Using Social Media to Promote Your Event

What works from the student point of view

By: McKinley Burnett

Promoting prior to an event — is just as important as the actual event.

Hi everyone, my name is McKinley Burnett. I’m a junior majoring in Business Marketing, a member of the NAU Social team and current Social Media Manager for my hometown team, the Alaska Goldpanners.

Here are some dos and don’ts of how to use social media to gain awareness.

Planning Stage: Be strategic

Know Your Target Audience

Understanding who your target audience is ensures you create content that is relevant and compelling to them.

Before promoting your event, review audience insights to get a better idea of who is on and where.

Factors to consider:

• Age
• Gender
• Job
• Hobbies
• Education level
• Location

Know When to Post

You can use Instagram’s algorithm to your benefit, but only if you know how to. The days and times you post matter and can significantly improve engagement.

Now that you’ve gone over your audience — select the platforms to use.

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok? Knowing which platforms you want to use to promote your event will help determine the type of content to create and push out.

Let’s go over the strategy for each one!

📸 INSTAGRAM- where students are

Instagram is very versatile.

First tip, don’t post a flyer.

Graphics are okay but modify them to fit your feed and be in the dimensions of an Instagram post. Tip — Canva is a good app for this.

Second tip- Make use of Instagram’s features

If you’re not creating an event reminder — you’re missing out. Instagram makes it easy to share your event with others — both on the feed and through stories.

Feed guide:

After you’ve added a reminder to a post, you can create additional posts with reminders for the same event. Select Add Reminder and choose one of your existing events from the list

3. Post posting: continued reminders

Once you have an event scheduled, head to the Instagram Stories editor and create a story.

Tap the smiley-face icon to open the sticker tray and select the “Scheduled” sticker.

Your audience can choose to get reminders and refer back to the event posting too.

Your work isn’t over just yet! Create additional stories to generate excitement for your event. Once you have a story, don’t forget to create an Instagram highlight that will live on your profile.

Lumberjack Tip — Share your social media post or Instagram highlight in your newsletters and other communication pieces.

Lastly — I highly recommend creating additional content to market your event.

Your goal is to remind your followers — but not annoy them. No one wants to see the same flyer posted 20 times.

BONUS

Plan your content well in advance and create large batches of content. You can build out your calendar with ideas such as:

• A countdown to the start of your event
• A teaser trailer of what people can expect to see and do
• Video snippets or photos of last year’s event
• User-generated content from last year’s event.
• Behind-the-scenes videos of the event set up
• Interesting facts about the event or speakers
• Previewing or “teasing” speakers using quotes, interview snippets, or facts
• Interactive content, such as Polls or Questions on Instagram Stories

What This Can Look Like

To promote for our upcoming summer games, I did our typical “photo dump” post and added information in the caption to update or inform fans of events taking place.

Alaska Goldpanners Instagram

Although we have our schedule pinned to our profile, I still want to remind fans that games are taking place. On top of this feed post, I will find other pictures to use on Instagram story to remind our followers each day, of the game that will take place.

🗞 FACEBOOK — the OG

Yes, Facebook still matters.

• Facebook has 2.989 billion monthly active users and ranks 1st as the world’s most ‘active’ social media platform.
• The global advertising audience of Facebook is 2.249 billion.
• 90% of social media marketers use Facebook to promote their business.
• Facebook generated USD 113 billion in ad revenues in 2022.

Given this, what should you do?

1. Create a Facebook Event

Creating a Facebook event is a great way to get people excited, interested and generate buzz online.

2. Optimize Your Event Page

It is not just enough to create a Facebook event page. Optimize the page and leverage the power of Facebook.

• Choose the correct event category
• Invite co-hosts
• Post or schedule content on the event page
• Enable event discussion and engage with attendees

3. Generate a Buzz about the Event in your Facebook Circle

Engage your circle by sharing details about the event and amplifying the event’s reach through word-of-mouth promotion within your network.

• Post event updates and countdowns
• Using Facebook Live for event teasers or coverage
• Respond to comments and tag friends who might be interested.
• Utilize Facebook groups and share relevant information for mindful promotion.

Tip: Remember Facebook has a different demographic than Instagram. I like to keep my Facebook posts more formal and informative and tweak the captions or change some photos to account for the generational difference.

Depending on your event, feel free to post far in advance on Facebook. Just remember to remind your Facebook friends when the event is getting close, by making another post or finding ways to mention it newer posts.

TIK TOK

Tik Tok may not be the best place to promote events unless you can adapt trends to apply to your event. Here are some examples:

I adapted this trend to fit the baseball team’s Tik Tok and promote our Midnight Sun Game.

I posted this about a week before the event as Tik Toks still gains attraction show up in the algorithm for a week and up to a month.

I would not recommend promoting the day of.

At NAU there was an app students needed to download in order to participate in the light show at our football game.

We used this trend and the caption to spread awareness in a way that would also be entertaining for Tik Tok!

TWITTER

Twitter is something I personally am still figuring out — everyone has their weakest platform!

In general, you want to get your point across in a short, simple, yet witty way. Find what works for you!

The hashtag and tagging of DowntownFlag are two great strategies on Twitter to gain benefit from Twitter’s algorithm. Everything is to the point and in a quick glance you get all the information to need.

Because Twitter has so many posts a day — we definitely recommend sharing more than once. For NAU Campus Happenings we usually do a one week or two week initial promotional tweet and then another the day of.

Closing Thoughts

The biggest thing I think about when curating my plan for event promotion is how I personally use social media.

• How far in advance would an event post resonate with me?
• What type of post would I stop and read?
• Would that many reposts annoy me?

This is a great way to help you take a step back and process the content you are putting out. Learn from past events and listen to feedback at the event as well as engagement on posts!