Creating Buzz

It’s All About The Lead Up

The rollout for event promotion is central to achieving a successful audience in attendance. Deciding when to post about an upcoming event can be tricky, and you may find yourself grappling with questions like: Am I posting too much or too little? Too frequently or too sporadically? How can I educate my audience without turning them away?

These are all valid concerns. While it may feel like there’s no harm in constant promotion, there are some potential consequences. Various algorithms hide repetitive content, and many online users can become irritated by spam-adjacent advertisements. There is a real risk involved in oversaturating your feeds with untargeted and unvaried posts.

Although there is no universal answer to posting timelines, you can start by testing out monthly markers beginning six months prior to the event. Analyze and note the success of these posts across socials, then you can determine how frequently to promote the event you’re attending and/or hosting. As the event nears, the content can become more specific and frequent, and shouldn’t come across as excessive. Overall, if the content is diverse and educational during the lead-up, the more likely it is that you will captivate, educate, and retain audiences for your upcoming event.

Building Excitement With The “Unique”

Diving into the content itself, naturally each post should be equipped with the standard event information of “where,” “when,” “why,” and “who,” but the real challenge is crafting promotions that are enticing enough to create buzz and unique enough to hold the intrigue of any viewer.

Crafting promotions that highlight the unique qualities of the event itself is primarily where audiences will be captured. What aspects of this upcoming event are the most alluring? Does it reside in its prestigious speakers, exclusive networking opportunities, or sought-after experiences? All these event experiences are prime examples of where to focus when marketing.

If you find that your event is missing these unique qualities, then it’s time to tailor it. Perhaps your event does not stand out on its own; here is a great opportunity to commit to a theme that pleasantly incorporates your existing brand while creating a distinctive vision for the gathering. Adopting a theme is a playful way to make your event easily recognizable on social feeds and informs the audience how engaging it may be. For example, incorporating elements of a circus, rodeo, or casino pitches a playful image to potential attendees — showing that not only are they going to make some serious professional advancements, but will also have a fun experience.

Highlighting the unparalleled happenings of your event will set it apart from the rest and encourage audiences online that this is something they cannot experience anywhere else. By teasing these unique elements of your event, the excitement will be tangible through your promotional strategies and far more successful in capturing attendees.

Putting A Face To It

Another effective method to enhance variation in your posts is sharing them from a different perspective: Your employees! Adding a personal flair and “putting a face” to marketing has become all the rage in promotional strategies.

You may notice an increase in popularity with brands adopting “ambassadors” and employee “takeovers” to advocate publicly on their behalf. In terms of event promotion rollout, adding a personal flair could be displayed in various ways.

Creating content for individuals to share their involvement and excitement about the upcoming event can be a great place to start. This provides an opportunity to humanize the staff attending and organically make a connection with potential audience members before they even arrive onsite. When they arrive, they will find comfort in seeing a familiar face from the interweb and naturally, remember the face more likely than the company.

Furthermore, collecting testimonials about similar events in the past can be a huge advantage to event promotion. From featuring quotes from previous attendees to sharing throwback videos of the environment from the year prior, adding these touches to event promotion can transport potential attendees to the world of possibilities of their future attendance.

Incorporating these personal touches not only serves as another platform for event promotion but also paints the event as a desirable occasion filled with trustworthy figures.

To ensure your upcoming event is well attended, you must showcase the value of it well in advance. Creating buzz on a timely schedule and showing audiences what they will miss if they don’t attend is the sweet spot of event marketing. Try these tips the next time you’re promoting your upcoming event!