You know it’s important to use social media to stir up a buzz about your event before the big day, but you also need to think about how your organization is going to use social media to enhance the experience during the event itself. Here are a few places to start:
An important part of any event is connecting with other attendees. People are there to support your cause, and they probably do other activities to support the cause as well. Help your supporters connect and work together to further your mission – they might set up a fundraiser, plan their own event, collaborate on efforts to advocate for the cause, volunteer together, and much more.
How do you help your audience connect? Start with a Facebook event. Encourage attendees to friend each other and discuss why they support your nonprofit. You can also encourage supporters to connect on LinkedIn, using your page as a mutual connection.
Make sure someone from your nonprofit is live-Tweeting and posting on Facebook during the event. Photos should accompany most posts, as well as calls to share your posts so you can reach a larger audience. Take pictures of the delicious food and beverage offerings and tag whoever provided them, or take fun pictures of attendees and tag sponsors, thanking them for making such a terrific event possible. An important thing to remember – make sure your camera lens is clean! A blurry, low quality picture is not suitable for your social media.
If there are guest speakers or important announcements during the night, make sure you post quotes on your social accounts so the people who couldn’t attend can still feel involved with your cause. If your organization announces important news, every supporter should be in the know whether they could attend your event or not.
Get the audience on social media during the event using incentives. Give away a small item to a random person who posts pictures of the event or tags your organization in posts about the event. To get people to post more, make it a drawing where they get one entry per photo or post. You don’t have to do the giveaway during the event, but when you do, make sure to post that one social as well!
You can also use a live social polling app like twtpoll to engage your audience during the event. Ask simple questions, like “What was your favorite hors devours?”, or something similar with multiple choice responses. Stay away from letting people write and post their own responses, especially if your displaying the responses anywhere at the event.
We put this last, but it is really where your event social media should start. Come up with a hashtag specific to the event and use it EVERYWHERE – on any marketing collateral your create, all online advertisements, and any and all posts your nonprofit makes about the event before, during, and after. Encourage guests to use the hashtag in their posts, in addition to tagging your organization. This creates a place on social media where people can go and see every post about the event, creating an easily accessible feed of information and images.
Follow these steps to get people more connected and involved at your events, with each other and with your nonprofit, and your organization will benefit with a broader reach and more diverse audience on social media.
Image: medium.com
Tapp Network is a marketing & technology firm serving nonprofits and organizations seeking to accelerate their social impact, capacity building, and revenue growth for good.
