To say that the event industry went through a whirlwind would be an understatement. In-person events and conferences that were planned days in advance got postponed or cancelled sooner than anybody could fathom.
Virtual events came to light, and the businesses took every effort to make them effective. While both: in-person and virtual events had their advantages, it was still difficult to bridge the gap of impact generation. Thus, making it evident that the role of live events will always be substantial in any powerful event program.
This gave rise to a whole different concept of hybrid events, which combines both live and virtual event experiences and will be an essential part of the ‘new normal.’ The audiences of both worlds are brought together in real-time, facilitating networking and participation opportunities boundlessly. The best part about hybrid events is the immersive experience that it provides by reducing the differences between virtual and physical events.
According to statistics,
73% of the event planners are expecting hybrid events to gain more populace moving ahead.
Research by Etc.Venues
Deliver The Best Of Two Worlds Using Social Media
Social media channels are becoming the center of promotions. Businesses across industries are using the influence of social platforms to popularize their presence and to expose themselves to a broader audience.
Hybrid event organizers can leverage social media to conduct pre, ongoing, and post-promotional activities and gather enhanced event awareness, audience attraction, greater engagement, and conversion rates while better marketing their sponsors’ business.
Other than that, interactions, community building, and a customer-first approach: are important aspects for any event to get successful. Using social networks can provide for it effectively.
37% of event planners report that social media exposure is a key metric of the success of any event.
State of the Event Industry Report: First Quarter 2021
Moreover, the fact that hybrid events are a blend of the physical and virtual audiences, the role of social media platforms gets amplified. To know more about optimally leveraging it, make your way through these top ideas.
Best Practices To Market Your Hybrid Event Through Social Media
1. Design An Exclusive Hashtag
Hashtags are omnipresent. They are the best weapon in your arsenal for marketing your event on social media. But to be able to generate an impressive response, create a hashtag that is unique, easy to remember, and relatable.
You can create a common hashtag for both your virtual and live attendees and prompt them to produce and share content on their social media handles, which can further be displayed on the event’s screen. This also can be a great way to combat the communication gap between the two audiences, which further leads to an interactive event.
Alternatively, you can also create different hashtags for both your audiences. The virtual event attendees can use the hashtag created for them and create content using it.
2. Upload Event Teasers
We sure know, teasers are for creating hype and giving a glimpse into what to expect moving further. Upload teasers on social media platforms to introduce your audience to the kind of event they can expect to attend.
Show off your guest of honor, list of entertainers, speakers, etc., to move the attention of your audience and achieve better ticket sales.
Take film teasers for example; it makes people want to watch the entire movie, and they are tempted to share their thrill with their friends and family-ending up in a houseful. You can generate a similar response for your event by uploading event teasers.
3. Display Social Wall On Both Event Venues
Using a social wall, you can collect content from various social media platforms and connect your live and virtual audience.
Leverage the power of social media before, after, and during your event by implementing a social media wall. For instance, you can display a social wall on your registration or web pages before the event, on the digital screens during the event, and on your website post the event.
Taggbox Display can help you aggregate content from hashtags, profiles, and pages to curate the content that you want to display in your hybrid event, choosing from 15+ social media platforms to aggregate content from.
The most significant benefit of using the social media wall for hybrid events is that it increases audience engagement, gives your event global exposure, boosts revenue with sponsored posts on your wall, and increases ticket sales for your next event.
4. Create & Promote Event Instagram Filter
If you are using Instagram for business, then you probably already know how effective IG stories are when it comes to engaging with audiences. According to stats, in 2019 more than 500M accounts engaged with Instagram Stories daily(Statista).
Using Instagram’s custom AR filters you can stay ahead of the curve and increase your event’s awareness amongst the platform users. Incorporate your brand’s logo, any event-linked background, etc.
Further, getting creative with AR camera effects is an exciting way to communicate with your audience.
Users can use your built AR filters and post stories on their social media handles, thus, helping you in a wider reach.
5. Collaborate With Influencers On Social Media
According to the stats by Launchmetrics, 28.1% of marketers preferred using influencer marketing as a part of their hybrid event promotion strategy.
With innumerable events taking place, it is easy for people to overlook yours. Influencers come in handy here, as they can potentially create a pre-event buzz for your brand. But, for this collaboration to yield results, targeting and collaborating with influencers that cater to your niche is important.
Micro-influencers, here, need a special mention because they have greater credibility amongst their followers. Partnering with them can enhance the engagement rate and further boost the number of ticket sales.
6. Provide A Sneak-Peek With Stories
The best part about social media event promotion? People love to know what’s going on behind the curtain. It ignites the prospective attendees’ interest and keeps them looking forward to the event.
Share behind-the-scenes visuals of your venue, speakers, sponsors, among other arrangements. Additionally, you can use the countdown sticker on Instagram Stories and let the viewers subscribe to receive a notification to get notified when the clock runs out.
This is a great tactic to boost conversions or to remind people about early bird registrations.
7. Run Paid Promotion To Get Early Birds
Early bird discount taps into your audience’s sense of urgency. So, if you have people on the fence about whether or not they would want to attend your event, then an early bird registration might be the right nudge for them.
To reach out to more people and get them excited about early-bird discounts, run paid promotions on social media. Further, you can also showcase details of your keynote performers, give a sneak peek of the guest list.
Social media promotions are a great way to enhance your targeting, gain access to mobile users and boost awareness of your hybrid event.
8. Conduct A Post-Event Survey
If you wish to amplify your game moving forward, it is important to ask people what they thought of the event. Here, considering the experience of the presenters, organizers, and volunteers is also essential.
Get creative with the format of the online survey to be able to receive a colossal response from virtual and physical event attendees. Alternatively, you can use the polling option provided by Instagram, which is an easy way to generate responses from people.
Repurpose reviews given by the people as a post-event promotional strategy on social media and other marketing touchpoints, using Taggbox Widget. Your attendees’ experience is your holy grail to fetch more attendance in your next event while creating a better brand image in the viewers’ minds.
The Benefits Of Promoting Hybrid Events On Social Media
1. Expands Participation And Engagement
Audience engagement is a key element in hybrid events, as you do not want your audience to solely be spectators. Having your audience actively participating helps in shaping interactions in real-time.
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By promoting your event on social media via hashtags, stories, teasers, discounts, etc., you can win the interest of your audience, increase your event’s awareness and create opportunities for audience involvement.
Further, hybrid events offer a significant advantage as they allow all participants to communicate with each other, opening up a multi-directional flow of ideas and information. Here, again, social media can play an important role as it works as a channel of communication during, before, and after the events.
2. Provides For Detailed Insights
Social media platforms provide meaningful insights into the hybrid event marketing campaigns undertaken by the brands, and when it comes to events, insights play an important role.
Using insights, you can determine your KPI, keep track of your audience’s behavior during the event and make changes as needed.
For instance, when a speaker is performing and the number of tweets goes up, you know that it is working well for you. But, if the number falls down because a PPT is displayed, you know what to eliminate. You can then adjust the schedule for your next hybrid event, depending upon the kind of response generated.
Apart from the insights provided by social media, you can also use Taggbox Display to analyze the performance of your social wall. The tool tracks the behavior of the audience and provides insightful details, using which you can alter your approach.
3. Fosters Community Building
One of the best advantages of promoting hybrid events on social media is community building. It helps global audiences to reach out to you and each other.
Strategies like running a hashtag campaign, showcasing a social media wall post-event, and collaborating with influencers; ignite interactions between the organizers, performers as well as physical and virtual attendees.
Organizers can leverage the dynamics of shared connections in their next event and easily gather more participation and sales. Further, social media promotions can also help in shaping the image of your brand while reaching out to more people organically via word-of-mouth marketing.
Case Study- Parookaville-A Worldwide Recognized Music Event Used Taggbox Display Social Wall At Their Hybrid Event
Parookaville is Germany’s biggest EDM music festival. Music lovers from all over the world flock over the place to attend the event. Last year, they conducted the music festival in a hybrid setup. As they couldn’t have missed on their global fans.
They created two hashtags for their physical and virtual events #parookavile2020 #dreamscannotbecancelled, respectively. Both the audiences posted content using the hashtag relevant to them and by using Taggbox Display they were able to showcase this content on the social wall.
The social wall boosted the engagement of the event and generated interactions by highlighting the audience experience.
Taggbox Display Social Wall offers the best solution: collecting, curating, moderating, and displaying user-generated content on a social wall.
It aggregates content from all social media platforms, customizes it as required, and makes it relevant to the brand, and enables showcasing the content on screens of all kinds.
Over To You
Hybrid events are gaining immense popularity as it provides for an immersive experience without any geographical restrictions. But, for them to be successful, having a robust social media strategy in place is essential.
Promote your events on social media platforms to increase ticket sales, foster a sense of community, and engage with your global attendees.
70% of the companies look up to social media for events as extremely important while 54% of the event organizers use it for post-event promotions.
It is now time to leverage the influence of social media for your next hybrid event using these ideas. For any further assistance, we are all ears!