At BG Digital Group, one of our favorite projects is, of course, event marketing. It’s an exciting challenge at our digital agency to not only create buzz around a big event, but to keep the audience engaged with your brand all year. When it comes to event marketing in North Carolina, most brands choose one of two focused approaches: marketing the big event, or creating a continuous voice.
(Psst: if you haven’t read Why You Need an Event Marketing Team, that’s a great starting point for getting the most out of this blog post!)
Focusing Marketing Efforts on Just the Event
With this approach, the audience looks to social media accounts before and during the events for constant, up-to-the-minute information. Not only does this mean that your content will be seen by those who follow, but the sudden surge in retweets, favorites, shares and comments will skyrocket your engagement right before the event to create a larger following during. Sounds great, right?
With this event-focused strategy, brands often go dark when the event is over. But just because everyone went home doesn’t mean they don’t care. As a result, loyal audience members may stop engaging with you because they don’t have anything specific left to engage with. If you only have one large event each year, you could lose a substantial portion of your followers this way.
Focusing Marketing Efforts on Creating a Continuous Voice
The solution to the focused efforts problem is to create a continuous voice. Consistent, quality updates about the brand prove to your audience that you are relevant year round. Sticking to event-related content promotion will bore your audience and leave large lapses of interesting content on your social media.
So how do you make this constant voice happen? Since you can’t always talk about your event, you’ll need to engage in some serious social listening. Explore social media to understand what content needs to be created, where you need to be sharing it, and how frequently it needs to be produced and shared.
- Explore Instagram: The new discovery tools on Instagram allow you to do a little hashtag research before you decide what to post. Find trending hashtags that link organically to your brand in some way and work them in conversationally, but don’t just add a heap of unrelated hashtags to the end of your post just because they’re trending.
- BuzzSumo: this content discovery tool uses advanced social search to filter out content that will resonate with your target audience and stay relevant in trending times. Find the ideal content that is getting the most shares on Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ at any time.
- Participate in Twitter chats. Watch trending topics on Twitter to find chatter, like #InboundHour from @Hubspot, or people live tweeting webinars. It’s a great way to see what people in your industry are buzzing about and make predictions for what customers will want to hear in the future.
When marketing an event, it is most effective to use a mix of both approaches: keep a continuous voice all year to maintain relevancy, but up your marketing efforts and social media presence when your audience will be expecting it. Use these content marketing research tools to keep the conversation going with your loyal followers after all of the excitement dies down.
If you’re looking for event marketing experts in North Carolina, BG Digital Groupis the name in inbound marketing. We are experienced in building a steadfast following for annual events and maintaining an engaged audience year round. Download our inbound marketing guide below to get started and attract, convert, close, and delight using only the most effective marketing efforts.
