How to promote an event on social media and boost your attendance

Coming up with new, unique ideas to engage with your audience on social media can be difficult due to the high volume of content already out there.

We’ve created a useful guide to help you promote your events on social media. You’ll learn about various social media strategies to elevate your digital presence and your audience’s digital experience, so you can reach more people and scale your virtual events.

7 ways to promote an event on social media before it happens

Start using these best practices to amplify engagement, expand your reach, and ensure a great turnout.

2. Make the event shareable

Include social sharing buttons on your event’s landing page, and post them on all of your platforms to ensure you’re meeting your audience wherever they are. Event marketing is all about ensuring your audience finds your event, so make sure it’s shareable with as many channels as possible.

If you’re hosting a virtual event with Livestorm, you can add social sharing features directly into your event’s landing page, empowering your audience to easily share your event with their social networks and enabling more people to register.

4. Post teasers of the event

Post sneak previews of the event’s lineup, or what your audience can look forward to during the event, to build hype and spark interest.

Get creative in the ways you tease your event by introducing your speakers individually, days or weeks leading up to the event, or posting interviews with key people in your lineup. Use Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or TikTok to create short, engaging videos your audience can quickly view and share.

If you decide to highlight key speakers as part of your virtual event or webinar marketing strategy, make sure the speakers are noteworthy enough to actually excite your potential attendees and not dissuade them from joining.

5. Create a hashtag

Branded hashtags help organize all the content or posts related to your event in one place, so people can easily find out more about it and add to the buzz.

Make sure the hashtag you create is short, easy to spell, and unique, so other unrelated content doesn’t end up there.

Creating a custom event hashtag is an excellent way to build your brand’s credibility and build authority. It lets your audience know that you’re an on-trend, modern organization that’s capable of meeting its customers where they already are, with exciting ways to promote engagement. Examples of great branded hashtags include:

• #SXSW is the timeless hashtag used by the South by Southwest festival —it’s easy to remember, recognizable, and all-encompassing.
• #CMC2022 is the official hashtag of the 2022 Content Marketing Conference — it’s specific to their event, short, and effective.
• #Brandweek is the hashtag of the 2022 Brandweek Conference by Adweek —it’s similar to the main brand, catchy, and memorable.

If you’re using Livestorm, attendees can register for the event directly from your LinkedIn event, automatically filling out their registration form with their LinkedIn information. By making it easy to participate in your event, you’re adding to your audiences’ experience with your brand, and ensuring a better turnout.

7. Host a giveaway or contest

A great way to get your audience to attend your event, in addition to our other social media promotion ideas, is to host a giveaway or contest. Let’s face it: everyone loves free stuff.

When hosting a giveaway, make sure to detail what your audience will gain by attending on your event’s landing page. You could give away branded merchandise or branded merchandise from your event sponsors, for example.

When hosting a contest on social media, what you offer as a reward is up to you, but remember to consider your audience and what attracts them. For instance, if you’re primarily targeting small business owners you’ll probably get more qualified leads by offering a free trial of your product rather than a free cooking class.

Then, engage users on social media by asking them to share a contest-related post from your page with your hashtag. This helps broaden your reach while building brand awareness.

5 ways to promote an event on social media while it’s happening

Yes, you can promote your virtual event on social media, even live while it’s taking place! Consider the following tips to build excitement and boost engagement during your event.

2. Invite the audience to engage with social media during the event

Don’t forget to remind your audience of your event hashtag so they add it to any social posts made about the event. This way, they’ll be easier to engage with, and they’ll also help you keep the hype going! Ask them to post an Instagram Story about the event or tweet about their favorite quotes or speakers so far.

However, be sure to do this during breaks between speakers, or breaks between segments, so as to not distract the audience from the event itself.

3. Invite your audience backstage

Do a behind-the-scenes view of what speakers are coming on next, like a short interview on IGTV or Facebook Live. This gives your audience something to look forward to while keeping them focused on the event.

If you’re live streaming your event with Youtube, you can share the link to your live stream across social media platforms using YouTube’s SHARE tool.

If you’re using Livestorm, you can host your virtual event on-demand, live, or pre-recorded. This way, you can manage your virtual event from start to finish, all in one place.

5. Interview attendees on Instagram Stories

Just like you’re on the red carpet, select a few attendees at your virtual event and interview them about their experience during breaks between speakers or segments. This is a great way to involve your audience and ensure they repost your content.

Interviewing attendees can also help widen your reach and help you connect with people who follow your audience already, increasing the chance of them taking interest in your company and event.

7 ways to promote an event on social media after it ends

Your event was a big hit! So make sure to share all the moments that made it special on your social media accounts using the following tips to spark excitement and get people interested in all your future events.

1. Repost user-generated content

Once it’s over, show off your event from your attendees’ perspective. Gather any user-generated content from the event to demonstrate how successful it was. If they used your hashtag, their posts will be easy to find, respond to, and repost.

This is also a great way to gauge where your audience likes to post their content, so be sure to repost their content on the platforms they use most.

Here is a list of the actions you should perform to turn your webinar or virtual event into a blog post:

• Download a recording of the event
• Transcribe the audio
• Use the resulting transcript to build a blog-style draft
• Polish off your blog post

You’ll also want to embed the source video in the final post so that any interested parties can give it their time and traffic. You can also send your blog post via email, to bolster your email promotion strategy.

3. Save event highlights to your Instagram Highlights

Instagram Stories enable you to post a higher volume of content that’s not necessarily as polished as your posts and reels. And, that can be a good thing.

Use Instagram Stories (yours or user-generated) from the event to add all the highlights of your event to your Instagram Highlights. Instagram Highlights allow you to keep stories pinned to your page, so all your hard work doesn’t disappear within 24 hours—allowing your audience to access them over and over again.

4. Conduct a post-event survey

Ask your attendees what they thought about your event to demonstrate you care about their experience and to know what to improve for next time. You can use poll stickers on Instagram Stories or emoji slider stickers to gauge overall impressions. You can also utilize a survey tool like SurveyMonkey, to ask more in-depth questions, and expand on attendees’ experiences to delight them now and in the future.

Using Livestorm, you can also share a replay of the entire event, or make it available on-demand. While on-demand events allow you to share the event after it’s over, they’re nonetheless gated content, meaning you can still generate leads based on those who sign-up to view it, aiding your video engagement marketing efforts.

You can also expand your video engagement metrics by repurposing your replay into smaller clips to share with your audience on social media, turning your event into easily digestible content bites.

You can also use social media listening tools to gauge what people are saying about your event outside the group. Make sure you’re open to all types of feedback to ensure you’re fostering an open conversation.

7. Turn event highlights into a meme/GIF

Consider turning funny or essential moments during your virtual event into a meme/GIF to further relate to your audience and inspire them to repost your content.

When content is easy to consume, it can deliver your message more effectively. GIFs and memes are very easy on the eye - and the brain - and engage viewers while conveying your message.

Supercharge your virtual event with social media

Every time you share content from a past virtual event, you’re subtly reminding your audience of the great events you’ve hosted in the past and will continue to produce in the future.

With a video engagement platform like Livestorm, hosting virtual events is easy with advanced engagement features like registration pages and analytics. The platform also comes pre-built with advanced promotion tools that can help you better plan and share your event.

Done correctly, social media lets your content do the work for you. Past content can be creatively repurposed to help you gain leads, traffic, and engagement now and increase registrations for future events.

Frequently asked questions about social media event promotion

When should I use LinkedIn to promote my event on social media?

You should use LinkedIn to promote your event on social media if you’re a B2B brand targeting working professionals. You’re likely to reach a smaller audience on LinkedIn, as opposed to Facebook or Instagram, but that smaller audience is easier to target and more likely to be interested in your event.

When should I use Instagram to promote my event on social media?

You should use Instagram to promote your event on social media if your brand primarily targets millennials, women, or both. This is because global Instagram users aged 16-24, and women, in particular, prefer Instagram over any other platform. To promote successfully on Instagram, make sure you’re posting high-quality images and videos.

When should I use Facebook to promote my event on social media?

If you could only choose one platform, you should use Facebook to promote your event on social media. That’s because Facebook has approximately 2.91 billion users, meaning any marketing campaign has the chance to see success on the platform based on users alone.

When should I use Twitter to promote my event on social media?

You should use Twitter to promote your event on social media if your brand has a pulse on what’s happening right now and you’re not afraid to react to it. Tech industry giants, socially motivated companies, and food brands have managed to use Twitter exclusively to run great, agile campaigns.