Hosting events at your hotel can be an excellent way to attract potential guests and boost engagement with your current followers. No matter the event, Blue Magnet has a sure-fire plan to ensure maximum visibility and engagement.
Setting a Goal for Your Event Promotion
It is important to have a goal in mind so you can measure the impact that your digital marketing efforts had on your event. Setting a goal will also help you choose what strategy to implement when promoting your event on social media. Think about what you would like to accomplish. Do you want to promote your on-site restaurant? Would you like to create awareness surrounding a specific event you will be hosting at your hotel? Recently, we worked with a hotel whose goal was to help promote their on-site restaurant by hosting a Whiskey Brunch; with the help of Blue Magnet’s efforts, they surpassed their attendance goal of 30 guests.
How to Implement Your Social Media Event Promotion Strategy
Once you have decided on a goal for your event, it is time to put your social media strategy together. Follow these steps to ensure maximum visibility before, during, and after the festivities.
Before the Event
The first thing you should do is create a Facebook Event so that people can RSVP, check-in, and have information to reference if they need directions or further instruction. A Facebook Event will also help increase exposure and allow interested users to share the event with their friends and family, furthering your reach. Next, you should create a series of posts leading up to your event to grow excitement. For our client’s Whiskey Brunch, we created posts on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks to users sharing our content, our posts were seen by an even wider audience. Several followers commented how excited they were about the event.
Our team made sure to tag a participating vendor in the post. Whenever you have partners at your event, always give them a shout out. Now only will your partners appreciate the exposure, tagging them also connects you to their network of followers.
As you are generating buzz for your event, pay attention to tags or mentions your hotel/ restaurant receives from attendees, vendors, or partners on social media. Event promotion is like a snowball. Once you get the ball rolling, continue to grow the excitement by sharing content posted by others, responding to comments, and tagging relevant participants often to create maximum visibility.
During the Event
Encourage your guests to post about the event as it is taking place. One way to do this is to have signage throughout the space with your social media handles and hashtags, if applicable. As guests begin to post about the event, interact with them! For example, respond with “Thank you for coming!” or “Glad you could make it! Stay tuned for our next event!” Take advantage of UGC and share their posts on your own feeds.
There are many other features that allow you to promote your event on social media. Boost your visibility by utilizing Facebook Live and Instagram Stories. This allows attendees and the rest of your followers to have a live, inside look.
Set up photo booths to encourage attendees to take selfies and share their experience with others on social. Affordable selfie props can easily be found on Amazon and add to the fun.
Finally, you can create a hashtag for guests to use in their posts. Try to come up with something unique so that your hashtag will be set apart from others on social, making it easier for you to track user-generated content.
After the Event
Follow up is important as it reminds your guests about the event they just attended as well as shows other guests that may not have come what they missed out on. Once your event has ended, do recap posts and search for user-generated content that you can share with your audience.
The hotel received a lot of positive feedback after the event had ended and we were able to use this feedback as content for their Facebook Page. They even received a shout out from CultureMap Dallas, who has a following of over 60k on Facebook and 29k on Instagram.
How to Effectively Promote Your Event with Social Media
When promoting an event on social media, it is important to:
- Set a goal.
- Create a Facebook Event.
- Create posts before, during, and after the event.
- Always tag any partners or vendors that are participating in your event.
- Pay attention to your audience on social media and engage with their posts by sharing content and responding to comments.
If you have an upcoming event, reach out to Blue Magnet to effectively promote it on social media. Our experienced team of social media marketers is ready to ensure your success and to answer any questions!
