Planning the Austin Chicken Wing Festival: Q&A with Event Organizer Jesse Island

Jesse Island, organizer of the Austin Chicken Wing Festival

In May, people flocked to south Austin to eat endless wings and cast their vote for the best wings in the city at the Austin Chicken Wing Festival. So, we caught up with the organizer of the event, Jesse Island, to learn about his experience planning a festival with Ticketbud.

The following Q&A with Jesse highlights an event manager's experience coordinating a food festival. In it, he shares, from an organizer’s perspective, what it’s like to manage ticket sales and promotions for large festivals and events.

What inspired the creation of the Austin Chicken Wing Festival, and what are the primary goals of the event?

The Austin Chicken Wing Festival was inspired by Wing Fest, which took place in Austin in 2017 and 2018. However, the event dissolved since organizers didn’t have the team they needed for promotion and implementation. So, I met with one of the organizers to see what it would take to make a wing tasting festival of my own. He told me everything they did right and everything they did wrong. So, for everything they did wrong, I hired someone in that area.

How do you select and manage the vendors and partners participating in the festival?

To recruit vendors, I asked everyone on my team to share their top 10 favorite wing places and also added spots published on lists and articles online. Then, we took to guerilla marketing. We showed up to 150 different places in matching gold t-shirts to try the wings and share more about the festival. From there, some restaurants really latched on.

austin chicken wing festival planning team in matching gold t-shirts — Photo courtesy of Austin Chicken Wing Festival.

One thing I learned from my initial meeting with the Wing Fest organizer was that it was important to put these vendors first. If there are no wings, there is no festival. So, I put vendor management high up on my list and treated them like gold.

Is this your first time planning a festival? How does it compare to other events you've planned?

This is the first event I’ve organized at this scale. However, I have hosted events that required blocking off downtown streets before. I am pretty good with permits, and I know how to coordinate and negotiate with the city. Some people don’t realize the time and cost of acquiring permits for large-scale events.

Having the event outside of the city limits made it easier, but it still required a 6 month lead time. We had to get mass gathering permits, food permits and also needed a fire marshal on site.

"Having the event outside of the city limits made it easier, but it still required a 6 month lead time."
Jesse Island, Festival Organizer

I should add that the timing of the event was not random either. I had a member of my team research in the Farmer’s Almanac for the driest spring weekend on record. We’d rather have heat than rain.

What marketing strategies did you use to promote the festival?

Our marketing strategy used a little bit of everything. We used paid stuff on Instagram and Facebook and worked with magazines and influencers. We did radio segments where we’d have people call in for giveaways. Our team pass out flyers and put on the gold t-shirts to visit bars and wing restaurants to talk to people about wings. We did pretty much did everything we could think of.

Why did you choose Ticketbud as your festival ticketing platform?

It was important for us to source locally, so I was glad to use Ticketbud. I looked into other options – Eventbrite is super cumbersome and Posh doesn’t offer check-in services. Plus, Ticketbud has less intrusive service charges than other event ticketing platforms.

“Ticketbud has less intrusive service charges than other event ticketing platforms”.
Jesse Island, Festival Organizer

Are there any features or integrations that Ticketbud provided that catered to your event’s needs?

Custom ticket layouts, hidden ticket options, discount codes - I utilized it all. From a user standpoint, it was not difficult to use. And, I was able to easily track and base budgets off of growing ticket sales.

Did using Ticketbud compliment or enhance your marketing and promotional efforts?

I used the referral tracking links to incentivize my team to help with ticket sales. Each person got a unique code to share and earn commission. It was easy to track and helped with promotion.

How has your experience been with Ticketbud’s customer service?

Ticketbud is not difficult to use. But if something ever was, I could just send an email and would usually get a response within an hour. I probably asked about 10,000 questions about how to make the most of the platform for our event and got help implementing every option, including staff support at the event itself. Our entire team enjoyed working with Ticketbud, and I expect a great working relationship for years to come.

Attendees enjoying the eats and austin chicken wing festival — Photo courtesy of Austin Chicken Wing Festival.

How did Ticketbud enhance the attendee experience?

Everything was seamless. No one had issues with wrong orders or missing tickets. We utilized Ticketbud’s scanners on event day and it made it so easy for people to get in. There weren’t any long lines. There wasn’t any friction. It was quick, and it was easy.

Did you utilize any of Ticketbud’s reporting and analytics tools? If so, what metrics did you find most valuable?

“It’s true what they say - 50% of your ticket sales will happen in the last 48 hours”.
Jesse Island, Festival Organizer

It's true what they say - 50% of your ticket sales will happen in the last 48 hours. So,budgeting for event can be super difficult. Ticketbud's reporting tools really helped me plan around this.

With ticket reports, I was able to keep track of the money that was coming in throughout the sales cycle. And as we got closer to the event, ticket breakdowns helped us prepare for who was going to what and how we would need to stock things like the bar.

What advice would you give to others planning a festival?

Hire people that you can trust to do things that you cannot do. There is so much that goes into planning an event. You’re not going to be able to do it all. You’re going to need help.

Is there anything you’d like to add about planning a festival or your ticketing experience?

The event exceeded my expectations. It was fantastic to see the smiles on everyone’s faces. Every single person was having a good time. And I can’t wait to do it again.

The Austin chicken Wing Festival — Photo courtesy of Austin Chicken Wing Festival.

Social Media Marketing for Events

Social media marketing for events is vital. Promoting your event on social media significantly increases discoverability. Generating opportunities for your event to be searched and seen allows you to create awareness, sell more tickets, and build loyalty for your brand or organization.

More than a quarter of traffic to ticketing and registration pages comes from social media. And according to Google’s internal research, 40% percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are now using social media as their primary search engine, making your presence and engagement online pivotal to event success.

Therefore, social media promotion should be a key part of your overall online event marketing strategy. Below, we will walk you through the seven tips you need to know to build a social media marketing strategy for your event:

1. Know your audience and where to find them

Social media marketing for events can be exhaustive in both time and resources. And it can yield little success if you don’t understand your audience, which platform they are on, and how to best reach them.

So, it's important to establish for whom your designing your event. Then, evaluate which platform will prove the most successful in reaching them:

Facebook: With nearly 3 billion users, Facebook remains the largest social media platform. However, people seem to be spending less time on it as younger users gravitate towards channels like Snapchat and TikTok. That being said, ad revenues continue to climb and could be a valuable and low-cost investment for your event. Plus, Facebook event pages make it easy to spread event information that links directly to your Ticketbud registration site.
Instagram: The platform’s popularity has doubled in the last two years, with Gen Z and Millennials comprising two thirds of the platform’s user base. If you venture in this highly visual territory, come prepared with engaging videos, images and designs. 91% of users watch videos weekly.
X, formerly known as Twitter: While X is losing traction as a favored platform, it remains a top platform for communicating breaking news and events. It is powerful in generating buzz, engaging live with audiences , and creating a digital experience for your event.
LinkedIn: According to the platform’s internal research, LinkedIn is a top-rated social network for B2B marketing. It’s currently being dominated by a wave of millennials exploring career opportunities, but has useful tools to create event pages and lead discussions, especially concerning industry specific events.
TikTok: The platform’s current growth surpasses all other social media channels, and its young-user base is heavily influenced by the brands and products they view in videos. Like Instagram, videos are king. So, create content that conveys your event experience in visually engaging ways.
YouTube: The go-to streaming service is accessed by nearly two thirds of its user base every day. Whether you’re hosting live-streamed events or posting full videos and clips after your event to share with stakeholders, YouTube makes it easy to archive and share your event moments. Because YouTube is a search engine it means your content is easily found long after it's shared. If you run annual events, part of your social media marketing strategy could be to share videos of prior years' events. Doing so will give your audience an idea of what's to come. When it comes to events, people love to see the experience visually.

Keep in mind that the average social media user engages on at least six different platforms. So, a multi-channel social media marketing strategy for events is pivotal.

2. Optimize your online presence

To help develop recognition across platforms, adhere to your organization’s brand guidelines and consistent messaging throughout event promotion. Optimize bio and about us sections across online channels with keywords and engaging descriptions about the organization and event, and provide links to all pages and profiles so users can easily navigate between platforms.

In spiring 2022, Instagram's CEO revealed that hashtags were losing their luster in terms of helping posts gain traction and visibility. Instead, social media algorithms tend to favor searchable keywords and phrases. In fact, keyword-optimized captions were found to increase reach by 30% and double engagement.

To increase visibility of content, strategize to include text-based features like alt-text and captions. Include phrases your target audience would use when conducting a Google search for your industry or event.

Create a landing page for your event that you can link to across your social media marketing efforts. (Learn how to create a free event page on Ticketbud here.) Use plug-ins like Linktree on your Instagram to easily direct people to your landing page when hyperlinking is not available.

Ticketbud offers tools to help you sell more tickets and boost promotion. Use Ticketbud's social share buttons so attendees can easily share your event with others. This helps gives your event credibility and builds community around your event.

Determine your desired outcomes from your social media efforts. Then, outline a plan to reach them through your online marketing efforts. Try using the S.M.A.R.T. goal principle:

Specific: Be clear about how you define your event’s success and identify objectives.
Measurable: Assign metrics and KPIs to measure your progress, such as aiming for a total number of registrations or total amount garnered through ticket sales.
Attainable: Be realistic to maintain your and your team’s morale
Relevant: Align your event goals with your organization’s goals
Time-bound: Attach a timeline to certain objectives or goals

Remember to track your progress and evaluate your results. The insights you gain from this campaign will inform social media strategies for future events

Nearly just as many people post about an event leading up to it as they do at the event itself, according to Buffer. So, create a content calendar that gets people engaged and talking about your event. Some ideas include:

Sharing press releases.
Announcing speaker line ups, special guests or attractive sessions with quotes and videos.
Sending out “save the dates” and “last calls” to communicate deadlines for early bird and general registrations. Check out Instagram’s Countdown Sticker as a great way to create urgency.
Administering ticket giveaways that require commenting or sharing to help spread the word and generate interest in your event.
Partnering with influencers popular with your target market to help reach your audience through someone they already trust.
Repurposing content and testimonials from prior events to convey event experience.

6. Inspire and encourage user-generated content (UGC)

Every social media algorithm favors engagement. Therefore, it's imperative to motivate your audience to do the heavy lifting and spread the word for you. Above, we suggested how hosting an online giveaway might inspire users to share and engage with posts. But consider other ways you can encourage user-generated content leading up to, during, and after your event.

Before the event, you can engage audiences by taking them behind-the-scenes on event preparations. Consider posing questions through posts and polls that ask audiences about speakers and sessions they’d like to see.

Today, it’s becoming more common for organizations to contract out UCG content to professional promoters. But if you don’t have the budget for that, consider approaching past attendees or event partners who might help produce more authentic content based on their own experiences.

At the event, encourage user generated content with photo-booths, live tweets, or streaming features. Then, share the content on your channels or on display at the event itself can encourage further engagement. These on-site endorsements stir up a healthy sense of FOMO, ensuring those who missed your event won’t want to make the mistake next time.

7. Gain insights through post event coverage

According to Buffer, 1 out of every 5 social posts related to an event were posted after it. These types of posts are more reflective and may offer feedback about the event.

Videos generate high engagement rates across platforms, so share clips from special moments at the event. And, continue to engage with and share user-generated content from the event and after to boost visibility. Also, connect with those who attended the event to get feedback and encourage them to follow your social media channels.

When planned and executed well, the insights and content acquired post-event will inspire social media marketing strategies for future events.

4 Ways To Use Influencer Marketing For Your Event

You’ve reached out to event blogs to create listings for your event, you’ve done our checklist and even done some Google AdWords and retargeting and you’ve totally got the social media marketing thing down. What do you do? Well, you need to reach more people. It’s a law of averages: the more people who know about your event, the more tickets you're likely to sell. While skywriting may be an interesting way to capture attention, and potentially some viral-ity, just blanket targeting anyone isn’t the best way.

(more…)

How to Use Instagram for Marketing Your Event

fastest growing social network? 26% of the adult population is already using it. That's a huge audience of potential ticket buyers. Instagram is the perfect marketing channel for events. The reason being that events are told best through pictures. Just take a look at your Instagram feed. Scrolling through photos you see friends at concerts, bars, holiday parties...you name it. It's now second nature for people to post about their experiences. Instagram just happens to be the best place to do it. In this post, I'll walk through the steps on how to use Instagram for marketing your event. I'll go over how to get started, what kind of content to create, and how to build your audience. Let's get rocking.

Getting Started

So the first thing you'll want to do is create a new account. Be smart about this. Creating an account for a large festival or conference makes sense. If that isn't you, create an Instagram account for your organization. This avoids pigeonholing yourself in building your audience from just one small event. After creating your account, Instagram asks you to connect to Facebook. Go ahead and connect if you already have a large Facebook fanbase. By connecting, all your Facebook followers will get notified that you joined Instagram. It's an easy way to build your initial audience. Now let's dress up your profile page. Think of your profile as a landing page for potential ticket buyers. This is where your event either makes a great first impression or fades away from memory. You want to show off your event both through the copy and your images. Let's take a look at the example below:

BLINK Conference does a pretty solid job here. I know exactly what the conference is, when it happens, and how to find more info. Their bio link goes to a Facebook community page which works fine. If your tickets are on sale, do link to your ticketing page. Use an aggressive call to action like "Grab early bird tickets before they run out" to get the point across. The profile also has some photos that make me want to explore the account. This is key. If your account doesn't have any activity, visitor won't follow you back.

Content Creation

Before using Instagram for marketing, you need to get in the flow of publishing awesome photos. Luckily it's pretty easy to do. That's why people use Instagram in the first place. Before diving into what to publish, let's look at 2 apps that will help you create high quality photos. Canva: This is my go-to tool for graphic design. I'm not a designer myself so Canva is a godsend. You don't need to know Photoshop. Just click and drag to edit photos and overlay text. PicLab: Similar to Canva but designed for the smartphone. So for event planners on the go, PicLab makes it possible to quickly snap a pic and drop some text over it. OK so you got your apps. Now what do you post? Here's a list that should give you some ideas:

Announcements: No-brainer here. No matter what type of event you're planning, there's always something new to announce. Below, a conference highlights a new speaker:

Countdowns: Is your event 100 days away? Post about it. How about 20? Post about it again. Don't hesitate and think that your audience will get annoyed. People scroll through their feeds so quickly that unless you are doing a countdown by the hour, you'll be fine. This builds up excitement for your event.

Trendjacking: This one takes a little more creativity. Trendjacking is capitalizing on an existing trend to promote your brand. Not all your photos need to be directly tied to your event. You can get great engagement by publishing an image tied to a current event. Just make sure it's relevant to your audience.

Flyer Promos: Think of this as a direct ad for your event. Use it sparingly as no one likes to follow a self-promoting Instagram handle.

Event photos: A no-brainer. You can use these before, during, and after your event. This is the definition of social proof. What better way to attract new attendees then by showing off pictures of the event itself?

Inspirational quotes: I've seen these type of photos get a ton of engagement. Just make sure the quotes are relevant to the audience you're targeting.

Along with creating some beautiful imagery, also take advantage of the post description. Write compelling and engaging text. Ask questions and get followers to tag their friends. A neat trick is to include a CTA that asks your followers to Double Tap. By double tapping, they'll like the photo. After you've come up with some ideas, the next question is how often should you post? To make headway, I recommend posting 1-2 times per day. This makes it manageable and avoids being too spammy. This article recommends posting between 5-6pm on weekdays. Our infographic on social media for events is also a solid resource for when and what to post. Let's move to the most exciting part: growing your audience!

Building Your Audience

Account Engagement

To use Instagram for marketing, you need to identify your event's target audience. Easiest place to start is location. Let's say we're planning a bacon festival in Austin, Texas. I'll head over to Instagram's and search #atx under the tags column. #atx is a pretty popular hashtag used by Austinites.

how to use instagram for marketing your event

When I search the hashtag, Instagram shows the most popular ones. The 4th one down is #atxeats. That looks promising! While there's a couple other hashtags, lets dive into this one as it's a bit more targeted to our festival. After tapping on the hashtag, I see a ton of foodie posts. I can make an assumption that people using that hashtag might be interested in attending my bacon festival. How do I engage with them? Start by using the Follow, Like, Like, Like strategy. This link talks about the process in more detail. What you want to do is find the top pictures under the #atxeats hashtag and follow those accounts. Then, like 3 of their photos. The account will then get a stream of notifications from you following and liking their stuff. If they're interested in what they see, there's a good chance they'll follow you back. Now this process is a bit manual but you can use a tool called Instagress to automate it. Instagress allows you to put your follows and likes on autopilot. It'll save you a lot of time in the long run. Along with this strategy, you can start using these targeted hashtags in your own photos. By doing this, your account will start showing up in these searches as well. An important note is that if you're going to load up an image with hashtags, do so in the comments. This way your photo description won't look spammy.

Contests

Contests work especially well for marketing on Instagram. A solid tactic is organizing contests where the winner gets a couple free tickets. I recommend using Gleam.io for running your contest. It makes contests super easy to run. Instagram's photo mentioning is what makes contests work. A photo mention is when someone comments on your photo by mentioning a friend as seen below:

When this happens, Instagram notifies the friend of the mention. The friend will then typically click on the photo to check it out. For contests, direct people to tag their friend on one of your photos to enter. This is where the network effects come into play. As your photo mentions build up, your exposure increases. You can also create entries that have people follow your account or like a post. What makes ticket giveaway contests awesome is that you're capturing buyer's intent. All your contest entries are showing interest in attending your event. Click here to view our slideshare about contests and other social media tactics.

Shoutouts

Our last growth tactic for how to use Instagram for marketing your event comes in the form of a shoutout. A shoutout is a post on another Instagram account that encourages that account’s followers to follow you. For an event, I recommend researching influencers in your city. City influencers can be publications, restaurants, or just ordinary people. Going back to the bacon festival example, I'll search for something like "Austin Magazine":

Now I have a couple local publications I can reach out to for a shoutout. You'll want the account to share an image and caption that you curate yourself. At least get them to mention your event in one of their photos. To help sweeten the deal, communicate to them that you'll return the favor by giving them a shoutout. This way they can get exposure to your audience as well. The shoutout tactic also works for influencers that are relevant to your event type. As you build your audience, it's also important to create your own hashtag for the event. The power of having an event hashtag is that attendees can tag their own photos with your hashtag. This not only helps increase your reach but gives you more photos to publish into your feed. It's a no brainer to try marketing on Instagram for your event. The platform is still young so there's a lot of untapped opportunity. Try testing out these tactics and see what works best for you. Every event is different. Be creative in your Instagram marketing to stand out from the rest of the pack.]]]]> ]]>

5 Ways to Use Social Media to Sell Event Tickets

If this is the first time your company is hosting an event, then you have some serious work ahead of you if you hope to sell most or all your tickets. Since your business isn't well known at this point, it’s going to be challenging to convince guests to attend. Nevertheless, the goal is completely doable especially if you promote your event heavily through social media.

1. Implement Social Listening

Use social listening services to monitor social media activity. This helps you identify soft leads that may potentially become hot leads. The latter is the demographic that you want to nurture as they have a greater likelihood of converting to customers. There is plenty you can do with social listening, such as:

Determine keywords or hashtags your demographic is using
Find out which social media channels they spend more time using
Identify positive and negative posts about your brand and respond accordingly
Determine your biggest brand advocates and reward them (more on this later)
Determine what followers are saying about your competitors, both the good and the bad

You can visit this site for a list of free social listening services, though you’ll eventually want to upgrade to a paid service for the very best features to really identify key social media patterns among your demographic.

2. Provide “Soft” Reminders

You want to begin ticket sales early. A lot of potential attendees, though, may opt to purchase closer to the event date since they’re still on the fences about attending and would rather not make a decision when the event is still kind of far out. This tends to be the case even if you provide early bird sale specials. These people are your hot leads that you want to nurture so that they don’t forget or decide not to attend.

On your event page, you can provide a signup box that pops up when the visitor clicks away. The signup box can urge the visitor to sign up to receive regular reminders via tweet or Facebook post as event day approaches. This is known as a “soft conversion” tactic that keeps potential attendees in the loop so they don’t let the event slip past their mind.

3. Reward Your Biggest Brand Advocates

Brand advocates are the people who not only buy a ticket but also recommend others, “like” your social media channels, and share your posts. These advocates are your biggest assets and most loyal customers that you definitely want to keep around for the long-term.

To keep them as brand advocates, you have to reward them and acknowledge the favor they’re doing for you. Engage with these people and get to know them more on a one-on-one basis. Identify who they are and reach out to them on a more personal level.

This can be done via social media through a private post that addresses the recipient by name. Include some type of gift, such as a ticket discount if they haven’t already bought their ticket, or a coupon code as a thank you for advocating for your brand on the company’s behalf. To make it even more personal, send a hand-written physical letter or postcard with coupon code or gift card.

4. Create a Memorable Event Hashtag

Most people think they know how to create a cool hashtag when they really don’t. The trick is to make the hashtag discernible while keeping it as short as possible. Take a look at the hashtag #October2016MuscleCarShowOrangeCounty. It’s easily discernible just by taking a look at it, but it’s a tad long.

You can definitely curtail it to the following: #Oct2016MCShowOC. This is a lot shorter, but it’s a bit vague. Anyone not familiar with the event will have a hard time identifying what it means. How about this one: #OctMuscleCarShowOC? This provides the perfect balance between length and discernibility. Notice that it also leaves out the year. Omitting nonessential information helps keep the hashtag sweet and short.

5. Post-Event Talk

The event has passed, so ticket selling is over at this point. However, your job is far from over. It reasons that you plan on hosting more events in the future, so why not get a head start for the next event by promoting it right after the first one ends?

Continue to use social media to generate conversations about the event. Content to share include:
Video event highlights
A “thank you for attending” message from a company higher-up
Sending post-event surveys
A thank you gift (in the form of a discount code) for those who attended
A message or preview of the next event
A link to the event page for the next event if it’s already up
Ticket reservation for the next event, exclusive to those who attended the first one

Creating post-event buzz keeps people excited and may increase their likelihood of attending the next event. This is an early form of consumer nurturing that pays off come time for event #2.

Social Media Provides More than Enough Resources

Using social media to sell more tickets is a lot more than just sending posts here and there. You have to use the tools and trending social media practices to form a rapport with your consumers. Nurturing your customers in this manner takes time, but the rewards are more than worth it.

About the Author: Dan McCarthy is an Event Manager at Ultimate Experience, an event management company based in the UK. Dan has 5 years of event project management under his belt. He has worked on many successful events, and currently he shares his knowledge by writing on the company blog. Follow him on Twitter @DanCarthy2.

Choose a payment system. Mobile POS systems and cash are both good options. If you’re planning a ticketed event, select a platform to sell and scan tickets.]]]]> ]]>

Social Media for Events Timeline Infographic

here. (more…)

Slideshare: 8 Social Media Tactics to Ignite Ticket Sales

In this slideshare, we discuss:

How you can repurpose event content for long lasting effects
Incentivizing social sharing through promo codes
Running a successful ticket giveaway contest
Secrets to leveraging Twitter's advertising platform
Leveraging your speaker's audience
Instagram photo mentioning
Retargeting for your event
Gaining exposure through Reddit

Event Marketing Strategies - 8 Social Media Tactics to Ignite Ticket Sales from Ticketbud

]]]]> ]]>

Snapchat: Event Organizers Best Friend

Event promotion is tough. There are so many things going on and it takes something awesome to stand out in the crowded social landscape. However, Snapchat is perfectly suited for promoting an event and building an audience. The key is to tap into what makes Snapchat better than all other social media platforms: accessibility and time. (more…)

Social Media 101: Best Practices for Events

How?", you may ask. Great question. Each social media platform is different and has a different audience. Knowing your events audience allows you to then figure out where and when your audience is on social media. We've put together a handy guide that should help you out as you begin to plan how to market your next event. ]]]]> ]]>

Quick Tip: Getting The Most Out Of Pinterest

post about event marketing on social media platforms here, and what I said then is still true today: it's mostly female oriented and definitely geared for creative types. However, even if your current event doesn't fit these specs, you're likely going to be doing events that will fit this type of target market in the future, so keep reading! Once you've made your own board for the event you want to market/are planning for, here's some tips to get the most out of your time and the pins you've placed. #Hashtagsarethefuture What's that? Sick of hashtags? Sick of me making fun of hashtags? Well you'd better get #usedtoit, because Pinterest also utilizes a hashtag system. If you're doing an event based around gardening, then you'd add in hashtags like #greenthumb or #gardening. "Place" Pins Placing Pins is a very neat feature and allows you to mark locations of items in your Pinterest "pin" board. The great thing about this feature is that you can create your own boards, or edit other boards to place your items. It's a very powerful feature and can easily get a lot of people interested in a short amount of time. We've personally used this to great success during New Years' 2015, where we got more than 200 followers in the span of a couple days. You can see that board here. Good Pictures Required Think of Pinterest like Instagram: pictures are everything. This isn't Twitter or Facebook where pictures are nice, but these pictures need to do extremely well. If you want an idea of how to market your events on Pinterest, look at the McDonald's pinterest. And yes, they do have one. These days, if your marketing sticks out like a sore thumb and it's too sales-y, people immediately turn off. It's why online marketing is so tough these days, but always remember that the best marketing has always been what doesn't even look like marketing! Traditional Advertising You'll recall in my social media event marketing post about the different social media platforms that Pinterest was still working on advertising features for marketers. Unfortunately this is still something that's in limbo. You can join a waitlist, however, by signing up here. The feature is going to be called "promoted pins", and looks to be extremely similar to Facebook's "promoted posts". As always, remember that Pinterest needs you to be creative first so while you can certainly use some of the same tactics as on Facebook, remember that each niche's social network is going to have its own power plays and strategies. Business Accounts Pinterest has options for business accounts that allow you to see things like analytics, popular pins, and other features that will help you to gauge the success of your Pinterest campaigns. I highly recommend this feature, and Ticketbud has used this to great effect to double up on to more successful campaigns and to pivot from ones that may not be working as well.]]]]> ]]>

Finding Your Event's Marketing Niche

These days, it can seem like the term "social media marketing" is as ambiguous of a description as saying that you do "business". There are so many social media sites out there that it can get overwhelming if you don't narrow down your target market. It can also start to get expensive if you fire blindly in the dark by not narrowing down your targeting options.

In fact, I'm going to say something controversial: your event is not right for every single social media platform out there. If you disagree with this, think back to past social media marketing that you've done. I'll wager that your ROI (return on investment) is never the same across all platforms. Even in events we've run at Ticketbud, we've noticed a high ROI in platforms we were at first skeptical of. Adversely, platforms that we dumped a lot of money into resulted in a lower ROI than expected.. So as a side note, please experiment with the plethora of social media sites today - you could find a vein of gold amidst the wasteland. But don't feel bad if not all of them work out; Thomas Edison would be proud of you for trying!

The first step is to think of your target market. Where do they live? Where do they like to talk about the hobbies that interest them? For example, if your event is arts and crafts oriented with a high female turnout, Pinterest is the obvious choice. Events are even more varied than the social media sites out there, so what about events that may not be as obviously rooted in one media platform?

Facebook:

The nice thing about Facebook is that nearly everyone uses it. And for marketing purposes, it's one of the best. If you're an event organizer and you've done previous events, then take the email lists that you have and look into Facebook's custom audiences advertising option, found here. This is a powerful feature that allows you to input a list of emails and cross-reference them with Facebook users. If the emails were used to create their Facebook accounts, you will get a custom audience for your ad that is like the people who previously attended your event. Although you may find this contradictory, I recommend looking into Facebook for a solid portion of your social media advertising dollars due to the fact that nearly everyone has one. One last tip that will seem counterintuitive at first: if you set your bids for ads higher, you're more likely to receive more clicks and thus Facebook will reduce your cost per click. This equates to a significant cost savings.

Twitter:

Twitter has been pushing its advertising feature for a couple months now and I've personally used to it to great effect. You'll want to use Twitter for your platform if your event is more tech, comedy, or concert oriented since Twitter users tend to enjoy experiences along those lines. Twitter's userbase also tends to skew male. If you want to advertise to a certain group, you can target people who follow companies and people who are like the people you want at your event. Twitter is also a great before-and-after platform provided you encourage your eventgoers to live tweet. If you want more information on how to leverage this powerful platform, check this article out.

Instagram:

Instagram's advertisement feature is still in its formative stages. At the time of this writing, Instagram advertising isn't widely available. It helps to know that Instagram is used less by adults and more by teens. What Instagram is better for is using it for during-and-after event photos: encourage eventgoers with rewards to take photos and post them with your personal hashtag.

Pinterest:

Although it's also in a nascent period, Pinterest's promoted pins tool has a lot of potential-with more than a few caveats. First off, it's common knowledge that Pinterest is made up almost entirely of women, but there are also men who are interested. So if you're trying to promote a monster-truck rally, you'll probably want to pass since the target market is too small. As long as your event is more specific to women, you can't lose by trying out the promoted pins.

LinkedIn:

If your event is tailored towards professionals or more for adults aged 30-50, LinkedIn can be extremely useful when it comes to advertising. You can search by Job title and by location to create a highly targeted and highly converting campaign which will bring the right people to your event. LinkedIn's audience is much more educated than any other social network.

Conclusion

I should note that while these are all paid opportunities, there are tons of unpaid opportunities for each of these channels as well. This article was designed purely to look at paid options. Unpaid opportunities are extremely varied, and we will be looking at them in future posts. Thanks for reading and be sure to let me know if there's any other networks out there you've found success in!