Covering Events with Your Social Media

Sassy Social media

Covering Events with Your Social Media

“Your audience supports you and your business, so you want to make sure they feel included in the event whether they are attending or not.”

By Sarah Ankney

Events are important to growing and scaling your business. They are also a great marketing tool for you and your business. The social media strategy you create must be solid. It must help your audience see your value and trust you more. If social media is already part of your marketing strategy, why not use it to your advantage when hosting an event whether in-person or online? If you are unsure how to do this, here are some great tips.

Creating a Strong Social Media Strategy

The first thing you need to do is create a promotional and announcement timeline. If you are in the Success Champions Facebook Group, then you have firsthand seen the promotional and announcement material provided for the Badass Business Summit. This produces the hype and the public knowledge that is needed to have attendees at the event. The second thing for a strong social media strategy is to know what social media channels you are going to use. There are a lot to choose from so choose where your audience is hanging out, and of course, where you hang out the most. Lastly, use your social media channels to show love to your audience. Your audience supports you and your business, so you want to make sure they feel included in the event whether they are attending or not. You want to highlight the speakers and advocates of your event as well as the sponsors. They are an important part of your event and should be acknowledged.

Be Prepared for the Event

You want to capture the critical moments of the event, so you must know the schedule and be able to plan what types of posts you are going to use for those moments whether it is video or pictures. You want to highlight the great moments to share with your audience which again makes them feel included in the event. A great way to be prepared is to have a timeline of the events at the event

and delegate others to cover these. You can’t be everywhere at once. Have your cellphones ready as it is too hard to carry laptops everywhere. You want to be there for the moments that are great to capture. This includes the online events. You can capture via phone or screenshots to share with your audience. Make sure that you as well as all those helping you are logged into all your social media accounts for easy posting. Have a station with a laptop where you can also use a scheduler to put some time between postings instead of posting all at once.

Online events are just as essential to be prepared for. Have someone there to help you capture important moments just as you would for an inperson event. You can use your laptop to capture screenshots as well as highlights of your speakers. Don’t forget to post backstage and behind the scenes photos.

Invest in a Portable Charger

What would suck during any event is not to have full coverage of it. Imagine half-way through having social media updates for your charger to go down or have lapses in coverage. This would not be good for you or your audience. Remember people only have so much attention and will likely forget the event is going on if you have a lapse. SO, BE PREPARED WITH A PORTABLE CHARGER. This would be essential for cell phones. I would say maybe have multiple if you have an all-day event.

Create Hashtags for the Event

Have hashtags that are specific to your event. This will allow visitors, speakers, and your audience to use those hashtags when sharing information

Edit Your Photos Before Posting to Social Media

An important aspect of sharing to social media is to have permission for your attendees as well as those presenters. This helps cover you legally and lets you know when to edit out someone of a photo. A great way to edit the photo is to use applications on your phone so that you can tweak photos not only for permission but to make a positive difference.

Share Moments of the Event Live

Whether in-person or online, take a few moments during the event to post a video live. This includes your audience and makes them want to attend the next event you have. It is exciting for all those involved including those not in attendance. This will give your audience updates and highlights. A good coverage of any event is to focus on the live action shots.

about the event. One way to ensure those hashtags are being used is to create signs at the event. Don’t forget to mention them during speeches as well as when you post to your own social media. Create a photo booth for in-person events with the hashtag so attendees of the events can take photos and post to their social media. You want word of your event to spread. This is also just a

“One way to ensure those hashtags are being used is to create signs at the event.”

“It is important to engage on social media posts whether they are your own or other people’s. You want to like, comment, and share your event audiences’ posts.”

fun add-on to an event.

Engage on Social Media Posts

It is important to engage on social media posts whether they are your own or other people’s. This is where the hashtag will come into play a lot so you can find other people’s posts easily. Remember your posts will be shared as well. You want to like, comment, and share your audiences’ posts. This is where some of the delegated helpers will come in handy. Remember, you are only one person! Your engagement will show that you appreciate all the social media love you are getting.

Make Plans for How You are Going to Deal with Negative Feedback

No one likes negative comments or trolls, but it happens when you have events. How are you going to deal with them? Here are a few tips:

• Acknowledge and thank the person who brought the issues to your attention. • Make sure you have a support team on call if the issue needs to be handled inperson. • Take time to address each complaint. • Ignore the trolls. Focus on those who are following you.

Creating a solid social media strategy before the event helps to remove any issues that may occur. It is important to have a supportive and reactive team behind you so that you can present your event in the best way possible. A great social media strategy will have people reposting and encouraged to come to future events you may hold. Sarah Ankney of Sassy Pinterest is a Pinterest Account Manager. She wants to empower your business with a bit of magic to help you get visible. Sassy Pinterest creates graphics and descriptions as well as manages your Pinterest account so that you can do all the things you need to do and drive traffic to your business. If you need assistance in your business to get traffic to all your sites, please contact Sarah Ankney to add another powerful marketing tool. Sassy@ sarahankney.com.