会展活动社媒推广：每个渠道应有明确分工（Meetings Today）

By Phil Treagus-Evans

Pre-event social media promotion almost always follows the same pattern: Post the same graphic across all channels, then panic one week out when you haven’t drummed up enough registrations. That’s usually when my team gets a phone call from the organizer about using paid advertising to get to the registration goal. 

But if the host group gave more thought to how to use different social media platforms in specific ways to maximize visibility and interest among their potential audience, the problem might never have happened.

Here’s a strategic blueprint for how to use each social media channel for a specific task, with the sum of those individual efforts being a more informed audience and greater event attendance.

Collect the Questions First

Before planning any social posts, go through the questions potential attendees actually ask. Your registration emails, last year’s feedback forms, the venue’s front desk and whoever deals with event sponsors will have this data. You’ll probably find the same 15 or 20 questions turning up every year—answering those is a much better use of your posting schedule than inventing reasons to post.

Decide What Each Channel Is For

Understand where each segment of your audience shows up on social media; then, give every channel one purpose and stick to it. Your audience reaction may change the specifics, but as a rough guide:

•    LinkedIn is the home for professional events. Here, people decide whether the event is worth their time. Talk about the speakers, the sessions and who else is attending. LinkedIn also gives attendees something to present to their boss to get permission to attend.

•    Instagram is the vibe check: What the day will feel like—the venue, the food, how dressed up everyone gets, or not. It helps those guests who are unsure whether if the event is right for them.

•    Short video for email-list distribution and for various social channels is best used to address an event’s practical bits. Have a member of the team answer those common questions from earlier. Also, do a walkthrough of the event space, or how to get from the car park to the venue, or some other on-the-scene segment.

Determine Each Channel’s Effect

When measuring the success of your social media marketing, don’t focus on vanity metrics like reach and clicks. Being seen is easy; you want to be helpful. 

Replies, saves, and direct messages get closer to determining that. So does your inbox: If questions about nearby parking facilities stop coming in after you’ve posted about parking, that post worked.

Other Benefits

When social media posts are more focused, attendees show up onsite knowing where they’re going and what to expect, and the planning team spends the final week on the event details instead of scrambling to find the right avenue to drive registrations. Sponsors also benefit, since the people who turn up to the event are prepped because they were already paying attention.

Phil Treagus-Evans is CEO and co-founder of Giraffe Social, a U.K.-based agency offering social media marketing services. He is also the author of Human-First Marketing: The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered.