Tags
Cian Corbett, events, Facebook events, HUGS Charity, promoting events, social media tips, Vanity URLs
Have you ever wondered how to make your social media accounts work harder for you when promoting an event? I’m often asked do I have any quick tips for maximising the reach and increasing exposure for events. And with a Charity Event coming up shortly myself I thought I’d share the tricks I’ll be using.
1) Get professional imagery assets
Gently persuade a designer (thanks Niamh!) to make you a professional image for use on your digital spaces. This will give the event a professional feel and will make it easier to entice others to share with their network.
2) Create a Facebook Event
Facebook Events are really simple to create and will act as a nice Social Media platform to launch your campaign.
In Facebook Events you can:
- Invite your Facebook Friends
- Earn more organic impressions in the newsfeed when friends accept your invitation
- Provide event information such as ticket purchase details, times and useful location directions (imported from Bing maps)
- Inform your invited guests with event updates such as speaker/ performer details.
- Share the event on other platforms using it’s unique URL
3) Create Vanity URL’s for your links
When creating an event you’ll want to share multiple sources of information to make it easy for your readers to find out more but you don’t want to have your invite littered with a slew of messy long links. You can use a URL shortener to make these links appear neater in your updates.
The Facebook event URL will be quite long so you can shorten it using PO.ST to something nicer like http://po.st/HUGSEvent
Similarly, I have created a MyCharity link for the event but the accompanying URL is quite long so I’ve created a custom URL http://po.st/CianHugs
The great thing about custom created vanity URL’s is the added ability to track the clicks which can inform your posting strategy as the campaign progresses.
Track which links are attracting the most clicks
4) Use Video where possible
In today’s busy newsfeeds you only have a short time to inform and engage your target audience. Video is hugely effective in bringing your event to life by providing more information and adding emotion. If you have existing video content or budget to create video content you can upload this to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or your Blog and update your Facebook event to encourage more attendees.
5) Write a Blog promoting the event under the guise of giving Social Media Tips 😉
All exposure is good exposure! And by writing a blog with Social Media tips I hope I’ve added some value to the readers while also increasing awareness of my event.
If you’d like to attend the HUGS Comedy night on Thursday 12th of March register your interest here http://po.st/HUGSEvent.
Or if you can’t make the event but would like to make a small donation to HUGS please click here http://po.st/CianHugs
Thanks for reading!
