How Social Media Can Help to Promote Your Next Virtual Event?
The demand for virtual events skyrocketed in 2020 due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since hosting physical events became an impossibility, organizers and brands decided to go big on virtual. Suddenly, the focus of the digital marketing industry was to find the best virtual event marketing strategies.
Fortunately, since virtual events have been growing in popularity even before 2020, we already had some ideas on how to promote them. One of those ideas is that social media has proven to be really effective when it comes to virtual events promotion.
In this blog, we’re going to take a quick look at how you can use social media to promote your next virtual event.
There are more than 3,000,000,000 social media users in the world. This means that more than 63% of the world’s population has a social media presence. By incorporating the methods listed below in your virtual events promotion strategy, you can increase the effectiveness of the marketing.
Take Advantage of Native Social Media Features
When it comes to social media, the key to being effective is to embrace the native features provided by the social media platform. For example, Instagram has stories, Facebook has events, a lot of them support live streaming video, etc.
The idea is to adapt your message in the right format for the platform that you’re using. For example, instead of posting the same content on Instagram and Twitter, you can use Instagram to post-event updates as stories and use Twitter to host contest polls during the live event.
It can be tempting to be lazy and quickly put together a virtual events promotion strategy for social media but it is definitely not the best way.
Instead, the best approach is to take a look at the different social media platforms you’re targeting, figure out what type of content works best for each, and then create a plan that takes these factors into consideration.
Ensure That Your Messaging is Strong and Consistent
While you should use different types of content on different platforms, it is important to understand that the messaging of your social media campaigns is strong and consistent on all platforms.
It is important to understand your target audiences and what kind of messaging would work best for them. Once you’ve decided on the angle and messaging of your social media campaign, it is important to ensure it is consistently enforced on all platforms.
The messaging will also depend heavily on the type of virtual event you’re hosting. For example, the messaging for virtual hybrid events can be pretty different from the messaging for events that are purely virtual.
Use Influencer Marketing but Wisely
One of the paradigm shifts in marketing caused by social media marketing is the concept of influencer marketing.
If you want to execute a successful virtual event marketing strategy, you will need to indulge in influence marketing to some degree to have the best returns.
By collaborating with influencers that are relevant to your event can significantly increase the reach of your social media campaigns. Since the entire concept of social media is based around reach and exposure, it is natural to see why influencer marketing has become such a huge trend.
In case you do not want to invest a lot in influencer marketing for your virtual event, you can still use micro-influencers to promote your event. It is also a good idea to involve the speakers when it comes to influencer marketing too.
Paid Social Media Marketing
It is important to focus on organic promotion on social media but if you really want the best results, it is also important to use paid advertising on social media to increase the reach of your campaigns and content.
Every major social media platform has its own advertising tools and just like you should use different content on different platforms, you should also use a dedicated advertising strategy for each platform.
The key to running a paid social media virtual event marketing campaign is to understand the target audience for the event and reach them using the targeting tools provided by the platform.
Promotion During the Event and After the Event
Lastly, social media is also a great way to create engagement during the event too. If you’re using a modern virtual event platform, it should come with social media features that allow you to integrate social media posts into the virtual event itself.
There are a number of ways to use social media to generate engagement during the event. For example, you can run contests, share pictures, conduct polls and quizzes, and more.
Once the event is over, you can still continue posting on social media with content from the virtual event. If you’re hosting a virtual event around a particular topic like marketing, you can post short videos of key learnings from the sessions.
In the case of a virtual event, you can also make the content available on-demand for viewers who might not have been able to attend the live event. Social media is a great tool to promote on-demand content to potential attendees of the next event.
Final Thoughts on Social Media Marketing and Virtual Events
As mentioned at the starting of this blog, social media has penetrated all parts of the world and more than half the current population of the world is on social media.
When it comes to virtual event marketing, social media is a natural promotion channel as all one has to do is click on a link to join a virtual event. In a way, it is helpful to think of social media as the virtual world filled with potential attendees for your virtual event.
If used correctly, social media can be one of the most powerful marketing channels for virtual hybrid events of any size and type.