Your Followers Don’t Care About Your Big Event
Events are a huge deal for marketers. They offer an opportunity to engage with current and potential customers and really form a strong connection with them. When events come along, we tend to drop everything and put all efforts into promoting the happenings and hype. We really see this on social media, where our channels fill with messages encouraging people to attend events, plan the sessions they’ll be attending, and book their trips. While it’s great to promote your event, we need to remember one thing: You followers don’t care.
Big Event, Little Audience
Look at your biggest event of the year. How many people does it attract? Now look at your social following. How many people follow you? Even the largest industry events are unlikely to attract as many people as you see following your social accounts. How many of your followers are really likely to attend your event? Even the most engaged followings are unlikely to see more than 10% even consider attending. That means that 90% of your followers don’t care about your event messages. They aren’t going to attend and because of that, they don’t find your messages and event content useful and simply write it off. If they start ignoring your event content, chances are they’ll also ignore your other messages at the time too (even if they aren’t event-related). You’ve now lost yourself the vast majority of your audience because you were too caught up in your event to think about the greater good of your following.
Here’s Something For The Viewers At Home
No matter the size of your event, the majority of your viewers are the folks at home (those not attending the event). You need to cater to them even when you’re posting event messaging. Start thinking about the value you can provide for them while still promoting your event. They may not be able to attend but they can still benefit from the happenings. Keep this in mind when picking content to share coming up to, during, and after the event.
For those that can’t be there, make them feel like they are. Provide content that is beneficial to both attendees and those that aren’t. Provide as much information as you can for those that aren’t there to see it themselves. If you offer something special for those attending, offer something special for those that can’t also. Make sure you’re offering the most value for the majority of your following.
Cut The Crap
While many companies do it, tweeting each session as they’re about the begin is silly. Have you ever attended a conference where you weren’t sure which session to attend? How did you figure it out? Did you sit on Twitter and hope someone would tweet an answer to your question or did you simply check the conference program instead? No one figures out which sessions they’re attending and what time they’re taking place by checking Twitter, so stop filling your feed with these useless tweets.
Engage Everyone
Events are a big deal and should be treated as such by marketers. But forgetting about your core audience on social can cause far more harm to your social following than any event messaging benefit. By keeping all of your followers in mind when planning for events, companies can see the greatest benefit from their social channels and their events too. Don’t let the largest following of your fans be left out.
