As the world has slowly returned to normal following the pandemic, live events have become increasingly more important as brands seek to reconnect with their customers, consumers and professional network in a way that isn’t just through a 12” screen.
Many industries had to move their entire networks online overnight in March of 2020, however, there is no doubting the impact a well-run live event can have for brands of all shapes and sizes. One of the most vital parts of running a successful live event is to have a bulletproof social media strategy. It ensures that the live event doesn’t only benefit the event attendees themselves, but a wider mass audience on social through the duration.
Planning
The first thing to consider when creating a live event social media strategy is planning. It sounds obvious but having conversations long before the event on what a client/brand wants and needs out of the event is so important in order to tailor a social media strategy to have maximum effect on the day itself.
For example, a client may want their social to take a ‘behind the scenes’ approach, allowing their followers and a wider audience to get an exclusive sight of the event and feel as if they have been a part of the event from afar. This will feed into shaping the overall social media strategy for the day such as having a steady stream of Instagram & Facebook stories with engagement tactics such as story polls or sliders, and a plan for live videos and exclusive features.
Another aspect of planning for a successful live event social media strategy is scoping out the venue or location for the event before the week starts. Good practice is to visit the location in the weeks leading up to the event to check that the essentials needed to successfully implement your social strategy are available.
There is nothing worse than arriving at a venue or location on the day of the event without doing this planning and preparation to find no Wi-Fi or sufficient data connection. Including this in the strategy when planning for our client TRX’s ‘On The Beach’ event in Bournemouth last August was essential.
Preparations had to be made to connect to a nearby WiFi point to ensure a sufficient connection was available to cover the day. It’s certainly worth testing the connection by uploading stories and feed posts to a dummy account (a blank account set up specifically for testing purposes), as well as running a test live video if you have one of these planned of the day itself.
Content Preparation
Once again, this is all in the preparation, but spending time on creating bespoke social media assets and features ahead of the live event will help your content to stand out and have the largest impact on the day. This will also ensure that you can stay consistent with brand guidelines, even when capturing behind the scenes or on-the-spot content at the event. You should also add in some pre-event promotion to your social media strategy.
It’s key to make your following aware of the details for the event such as date, time and location, as well as promoting any specific social media features you will be running on the day, such as live videos or interactive features.
A great way of achieving this is to create Instagram / Facebook story borders or overlays to have to hand to use whilst capturing content on the day. These assets are relatively easy to make and is a simple but effective way to make your reactive content look professional, on-brand and eye catching with minimal extra effort. This was a feature we used to great effect when covering TRX’s involvement as the headline sponsor on National Fitness Day.
This ensured that we kept a professional look and feel to the TRX Instagram stories when capturing all of the behind-the-scenes content from the exclusive TRX workout in Covent Garden with Matty Lee and Tanni Grey-Thompson. Having these pre-made story assets also allowed us to include constant key branding features for both TRX and National Fitness Day such as logos, hashtags and GIFs, allowing maximum brand exposure when attracting new eyes to the story sequence. Having these assets prepped beforehand also ensures you can focus on other important aspects when at the event itself.
In addition to reactive behind-the-scenes story content, live videos are a fantastic way to give your social media audience an exclusive look at the event. It’s also worth noting that all followers will receive a notification when you go live, which helps draw in your audience to activity on the account from the event. Whether you are aiming to drive traffic and engagement, encourage an action (sale / sign up), or promote a future event, there are many ways to get creative with live videos.
However, broadcasting an impactful live video can be quite difficult and preparing as much as you can for this part of your social media strategy will save you a big stress on the day! An effective way to incorporate this is to interview someone from the event to talk through their experience and what is happening on the day. If taking this approach, it’s useful to get a rough script together in advance to ensure the conversation doesn’t run off course – this will also help with peaking interest and engagement on the live video itself.
On The Day
Once the preparation is done, it’s on to the event itself! If possible, I’d recommend taking a professional camera to the event along with your smartphone so you can capture lots of ‘evergreen’ content, as well as posting directly to your desired social media platform. This worked particularly well from the ‘TRX On The Beach’ event, where the evergreen content we captured from the day performed fantastically well on the main feed after the event, and gave us numerous pieces of content that we knew would perform well for weeks after the event.
On the day itself, try to be as reactive as possible by capturing content that you think would be interesting to see on social. Capture unique shots and use the opportunity to give your social audience a perspective of the event as if they were there. Although, there is a fine line between maintaining your audience’s attention throughout the day and overdoing the same type of content that may become boring or repetitive. Keep this in mind and stick to your prepared schedule!
Follow-Up
So, the event was a success and you managed to capture lots of great content from the day itself – what’s next? A good live event social media strategy never ends when the event ends. It’s important to use the ‘evergreen’ social media content that you shot on the day to help remind followers of the event and any actions to take from it such as ‘don’t forget to sign up’. This post-event content can also be used to help promote the next event, showing your audience why they should want to attend.
Lastly, it’s very important to measure the impact of your social media strategy through statistics. Key questions to answer may include:
- How many story views did you amass throughout the day?
- How many link clicks did you get from IG story link stickers?
- What was the viewer peak on your live videos?
- What was the impression and engagement count on any feed posts throughout the day or post-event?
These stats can be used to inform the brand / client on whether their social audience resonated with the content from the day and can be used as a key learning when preparing for the next event in the calendar.
If you would like to learn more about the results a social media strategy could deliver for your next event, get in touch today.