Facebook is one of the most popular ways for event organisers, musicians, comedians and artists to promote their latest show online.However, what is the best way to use Facebook for event promoters?
As anyone who’s organised anything from a birthday party to major live event might already know, when someone clicks “I’m attending” on Facebook, there’s no guarantee that they’ll actually show up. The ability to create an attractive and popular Facebook Like page is an essential tool for every event promoters and, with 600 million people now using Facebook, you can’t afford to miss out. However, what is the best way to use Facebook for event promoters?
Evvnt’s Top 10 Tips for Promoting Events on Facebook
1. Switch over from Groups to Pages
Business owners on Facebook should ensure that they are not still using Groups or Profiles to promote their company on Facebook. Pages are a much better platform on which to promote a business, with lots of extra features that are not available to Group owners. Event owners can also create and promote events as their Page rather than attaching an event to a personal Profile.
2. Make Facebook your social hub
When a Facebook user lands on your Page, it’s important to grab their attention with great content; music, video or games are good tools to promote interaction. Your Page could also become a valuable resource of information or statistics.
Run competitions or install a sign-up box on your Page – these are simple and effective ways to increase your data and build followers or fans to your company.
Network through other social platforms. Treat your Facebook page as a one-stop-shop for your online activity by integrating your blog, Twitter, Flickr or other social network.
3. Create a Landing page for your Facebook Page
Adding a Static FBML tab to your Facebook Page is the easiest way to enhance the customisation of your Facebook Page and one of the many ways that Facebook is making it easier for businesses to interact with their fans.
A Static FBML tab is a Facebook Application that uses basic HTML to let users configure their own unique content. You can use the tab to; create a landing page, insert forms to collect data, run special offers and competitions or as a redirect link to your website.
4. Add a Facebook Like button to your website or blog
Facebook is a platform on which many businesses are focusing lots of money, time and resources. Yet many companies still don’t use arguably Facebook’s most powerful tool – the Like button.
The Like button lets visitors to your blog or website share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link directly to your website. This will encourage other users on Facebook to visit and possibly share your content too.
You can visit Facebook to view the full guide to adding a Facebook Like button
5. Get a photographer and start tagging
People love to see themselves having fun when they’re out clubbing, at a gig or outdoor events and with a professional behind the lens these pictures will hopefully look a little more flattering. Make sure you put a watermark on these images and publish them on albums on Facebook where the name and date of the event is clear.
Users love to snoop on other peoples’ Facebook photos and comment on them, so posting photos online will carry your pictures and your logo to peoples’ News Feeds who otherwise wouldn’t have heard of you. Posting photos to your Facebook Page will also help keep the content interesting and encourage your Page subscribers to return.
6. Sell tickets through your Facebook Page
With so many bands switching over to Facebook from MySpace to promote their upcoming gigs, it was only a matter of time before someone built a ticketing app for Facebook Pages that lets music fans buy tickets directly through Facebook. One such company is WePay who have built an app for Pages called Sell Tickets that allows users to sell tickets for any Facebook Event and lets users create an event directly from the app itself.
7. Get to know Facebok Insights
Facebook Insights is Facebook’s analytics tool for Facebook page admins. It measures 2 things – Users and Interactions.
Users
Active Users: the number of users who have interacted with or viewed your Page or posts on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Daily Active Users Breakdown: the number of individual page views and unique post viewers. As well as when when users have liked a post by a specific admin, commented on a post or written their own post on the Page’s Wall.
Likes: the number of new Likes and unlikes from your Page as well as a Page Sources section that displays a breakdown of the Page likes from the most common places.
Demographics: Facebook Insights also gives Page owners a snapshot of information about their users and includes gender, age, country, town or and also what language they’re using Facebook in.
Activity: This section of Facebook Insights charts the number of times the Tabs on your Page were viewed by logged-in Facebook users as well as top referring external websites that are sending direct traffic to your Page and what rich media content they consume.
Interactions
The Interactions section of Facebook Insights charts the number of times that Fans and non-Fans interact with your Page through the News Feed or Page Wall and what actions they make.
Page admins can view the total number of times that individual Page posts were seen. The feedback percentage calculates the ratio of the total likes and comments that a post recieved.
You can export all the data for your Page between any date range of your choosing. Data exports as a .CSV or Excel file. To export your data, you can click on the ‘Export’ button on the top left corner of your Insights Dashboard for any application, page or domain.
8. Make content like DJ mixes available online
The easiest way for a clubbing event marketer to take advantage of content sharing on Facebook is to make DJ mixes available online. Tools like Soundcloud mean you can post up mixes from previous nights, so people who were there can relive the happy memories, as well as putting up mixes by future guest DJs to naturally boost interest in upcoming events. This provides relevant material you can let your clients know about on Facebook to remind them of your presence and encourage them to tell their friends about your events. You can also link to recently uploaded content (mixes, videos or photos) from guest DJs that are hosted on their blogs.
9. Claim a Facebook Place and promote some deals
At this time, Facebook Deals are only available to a limited number of partner businesses, but soon, anyone with a Facebook Places location will be able to set up their own promotion and intice local people to visit your venue.
Facebook had this to say about the slow roll-out: “We are currently testing self-service Check-in Deals in a limited beta in the US. We want to provide the best experience to everyone using Facebook and we’re taking our time as we scale the product.”
10. Use your Facebook event to lead people on to your other marketing channels
Facebook should offer the means to create a buzz about your event, not necessarily as the only means of getting people to attend. Why not focus on how you can better engage with the crowds once they’re through the door instead? Think about how you can encourage attendees to sign-up to your email list or get them to follow you on Twitter too.
For More Marketing Advice – https://evvnt.com/blog/category/event-marketing/