According to Simply Measured, Instagram has about 600 million users in 2017, 100 million of which was added toward the end of 2016. No wonder, brands have been flocking the network in droves. Recent survey also shows that over 16 million Nigerians log on to Facebook every month and about 7.2 million log on everyday most of which are done via a mobile device.

Meanwhile, many event planners own social media accounts ranging from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, linked in, Snapchat and so on. But seems they are ignorant of how powerful these can be for an event planner. It is not enough to have these social media platform just for posting pictures and video without creating and stimulating a community that will consistently follow you and then become your next customer. Take it or leave it, the reality is that social media is becoming a very integral part of not only our social life our everyday life, including marketing a brand.

The question is how are the big event planners and managers using the social media to influence their brand?

Understanding their peculiarities

The success or the profitability of one social media platform to the other depends on understanding their peculiarity that is, how they work. Even though most of the platforms work on the same principle of social networking but they possess distinctive features and characteristics that define functionality as well as their users. For instance, Twitter offers the opportunity of users to type or define their thoughts with just 140 letter characters while Facebook offers much more room for such. Secondly, from my experience, most opinion leaders or influencers would rather remain on Twitter than on any other platforms. This means that, if they are your target then Twitter is the platform to direct your strength than any other platform.
When events planners understand these features vividly, it’s easy to design specific messages for specific audience using the strategic features offered by the social media platforms.

Develop a social media strategy.

Forget this big grammar of social media strategy, it simply means develop your own style and manner of sending messages and communicating your brand. What do you wish to be known for? This includes your logo, colour, style of communication etc; It simply gives you an identity and make your messages on the different platforms coherent and consistent. At this point, you decide the kind of pictures you will always use, the kind of videos that will communicate your intentions and so on. It’s very dangerous to send out messages that are not consistent, because your audience are very sensitive and may regard you as a fraud and consequently you may never get their attention.

Your message and your audience.

At the very heart of tapping into the many riches of the social media is, understanding that, tailor made messages for your audiences are a key to attracting followership. As was stated earlier, the interactive features provided by the various social networking platforms determine to a large extent the segment of audiences it attracts. This will help you to craft special messages that will strike a note with your audiences and create a rewarding engagement.
Before now, you should have discovered that specific social media platform that play host to most of your audiences and which offers you the needed features for your business because it will determine the number of people who will see your messages. This is where you will put most of your effort. This does not mean that you will not pay attention to other platforms for promoting your events; it simply means that you are using your time and other resources wisely on the ones that will impact maximally on your events..
It is very important to note here that the messages you send out must be relevant to your audience. If it does not interest them forget about getting their attention talk more of their action. The message must be about them and not about you. Note that every human is emotionally attracted to their interest one way or the other. Ensure you Design messages that will in a way respond to their emotions while you are still alongside sending a message about your events.

Pre and Post events with social media

Event managers that are serious and know their acts well will always plan ahead by looking at their events in two aspects, the pre events and the post events. No matter how small or big such event is, it should be categorized into this two aspect as far as social media is concerned. This is because; it will not only help to break down social media activities into workable levels, it will help to suggest and initiate relevant activities and help to start early engagement with your audiences before the events too. At this point also, depending on the kind of events you are promoting, you would wish your audience to be involved in the pre events activities? You can even decide to initiate an audience engagement as a build up to the real event. This pre-event on social media is to stimulate your audience (who will also be your guest at the event). You can create a reward session before the events and so on. For instance answer these questions and get a free ticket to the event.
Post-event engagement with your audience on the social media is as important as the event itself. This is where you get feedback, discover, the areas of your strength and weaknesses. Let them throw the mud at you, it’s alright, it will make you stronger and be a better event planner, at least you will learn better ways of doing the things you do. This opens a credible communication window between you and your audience keeping you abreast of their pulse and giving them a sense of belonging to a community making it easy to you to build opinions relevant to your events.

Measure your effort on social media:

It will amount to a major loss of time and effort if you do not measure your efforts on social media. All your postings and message will go down the drain if you are not making impact. Almost all social networking platforms discovered this very important factor that is why they designed inherently into their platforms, a means of measuring the impact of your campaigns. Although there are third party software or platforms such as Social bakers, Hoot Suite and many more that can help to analyze impacts professionally with desired result, I will advise that, for a start, use the one provided on the platform. For instance on the Facebook, the Insight panel opens up some analytical tools very useful to measures for instance the numbers of people who engaged in the last post showing the percentage of males and females, the time of engagement and so on. This gives you an idea on how your audiences are interacting with you, which of your post (pictures or videos) excited them the more

Written by
Mfon Barry

Mfon Barry is a PR professional, a content manager and a social media Strategist with Doxa Digital.

Contact: realmfon@doxadigital.org