10 Tips for Improving Your Business’ Social Media Presence
There’s a reason that 58% of event managers use social media before, during, and after their events. Social media is the single biggest driver of exposure, engagement, and awareness in the digital age. With billions of people spending hours a day browsing through social sites, getting people to engage with you on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter can be the difference between a sellout event and a flop.
But here’s the problem. 90% of marketers know that social media has an impact on revenue. But over 60% aren’t sure… how. What makes social crowds tick? How do you execute smart social campaigns that help pack your event? And what strategies can you use to become the social marketing guru you’ve always dreamed of being?
1. Ditch the Fancy Scheduler
By now, you’ve seen the advice.
“You need to make x number of social media posts on xtimeline. It’s all about consistency! So, you should use a social media scheduler to auto-post status updates. It’s easy and effective!”
Yes! You should be consistent with your posts. And, if it’s easier for you, you can schedule your posts in advance. But don’t let a robot post your statuses. Why? Because you need to be on-the-ball once a post drops. 42% of customers expect you to respond to their social media questions in 60 minutes.
When you make a post. Make it yourself. Take the opportunity to engage with consumers and answer their questions. You want to build meaningful relationships, not put your entire social media strategy on autopilot. This is going to lead to a lower or delayed response time that your followers will notice.
2. Engage Constantly
Walker predicts that brands will overtake price and product as the key differentiator between businesses by next year. You want to forge tangible relationships with your audience that go beyond the keyboard. Because, here’s the thing — you don’t want them to come to your next event. You want them to come to ALL of your current and future events.
And that starts by creating relationships in person or online. Don’t just reply to some of their questions. Like their posts. Follow them. Be a real part of their social lives and become a friend they recognize or put outposts they look forward to. Building an event marketing business is about more than just selling out an event. It’s about creating a brand that sells out with repeat customers who love your product, services, and brand.
3. Always Tell A Story
Telling a story is the single most important thing your brand can do. It creates emotional attachments, engages, inspires, and makes all your content hyper-digestible. Storytelling is what makes marketers like Gary Vaynerchuk such a powerful entity. He doesn’t just sell products; he sells experiences.
- 92% of consumers want ads to feel like stories.
- Messages delivered as stories are 22x more engaging than facts.
- More people are going to remember an ad that tells a story
- It’s easy to gain a customer by making a personal connection or sparking their emotions
It’s that simple and when in doubt, think about telling your story with a creative meme. Layla Sleep, an online mattress supplier, integrates creative and funny memes on their social media feeds that almost anyone can relate to. Being a relatable brand increases your chances of staying top of the mind for customers that connect to your messaging.
4. Create Contests and Giveaways
If you’ve ever read our blog on ticketing solutions, you would know that we’re crazy about giveaways and contests. They’re a great way to spark a conversation — especially if you’re a newer event marketer. The average Instagram post with a contest gets 64x as many comments and 3.5x as many likes as a standard post.
We know!
You’re thinking, “no, duh!”
After all, you’re giving people free stuff, right? Well, sort of. But, you buy ads, right? Those contest views are WAY cheaper than ad views. There’s a reason that 32% of brands do at least one giveaway a month. They work.
Before start handing out things, there are a few questions you should ask yourself when building your giveaway contest:
- Determine what the goal of the giveaway is and how you can tie it into your marketing campaign.
- What prize are you giving away? Make sure the outcome is going to be higher in value than the prize.
- What platform are you doing to promote your campaign on?
- How long will your giveaway run for?
5. Celebrate Your Milestones
This may sound a little too nitpicky, but you should celebrate your wins with your audience. That means that you should post about hitting 1k subscribers. You should celebrate that latest sold-out event. It lets your audience know that you care about them. And, let’s be honest, it’s natural. What’s more believable?
That those 100k sub social media accounts never got excited when they hit milestones? Or that they’re too cool to care?
6. Encourage Comments and Ask Questions
Want to know the easiest way to get engagement? You ask for it.
Ask your followers questions in the comment sections and engage with them regularly. We’re not just talking about on your page either. Like their posts, comment on their statuses, and engage with them as a human would.
If your followers reply back or further engage with your brand, don’t be afraid to reward them. Customers will be pleasantly surprised when brands go above and beyond to introduce a rewards program to them. Take Vitality Extracts, for example, they do a great job of highlighting simple ways to earn their ‘vibe’ points and receive more of their products for less:
You’ll notice that a ton of these tips can be summed up with this statement — be a human, not a brand robot. Simply being more than a stale, bland, boring brand can generate a ton of buzz for your event online and build authenticity that attracts a crowd.
And if you receive negative comments on social media, here are 6 tips for how businesses can respond to these types of comments.
7. Give Them A Gateway Back to Your Resources
Always leave breadcrumbs. Doing something as simple as putting a link to your event page in your bio or linking to your blog in your status updates goes a long way. The goal is to get them to notice you and be directed to your business seamlessly. We left breadcrumbs in this post to our resources. You should do the same.
8. Give Love to Other Brands
Look. Everyone can’t be your competition. Just because there are other events that are similar to yours doesn’t mean that you can’t be friends. If you pay attention to the world of Instagram and Twitter, you’ll notice that brands love to be playful with each other.
The Chick-fil-a vs. Popeyes war that’s currently swallowing the world like one big chicken sandwich started from brand-to-brand interactions … and people are noticing! Brands have a ton to gain by communicating with each other regularly online while people are watching.
9. Do Partnership Giveaways
That giveaway idea seems great in theory, right? But the problem is, you only have like 200 followers. That’s not much of a giveaway. Don’t worry! You have options.
Partnership giveaways are giveaways that happen between two brands. So, let’s say that you want to give away free concert tickets. Approach one of your sponsors or one of those companies that you built a relationship with through brand-to-brand interactions, and have them throw in with your giveaway.
So, you could give away tickets, and they could give away a guitar. That way, the brand with the bigger social following can direct traffic to your giveaway. What do they get? Well, they don’t lose anything. And they get more swag for their giveaway. It’s a win-win.
10. DM People!
This is our biggest tip that marketers don’t do on social media. DM people. Too many brands are scared to use the DM. Did you get a new follower? Thank them personally! Remember, shed your outer robot, and become a human again. It’s OK to DM your followers as a brand, reach out and show them you appreciate their engagement.
Author: Savannah McIntosh is currently the Marketing Director for Purplepass Ticketing, an all-in-one ticketing and event management software. You can find more event planning tips, marketing hacks, and the latest event trends at their blog.
