Social media is one of the best ways to spread the buzz about an upcoming event. To maximise your social media marketing efforts, it pays to put some strategy behind your posts. After all, it’s not enough for your followers to see your updates – you want to engage and convert them, too.

Here are 12 more steps you can take to promote your event on social media and drive ticket sales.

Step 1: Choose your social networks

Depending on your industry and target audience, some social platforms may be more effective than others. Typically, if you can do some promotion on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you should be well covered. Here’s a quick overview of each platform’s benefits:

  • Facebook: You can share event updates, engage followers, and create event pages. You can also target your messaging to specific groups using paid promotion.
  • Instagram: Brands get the most engagement on this image-laden social platform.
  • TikTok: This short-form video platform has taken the world by storm. With its quickly evolving landscape, you can experiment with many new features for businesses.
  • YouTube: A legacy video platform that is becoming even friendlier to advertisers and musicians.
  • LinkedIn: Great for B2B and industry networking, this professional social media platform is a good choice for company news and event announcements.
  • Twitter: Use posts and an event hashtag to build excitement before and during your event.
  • Snapchat: Appeal to young audiences by building a presence on Snapchat.
  • Spotify: How popular and up-and-coming musical acts promote shows and tours to fans.

Step 2: Choose your event hashtag

Come up with a hashtag that’s short, unique, and easy to understand. Once you land on an idea, stick with it! Consistency is key.

If you post anything relevant to your upcoming event, include your hashtag. Add it to all of your social account bios as well. And don’t stop there – promote your hashtag on all your other communication channels. These include your event website, promotional emails, print materials, and more. Videos are getting more attention than ever, so include a hashtag where viewers can easily notice it, such as a footer or in a corner.

During the event, make sure your hashtag is visible, so your guests know to use it. Include it in handouts and display it on screens throughout your venue. Better yet? Give people incentives to use your hashtag or share your event on social. This could mean setting up a photo booth branded with your hashtag or creating a photo competition where the best photo using your hashtag wins a prize. Keep in mind that contests have legal requirements, so make sure you consult a solicitor prior to running one.

Step 3: Upgrade your profiles before promoting your event on social media

Before you promote your event on social media, you’ll want to revise your channel’s pages. Create sleek headers and thorough company descriptions and update any existing pages to include your upcoming event. Some quick tips:

  • Stay consistent across all your channels: Professionalism is key. Be sure that your social media channels are consistent with one another. This includes usernames, URLs, headers, and descriptions.
  • Optimise your social media “about us” sections: Include a thorough, engaging description of your company. Use keywords that will help prospective attendees find your page, and include a mention of your event as well.
  • Interlink all of your social media pages: On Facebook, include your Twitter handle, and so on. This will allow fans to follow additional pages for news and updates.

Don’t let your social media presence look outdated. Spruce up your virtual footprint with tips from our guide to promoting events on social media.

When should you start promoting an event on social media?

Timing can make or break a social media post. If you’re promoting an event on your platforms, make sure you release content at intervals leading up to the big day, so potential guests have plenty of reminders.

Step 4: Create (and sell tickets through) a Facebook Event

700 million people use Facebook Events each month. But with more creators using the platform for social media event promotion, you need to make your events stand out from the rest.

When creating your Facebook Event, be sure to:

  • Choose a cover photo that looks good on any size screen
  • Be specific about location, time, and category so Facebook can help promote your event
  • Craft a compelling event description
  • Put your ticketing link front and centre

If you use Eventbrite, you can sell tickets directly on Facebook. In fact, events that sell tickets directly on Facebook drive two times the free registrations and 20% more purchased ticket sales on average than events that redirect to a ticketing page. Use Eventbrite Boost’s Add to Facebook feature to see those benefits ASAP. Using the app’s integration capabilities means your events will instantly sync to all relevant information. It’s a super convenient way to market events across your entire social media network.

Step 5: Craft your content carefully

Engagement with your posts determines how many potential event-goers see your promotions, so you need to make every post count.

For maximum engagement, you’ll want to include images and space out your ticket sale posts with more general industry news or lifestyle info. When promoting your event on social media, make the content engaging, conversational, and not overly “salesy.” Also:

  • Tailor content for each social network: You want to keep in mind the different styles and audiences on each platform. On Twitter, it’s short, sweet, and sometimes quirky, whereas, on LinkedIn, you should steer toward a more professional tone. The demographics of each social media channel are also something to take into account. If you’re aware of who enjoys your content on certain channels, focus your marketing efforts on giving them more of what they want.
  • Incorporate images into your posts: Image and video-driven posts are more engaging than plain copy. If you’ve had past events, include photos of happy attendees having a great time. Or, if you have well-known speakers, partners, or vendors for your upcoming event, you can share these photos to build excitement. You can even create silly memes or add animated gifs for some lighthearted fun.

Step 6: Invest in tools to streamline promoting your event on social media

If you’re not careful, developing and scaling a strong social media strategy can be a drain on your resources. Consider using an all-in-one tool like Eventbrite Boost to make life a little easier.

In particular, if you’re worried about ROI, a tool like Eventbrite Boost has some great features designed to assist any busy event planner. Event planning tools can help you:

  • Plan and schedule more efficiently: You can’t be online 24 hours a day, so use tools that help you plan, organise, and schedule your posts.
  • Create and curate diverse content: Content curation platforms help you find interesting content. Bookmark a blog post or a video that relates to your topic.

At the end of the day, event planning tools like Boost will save you time and energy, cutting down on stress.

Step 7: Run a social media contest

Wish your followers shared your posts more? Make it happen with social media contests. Social media is vital for event promotion, but you can’t just rely on your own accounts to spread the word – you have to get event-goers to share it as well. When you’re looking for new ideas for how to promote your event on social media, contests motivate word-of-mouth promotion without a huge investment.

But not every social media contest is as successful as it could be – and if you don’t follow legal requirements, contests could even land you in legal trouble. Make sure to consult with a solicitor and post contest rules that reflect your local and state legal requirements. You don’t want to risk your event brand during a promotion. When it comes to the ways social media contests can bump up engagement, the possibilities are endless.

Step 8: Get attendees sharing to increase engagement

Social media engagement simply refers to the rate of interaction between your audience and your content. One of the most tried-and-true ways to enhance engagement is to improve your storytelling vehicle. Your audience is likelier to pay attention to your content if it offers a compelling narrative that grabs them.

  • Keep it short and simple: Studies show shorter posts generally have higher engagement. On Facebook and Instagram, keep things short enough, so readers don’t have to expand your post to read the whole thing.
  • Avoid overused words: Overusing adjectives like “awesome” and “great” actually makes your writing sound boring. Be specific and colourful with your words.
  • Proofread: Comb your social post for typos before you post it, or run it through an online grammar checker like Grammarly. It’s always good practice to get a colleague to lend a second set of eyes before you publish as well.
  • Have a clear CTA: Make sure it’s easy for people to take whatever action you’re asking them to take in each post. For example, if you’re promoting the end of early bird ticket sales, link directly to your ticketing page, not to a FAQ page.

Step 9: Work with influencers

Influencers can bring your events more buzz; having a known personality gives your event exposure to their audience. Building relationships with key people in your industry who can talk up your event can help influence interested attendees to register. Influencers can be found on each of your social media channels, so it is easy to come across many of them that reach out to the same target audience as you do.

But influencer marketing can be an intimidating and uncertain path for many, so it can be challenging to develop a sound strategy. Make sure your strategy involves researching to find the right influencers so you and your events benefit greatly from collaboration.

Step 10: Launch paid social media ads

According to Adweek, an average of only about 2-6% of your Facebook followers will see posts you make on your event page.

“If you want to get your content in front of the right people, it’s a pay-to-play environment,” says Ali Shakeri of Eventbrite Boost. That means supplementing organic posts with paid social ads.

To craft an engaging social media advertisement, be sure to include:

  • An eye-catching image or video
  • Short and sweet post text
  • An even shorter headline – that’s still engaging
  • A direct call to action (i.e., “Buy Tickets”)
  • An accurate link description (i.e., “Click here to buy tickets”)

Step 11: Use each channel’s features to their fullest when promoting your event on social media

Snapchat is a pioneer in social media when it comes to expressing yourself creatively. As more than 360 million people use Snapchat every day, organisers can still use it for event social media posts. The easiest way to use Snapchat for events? Make a Snapchat geofilter for your attendees. Get step-by-step directions on how to make a Snapchat geofilter in this post. By investing only an hour of time and less than £100 of budget, you can engage attendees and spread the word to new ticket-buyers.

TikTok and Instagram also have tools that allow you to customise your content and enable other users to share your message organically. Stickers and filters can be created in these popular social media channels; since they’re fun and interactive elements, users happily apply them to their own content and spread the word in a less salesy way. With these professional-looking features, you can personalise your posts and create entertaining plugs for upcoming events at the same time.

Step 12: Use live video on event day

You don’t have to livestream your entire event to make a splash with live video. Instead, use short, live clips from your event – like behind-the-scenes peeks or interviews with performers – to engage viewers. There are plenty of options for livestreaming where you can grow your audience fairly quickly.

This light effort can pay off seriously down the road. Here are a few reasons why, from Amber van Moessner of Livestream:

  • Live video is extremely engaging: According to Facebook Live, users spend more than 3x more time and comment 10x more when the video is live.
  • Live video grows attendance: 30% of people who watch a livestream of an event will attend the same event the following year.
  • Live video is cost-effective: It’s a common misconception that live video is costly. Thanks to tools like Facebook Live, anyone can leverage the technology and see a positive return on investment.

In addition to Facebook Live, Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube are also viable livestreaming platforms where you can find many viewers. To ensure your streams work well to find an audience, be sure they are longer than 10 minutes, so you’re live long enough to attract as many users as possible.

Not sure where to host your livestream? Here’s how you can stream with Facebook Live or YouTube.

Step 13: Measure your social media activity

As you get better at posting your events on social media, you’ll want to get a sense of what’s working and resonating with your followers. That way, you can tweak your strategy accordingly, and hopefully, drive more ticket and registration sales. To learn more about how to promote your event on social media, check out The Essential Guide: Social Media for Events.

Now more than ever before, you have the tools at your disposal to create engaging social media marketing for event promotion. Learn more about how you can sell tickets with Eventbrite.

Start Increasing Social Media Engagement Today

Now that you’re armed with these thirteen simple steps, you’re all set to promote your event on social media. And remember, if you’re still feeling lost, you can always turn to Eventbrite Boost. Boost’s tools can help you gauge success and growth across social media channels. Whether you’re connecting people in-person or online, for poetry readings or dance lessons, cook-alongs or concerts, Boost can help. This platform makes it a breeze to reach new people, engage your fans and followers, and grow your event attendance – directly from your Eventbrite account. Plus, events promoted using Boost marketing tools get nearly 2.5x more listing views.