Freshtix Event Marketing Solutions

Creating Promotional Content For Social Media

So you've got the venue, the brand partners, the performers, and you're almost ready to announce your event. You've created the ticket link, the event pages on various third-party sites, have sent out emails and invitations and are feeling confident that you're reaching a significant portion of the people that you think would be interested in your event. Then the event goes on sale and... *crickets*. You may be seeing some ticket sales come in, but they seem lower than in previous years or at other events with similar artists that you've been to or been a part of. There are now more music festivals, beer festivals and food tastings than ever which means the old adage of "build it and they will come" no longer applies. In some cities there are multiple events like these happening every weekend and getting your event to stand out can be a seemingly impossible endeavor. Luckily, with some extra preparation and time creating content to post regularly from your online profiles and into your event pages, you can stay in front of the people who you think are interested in the event but haven't pulled the trigger on buying a ticket. 

The On-Sale Announcement is Not Enough

The truth is that people are bombarded by notifications, emails, advertisements, and recommendations about events they should be attending every day. There are also people who every day realize that they didn't hear about an event they would have gone to or forgot about an event they were looking forward to. This tells us that once the initial announcement and on-sale phases have passed, it's important to continually engage with your potential audience and continue to grow the number of people you're reaching. Here's a few steps to get you started:

1. Create your content - photos, videos, contests, polls, announcements, know-before-you-go articles, interviews and other forms of content that give ticket buyers insight into why they should attend your event
2. Create your posting schedule - a calendar of when you plan on posting the content you've created 
3. Coordinate with your team and involved parties for when content should be shared and from which pages - getting an artist with 20k followers to share content linking to the ticket buying page is much more effective than a brand with lower fan engagement posting the same content.

How Often Should I Post?

Posting something every day might be overkill when you're still over a month away from the date of your event, but posting 2-3 times/week is a healthy frequency that keeps people engaged or at least aware. As you get to a few weeks out, you may want to start posting daily, as long as the content isn't overly repetitive. The week leading up to the event, daily posting is pretty much the bare minimum. At this point posting content 2-3 times/day can get people excited about the event that they've been hearing about for months. And, since you've been posting regularly leading up to the event you should have an idea about what type of content posts seem to get the best reaction from your audience.

Now my event is going to sell-out, right?

Another hard truth is that there's no exact method that works 10/10 times when promoting events via traditional methods or with social media, but the more effort you put into curating quality content and measuring the results of your efforts, the more you can dial into what gets your audience excited and ready to buy tickets. Repeat this process over many events over many years and you'll have the information you need to create a compelling brand identity that current and potential fans of your events will learn to trust over the sea of other event organizers. 

Further Reading

• Freshtix Event Marketing Solutions
• Facebook Event Creation