Marketing for digital events: Which social media platforms should you be on?
Social media networks have changed our lives. Not only do we share and provide insights into our private lives through social media, but these online community platforms have also become important channels to get information and news on various topics and products. From an event organizer perspective, social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube provide an opportunity to promote an event to a broad and diverse audience. In this article, we have compiled a list to highlight the most important social media platforms for meeting planners and event organizers to increase the visibility of their event.
Facebook is still the most widely used social media platform despite the emergence of other platforms. The network has 2.8 billion daily active users worldwide, 308 million users are from Europe. Though other social media platforms are gaining more and more influence, Facebook remains the market leader. As such, it is important that your business has a presence on Facebook by having a company profile. A Facebook company page is a free and convenient way to make your own brand better known and to gain customers.
Compared to a private profile, a company profile offers various tools – there are functions for content creation, you receive insights from visitor statistics, and of course you have the possibility to place ads – all with the purpose of making it as easy as possible for interested parties and customers to find information about your event and/or company online. Additionally, a presence on Facebook has SEO advantages. With an up-to-date company page, your business will not only be easier to find within the network, but will also be listed higher on search engines such as Google.
Of course, Facebook also offers the possibility to create events. This tool is particularly attractive in event marketing, as it allows you to advertise events in a very targeted manner and invite interested parties. Administrators have statistics at their disposal that provide information about the reach of their event, and how many guests have accepted. This information can be used to decide whether further marketing measures are necessary.
If you also have an Instagram account, you have the option of conveniently sharing your Instapostings on Facebook, saving you the time and effort of creating separate posts. Important to note is that a Facebook profile is a prerequisite if you want to place ads on Instagram, as both platform accounts have to be connected.
As Instagram user numbers continue to rise (over one billion users worldwide), the platform’s importance in marketing is rapidly growing. Instagram Stories (posts that automatically delete themselves after 24 hours) are increasingly popular among influencers and companies to convey messages. Instagram Stories are viewed daily by over 500 million people. Additionally, 69% of Instagram users are younger than 35, so if you want to appeal to a young audience, this is the place to do it.
Unlike Facebook, images and videos are the focus of the Instagram platform. For example, the same photo on Facebook is said to bring 23 percent fewer likes and comments compared to Instagram. In order to be well-received on Instagram and to expand your audience, high-quality images are a must
Some tips on how to find high-qualtity images: https://www.converve.com/event-networking-blog/20-sources-for-free-photos-videos-graphics-and-music/
Well-chosen hashtags can also help to position yourself on the market as well as address the right target groups. It is important not to simply add as many hashtags as possible to the caption, but to think about which terms really fit the post or event and how you want to be found. For example, an appropriate use of hashtags would be the event name, the event theme, and the event location. Ideally, you should create your own hashtag for your event, which you can then use to monitor posts and reactions from the community.
To reiterate, Stories in particular are booming on Instagram and increasingly growing in popularity with users. With a lifespan of 24 hours, Instagram Stories trigger the FOMO effect – the fear of missing out of content that will only be available for a limited time. For event organizers, this is a great opportunity to interact with target groups, regularly promote the event as well as providing insights and updates. Small, but regular, stories and posts build anticipation.
As Instagram Stories are increasingly establishing themselves as the “place to be” on the internet, this channel is naturally also very attractive for advertisements. Similar to Facebook, the target group of an ad can be defined precisely by specifying age, location and interests.
Since its founding in 2002, LinkedIn has continued to grow and gain influence. 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing – this is not surprising when you note that content on LinkedIn is considered 3 times more trustworthy compared to other social networks. Many features are similar to XING – there are free limited accounts with the option to upgrade to premium paid accounts with more platform functions activated; the “LinkedIn Events” feature offers members an easy way to create and participate in professional events; and members actively exchange information in various groups.
Twitter, which is a hybrid of blog and social network, continues to grow in popularity in Germany. It is a popular medium for communicating and commenting on current news and events because of the bite-sized messages, or “tweets”, made for easy and quick digestion. Despite the character limit, which allows only one or two sentences, lively conversations between with many participants often arise on Twitter.
There are around 330 million monthly active users on Twitter, and 145 million daily active users. While Instagram has secured the younger generations, Twitter has a completely different target group – about six out of ten Twitter users worldwide are between 35 and 65 years old. Moreover, a quarter of all verified accounts are journalists.
The fundamental principle of Twitter is hashtags, which can be used to assign tweets to specific topics, and to engage in discussions and debates. A popular tool for an event is the so-called “Twitter Wall”, where a separate hashtag is created for an event and communicated to the outside. By using a hashtag, participants of an event can comment live on the event, while giving people who could not actively participate the opportunity to follow the event. The Twitter Wall is ultimately the place where tweets on a specific hashtag are collected and displayed in real time. A Twitter Wall can be broadcast on site via an overhead projector, or digitally embedded on the event platform.
YouTube
Forecasts say that by 2021, 82% of all traffic on the internet will be video. This naturally raises the question of how relevant the leading video platform YouTube is for event organizers. The fact is that video content continues to grow. YouTube has more than two billion registered users per month and is the third most visited site after Google and Facebook. In addition, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. This means that the platform offers companies and event organizers a very high-reach advertising environment. For example, the visibility of video ads on YouTube in Germany is 96%. By comparison, the industry average is 66%.
YouTube is a mix between a social media channel, a search engine, and a classic broadcast medium. Event organizers can let their creative juices flow with event videos, trailers, interviews or movies.
Summary
Social media offers event organizers the opportunity to be where their target group is, and to gain more followers and customers with a little effort. Some level of social media presence is important in order to stay competitive, especially in times of Covid-19, as events and activities are increasingly shifting to the online sphere. It is up to the individual business to decide which channels to focus on, and the amount of time and effort to invest in a social media strategy. The process of creating text, image and video content is becoming increasingly easy on all platforms, and the hurdle to stay on the ball is lowered.
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