buttons, and featured stories highlighting the event.

In the screenshots below you can see a couple examples for one of April Iannazzone's Events for her Med Spa Growth & Profitability Company.  She hosts an annual 3 day summit for Medical Spa Owners to help them grow their practice.

Facebook Profile Example:  You'll notice April created a banner image for the event.  She also included the web address for the event on the banner.  

I love that she used the white and black arrow pointing to the Call to Action.  On your Facebook business profiles you have the option to place a CTA Button.  This button can link directly to your event website or event funnel.

...By the way - if you don't have an event funnel you can "swipe" one of our proven event funnels. These are so easy to customize for your specific event.  
Screen shot of facebook page profile with a red arrow pointing out the event social media plan call to action to learn more about event

You can use the same idea of the Facebook banner image on Twitter and Linkedin as well.  Remember you really should put more focus on the platforms where your attendee spends the most time on.

Instagram profile example: Okay, on the Instagram profile image below, you'll notice the red arrow pointing out a "featured story".  

April created a "featured story" with more information about the event. April also added a second feature highlight last years event.  The additional featured story is not necessary but really great if you have a past event you can highlight... Especially if you show past attendee experience and testimonials. 

a screenshot of an instagram profile with a red arrow pointing to a red circle which highlights th event social media plan by putting event in featured story

Does your profile give a professional impression?

Next thing to look at: what is the impression that the attendee will get from your profile?  Does it look like you have not posted in 6 months?  Are you posts relevant to you business?

While you are at it, interlink your social media pages so there is a LinkedIn handle on Facebook, an Instagram link to Twitter, and so on.

3. #CatchyEventHashtag

When working on event social media plan, a hashtag can make or break your campaign. The hashtag should be concise, informational, and appealing.

Make sure you use the same idea for the entire promotional campaign. You can even consider integrating a hashtag into the interior design of the event's venue to encourage photos and further promotion.

Any post related to the event on social media must have the same hashtag. Put it on emails, print materials, venue staff's uniforms, and wherever else the budget allows.

AVOID these mistakes when creating  your event hash tag:

  • Using a hashtag that is already taken - So you have a hashtag that is unique and think will be great.  Research it a bit. Check on all platforms, not just on the platform you are planning to use. Although you may think you were the first one to use it, it's almost always not the case.  Possibly you are using the first letter of each word in your event and think no one else would be using the same letters in the same order.  It happens all the time!  And now your high end retreat is confused with a dog show. If you researched it a head of time, this would've been avoided.
  • Using a long or complicated hashtag - Keep your hash tag short and concise.  Be sure that it still portrays what the event is.  This will make it easy for your attendees to remember.  It will also cut down the chance of a misspelling.  In the example event used in this post, the event name is The 2020 Med Spa Growth & Profitability Summit...  Boy is that a mouth full!  But the has tag for the event is #MedSpaGrowthCon.  April not only decided to use it for the hash tag but also the web address for the event.   

4. Adjust Your Content for Each Social Media Platform

As you are creating promotional content for your event, make sure it's suitable for social media posting.

While you can come up with thousands of words about the upcoming program, try to shorten the flow to fit into a couple of sentences. With social media, images and videos work best.

Be careful not to overuse the promotional content. Try to dilute posts about the event with other interesting information related to its theme. Otherwise, your effort will appear too salesy and forced.

Do not use the same exact post on each platform.  Although the content or theme of the post will be the same.  Remember to use the preferred style of each platform.  There are very distinct differences in tone and style for each platforms. I know you have seen posts that clearly were used on Instagram but posted on Facebook too. You can tell that it was someone being lazy and did not put in effort to optimize the posts.

If the style of the post is not what the platform prefers, the algorithm will not pick it up.  This means your organic posts will most likely NOT be shown to many people. 

Example:

  • On Twitter, you need to keep it short and catchy
  • While on LinkedIn, a professional voice is imperative. A quick side note...LinkedIn is showing preference to videos right now. 
  • For Instagram, your main focus should be on images on images. 
  • While on Facebook, you are free to add some more text. 

5. Plan Your Posts

Social media platforms can work for you even when you are busy with other event planning matters. You can take advantage of post planning features available on most platforms.

Create several posts when you have time and schedule them to appear whenever you wish. It could be daily or weekly depending on the stage of your promotional campaign.

Use an app or a tool to help execute your social media plan...

But remember what we discussed in step #4! The same thing goes If you are using a social media scheduling tool like Meet Edgar or Hootsuite.

These apps are AMAZING tools to help you execute your event social media plan!  They help you free up your time by enabling you to batch your content creation and schedule your posts in advance.  This way you don't have to worry about planning posts all the time.  

But...

A newbie might be fooled into thinking it would okay to just "click the box" to post to Linkedin.  Even though the post was originally created for Facebook.  

The good news is these tools also make it so easy to really plan out and schedule exactly what should be posted to each respective platform.  Here at Only Successful Events, we use Meet Edgar.

6. Invest in Paid Ads

No matter how excellent your promotional efforts on social media are, they can get better with paid ads. The majority of social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer paid advertisement options.

Depending on your budget, you can choose the type of paid advertising and the number of platforms you can use it on.

Is social media part of your #eventplanning process? Social media is a powerful tool for #fillingyourevents, BUT only if you have a solid #event social media plan and you actually IMPLEMENT IT!

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Final Thoughts

Social media is a powerful tool for successful event planning, BUT only if you use it right. Everything from choosing a platform to paying for advertising needs to be carefully contemplated and implemented to achieve top results at the lowest price.  

It's easy to get caught up in the actual event production process and forget about the importance and impact social media will have on your event attendance.  Don't wait until the last minute. Your event social media plan should not be an after thought.

Do you need help marketing your event?  Have you thought about hiring an agency to take all the event marketing and promotion off of your hands?   Choosing an experienced event marketing agency with proven success can help ensure that you have a sold out event! 

APPLY NOW to work with the Only Successful Events agency today.

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