How To Promote An Event Using Social Media

On today's episode we talk about how to promote an event using social media. We cover the following tactics: 

• Create a custom hashtag to create a sense of community
• Get in front of your audience with cross promotion from other speakers or influencers in your area. This could be done as a blog, podcast or video.
• Create Testimonial videos and/or highlight reel of previous years. Go live often to answer any questions, talk about the speakers, what makes the event unique.
• Use Facebook ads as a re-marketing tool.

Aaron: [00:00:16] Howdy,y'all. Welcome to another episode of The Marketing Natives. Hope you areenjoying your either A, car ride, B, run on your treadmill, C, run outside, orD, any other option that you may be listening to this podcast. This is apodcast all for local businesses, and we try to talk about specific topics.Today is a little bit different in the sense that we're not talkingspecifically about a business. We're just talking about how to promote an eventusing social media. We're going to talk about custom hashtags, how to cross-promotewith other businesses in your area, testimonials, and obviously, advertisingand remarketing. Should be pretty good.

Christian: [00:01:03] Yeah.All right. So I think the number one thing here is, like Aaron said, creating acustom hashtag for your event to create a sense of community, and also- I mean,this is actually part of that community part, but it's just so much easier. Wewent to Social Meeting Marketing World- Was it this year?

Aaron: [00:01:24] Yes.

Christian: [00:01:25] Itfeels like it was last year for some reason, but it's cool to, for example, goon Twitter, go to the actual hashtag, and look at real-time posts of peopleeither doing videos or quotes or images, and yeah, you just get that sense ofcommunity. And also it's a great way for- If you promote that custom hashtagenough, it's a great way for other people who didn't attend the event to kindof get a sneak peek of what's going on during the event which is a great, greatthing to do.

Aaron: [00:02:00] Yeah.I think not only with the hashtag on, like you said, Twitter, I followed it. Itwas for Instagram, and people are still using the hashtag. So if you get it towhere maybe you have an event like this or a similar event each year, peoplecould be creating hashtags- Like I think I saw a post yesterday or the daybefore for Social Media Marketing World - since we're talking about it - for2018, and there are still people posting about it today. Like people took somany pictures and content, which we still haven't posted all of ours yeteither, and they're still posting about it which is still a top trending spot.And it's also- You know, people aren't using the hashtag unless they know aboutit or kind of went to that conference which is pretty cool.

Christian: [00:02:42] Yeah.And also the Social Media Breakfast or Social Media Dallas.

Aaron: [00:02:47] Yes.Social Media Dallas.

Christian: [00:02:48] Theyhave a few hashtags that they use, and from time to time it pops up on myTwitter feed, and I usually click on them. Yeah, you can kind of see when theyhave the events because that's when you get like a good chunk of tweets andpictures and videos and quotes from those events. So yeah. Even for an eventthat's a recurring event just like Social Media Breakfast, Social Media DallasBreakfast. I don't know how it was worded, but it's something like that. Imean, it's good. It's good to have something generic fora recurring event, butif you have something like Social Media Examiner or Social Media MarketingWorld, I think they do a different- Yeah, they do a different hashtag for eachyear.

Aaron: [00:03:30] Right.2018. 2019.

Christian: [00:03:32] Yeah,yeah, yeah. Just to keep that, I guess, the content separate.

Aaron: [00:03:37] Verycool. All right. So the next thing is to get in front of your audience withcross-promotion. So a great way to do that would be hey, if you've got an eventthat's coming up, come join us on our podcast. If you are going to be in frontof- If we're talking to the right audience. The next thing is to make sure thatyou're either on a blog or a video, any of those things to be in front of yourpotential cross-promoting audiences because you don't know who could belistening to them or watching them and not doing the same for you.

Christian: [00:04:08] Yeah.And I think this is probably one of the best ways to increase, I guess, yourpotential reach and audience by being on the different blog posts or podcastsor videos and, like Aaron said, using your speakers as a way for us to promote,obviously, your event. If you have speakers. We're assuming I guess that theevent's going to have speakers.

Aaron: [00:04:37] Orsome kind of speaking component. I mean, somebody's going to have to talk atthis event.

Christian: [00:04:41] Yeah.So I guess this is a tip for if you're doing an event and you're promoting onsocial media is to have at least one speaker in there so that you can expandyour reach for your event.

Aaron: [00:04:56] Verycool.

Christian: [00:05:04] Ooh.Bah-bow. All right. So today we're going to talk about our company. If you'vebeen listening to this episode- Or our podcast.

Aaron: [00:05:13] Ibetcha they've been listening to this episode.

Christian: [00:05:16] Ifyou've been listening to our podcast, we usually take a little bit of time totalk about BitBranding which is the company that Aaron and I run here in Allen,Texas. Something that we've been, I guess, trying to get done for quite sometime ever since our ribbon cutting actually, it's an event to gather social -not social media - to gather business owners and talk about social mediamarketing, talk about business, talk about what, you know, what they're doingfor their marketing efforts in order to get just a better sense ofunderstanding, I guess, on what other business owners are doing. I believe thename was Social Media Marketing Forum, and it was a way for us to do kind oflike a huge Q&A and get any questions you guys might have answered. We weregoing to do this back, I like said, back in a ribbon cutting, but we have plansto do it hopefully August 1st. We're still obviously trying to get some detailsfor this event. It will most likely be here at the Yeager Offices in Allen,Texas, and we've also discussed about charging just a little bit of money.Literally, it's just a few dollars so that we can get a better sense of howmany people are coming because we do have limited seating. So hopefully here inthe next few weeks you will be hearing more about this, and we'll have, Iguess, a landing page so you can get your tickets and all that stuff andactually more detailed information. But if you're interested in this, you candefinitely send us a message on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Just send us ane-mail. Hello@bitbranding.co, and let us know if you're interested or actuallyif you want to do speaking. We can give you a little spotlight speaking ifyou're interested in doing something like that too.

Aaron: [00:07:19] Yeah.If you specialize in like messenger bots, we really want you to talk.

Christian: [00:07:22] Yeah.That would be pretty cool.

Aaron: [00:07:24] Allright. All right. We are back, and I feel like we should say to your regularlyscheduled episode. That just kind of seems natural. I don't know.

Christian: [00:07:38] Yeah.

Aaron: [00:07:39] Allright. So if you have an event, nobody likes to go to a bad one, and no onelikes to waste their time. And really, that's why reviews are so important isbecause other people are telling you this food is good or this place was reallycool, and the same thing goes for your event. If you can create testimonialvideos or highlight maybe a previous year or even if you have done this for thefirst time ever but you know who's going to be talking, like say for Christianand I. We're doing our event like August 1st, but people know that hey,whenever we've been to an event with Aaron and Christian or if they've evertalked about something, I know it's really good. Having those people do atestimonial video and running that out there to answer any questions or to justkind of like free people's mind up to say that this is going to be a reallygood event, that's going to get you a lot more people in the door becausethey're like, eh, I've seen a ton of social media marketing, you know, meetingsor conferences or whatever. I've been to 100 of them. I get nothing out of it.But if somebody else is telling you that it is good versus us telling you it'sgood, then you know it's going to be good.

Christian: [00:08:45] Yeah.Yeah, exactly. And I think- I don't know if you- I don't think you talked aboutthis, but going live. You know, I think this whole point that we're talkingabout here is using videos, using the testimonials, using the highlight reel ifyou have it, but also going live and going live often leading up to the event.One, to answer questions. Two, to talk about the potential speakers, what makesthe event unique, which are still kind of things that we need to figure out,but obviously, I mean, ours is not a huge event. It's a very limited seating,but it's still going to be something pretty unique that we haven't seen donearound here. So we're pretty excited for that, but yeah. Point number three isuse video, use live video as well.

Aaron: [00:09:32] Andone tip for the live, I would go live- Start going live about two weeks beforethe event because if you do it- Or maybe a little bit farther. Maybe two orthree weeks, but if you just try to go live four days before the event, it'snot really going to do any good.

Christian: [00:09:45] Yeah.

Aaron: [00:09:46] Allright. And our last one here is to use Facebook ads to remarket. There is atool, it's called a Facebook Pixel Helper. If you have a Google Chrome browser,just install it, go to your website, and if you don't see that thing light up,please just message us. So many businesses- I feel like one, it's a crazystatistic. Half of all businesses don't have a website, which is- Just call us.That doesn't matter. But I would say maybe five or 10 percent of businesses, evenmarketing companies, do not have the Facebook Pixel installed. What it is, inmost layman's terms possible, it allows you to market back to people who visityour site so that you can really convert somebody. Nobody's going to- Well, Isay- Very few people are going to convert the first time they see a product.They're like yeah, that's exactly what I want. I want to buy. Most people don'tbuy that way. So if you can remarket to them, it's a lot cheaper, and you'regoing to get a lot more people to actually sign up without having to spend moremoney to reach newer people. So please get that set up. There's also otherremarketing tools, but just Facebook's probably the most basic and most widelyused. So just setting up that to remarket.

Christian: [00:10:57] Yeah.I think that's probably one of the best things that you could do to promoteyour event using social media.

Aaron: [00:11:03] Yes.All right. Thank you guys for listening to this episode. If this is your firsttime, we really want to hear some feedback from you. Just leave us a review oniTunes or you can shoot us a message. Doesn't matter. We just want to know howyou like the podcast and really how we can get better at it that way we cancontinue to create great content that you guys are consuming. One way to nevermiss one of our episodes though is to make sure you hit the subscribe button sothat every time we come out with a new episode, which is every Monday, you willbe notified that we just released a new podcast. Every week is different.Sometimes we'll focus on plumbers. Sometimes we'll talk about roofers, buteverything is applicable to your business. It's all about growth for localbusinesses. That's just our huge focus, and if you have a friend who's about tostart a Facebook or social media event rather- Or starting an event to usesocial media-

Christian: [00:12:00] Topromote it with social media.

Aaron: [00:12:02] Yeah,to promote it on social media, make sure you share this episode. If you have aniPhone, it's super easy. In the right hand corner, click those three dots, theshare button, and then just send it to them via text message or Facebook.Doesn't matter. Just share it with them. All right. That's it.

Christian: [00:12:17] Yeah.Bye. See you.

Aaron: [00:12:18] Isthat it for this episode? All right. We'll talk to you later. Bye.