Blog
Posted by truecourse
Does this scenario sound familiar?
You’re planning an event that is business critical. Its marketing cycles are short. Your partners, sponsors, and supporters await worthwhile returns on their investment and involvement. You’ve spent countless hours (and carefully counted dollars) planning and working your connections. And your event’s a few months away.
To drive attendance to the event, you know you’ll need to promote where your audiences spend at least some time most days—on social media. But the questions keep coming:
- How can you make sure it gets done properly without taking up your team’s valuable time, given they have other important priorities to manage?
- How can you make your organization and event look great online?
- How can you get the most out of your social media investment?
We can help. This blog will answer those questions and more with a full walkthrough of the social media event promotion process. Here’s a quick look at the steps involved, featuring the work we did for our client, the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA), to promote their TEDxKanata 2021 event on social media.
1. When is it time to start planning the promotion of your event on social media?
When you know your event’s key theme, offering, and goals, it’s time to include the promotion strategy in your planning. First, we recommend creating a brand look & feel and overarching marketing strategy (including sponsorships and partnerships). Your promotion efforts—including your social strategy—will be built out from there and your content calendar follows suit.
Let’s consider KNBA. When did they know it was time to start planning the social marketing for their event?
They’d chosen the theme of their TEDxKanata 2021 event—“adapt.” They knew their main offering inside and out. They’d established their goals, based on their experience hosting past events. It was time to start planning integrated marketing and promotion across channels, including social media. That’s when they engaged TrueCourse.
The event was launched across all platforms (here it is on Twitter):
2. What is the first step to getting successful event marketing going on social?
If you engage us to help promote your event, we’ll quickly get to know you, your organization, your event, and your goals. Leave the work to us: in just an hour and a half, we’ll ask all the right questions so we can ramp up and start managing the promotions planning right away. Our structured process, including writing down the plan, is designed to take the pressure off you—with no preparation needed on your part.
From there, we’ll find three examples of event branding from your competitors and “comparables” and then develop a unique creative direction for your event that best aligns with your audiences and your event goals. We establish your event’s brand look & feel and the brand conventions that will ensure a consistent audience experience across copy and graphics. Step 1 is complete: you have a strong, professional-looking event brand.
(Hint: Test your brand’s consistency by taking a quick look at your event’s Instagram page. Does your profile’s grid tell a cohesive, organized, and compelling story?)
We invite you to check out the grid from TEDxKanata 2021!
3. What’s the rest of the process moving forward?
Together, we’ll identify topics to best support your event marketing on social media. Then, TrueCourse will present a cadence, story arc, work plan, and content calendar leading up to event day. We also recommend scheduling a weekly meeting so our team stays aligned with your team in terms of new developments and to review post performance, make adjustments, and keep ahead of the curve.
We’ll take care of all the moving parts to ensure your social media is driving value for your event. This includes content creation, writing posts, and creating graphics—and bonus content for sponsors and partners. It also involves post scheduling, publishing, and monitoring comments. And rest assured, nothing will go public facing without your prior approval.
Take a look at the content creation for TEDxKanata’s Facebook:
4. How will audiences experience your event’s new social media?
This one’s easy. Your event’s look & feel will be consistent, following the brand conventions established at the outset. Its social presence will be engaging, with dynamic posts scheduled across platforms, a designated event hashtag, and strategic @mentions to amplify reach. Its presentation will be authentic, reflecting its theme to a T. And the whole experience will feel professional and reliable right up to event day—even during the event itself, if you’d like: we can join the event and publish posts live from the floor.
The final countdown and event day (featuring TEDxKanata’s LinkedIn)!
5. What are some key lessons learned?
You have ownership over your event’s success and the experience it creates. We understand how much work is involved in event planning and that things can change at any time in the lead up to an event. You need an all-hands-on-deck team, with everyone owning their respective roles. Being confident that the social media team is managed professionally and acts as a partner takes a lot off your plate.
Our proven process means minimal effort for you. And it will always move your marketing in the right direction. But #DontJustTakeOurWordForIt: see what other event promotion experts have to say at Events.com.