Social media platforms have become go-to ports of call for almost anything, now. It can be what helps you find your perfect holiday or the first place you go to make your opinion about a brand before using them. Here at eve, we know how important it is to have a strong presence online as an Event Manager, to win clients, gain trust and be an active voice within your brand’s communities. Read on for our top tips on becoming a social media guru.
Put the pro in profile
Your social media profiles are a really valuable stamp of who you are and an important calling card for business contacts and networking alike. It will totally pay off to spend time creating exciting and engaging content to appeal to your target audience and keep you prominent online. Having a well-maintained social profile is a valuable piece of social and marketing collateral.
Define your content strategy
It’s always important when thinking about your content to consider your content plan and tie it in with specific events throughout the year. Consistent content and being part of an online community is key. Don’t just be a flash in the pan or a fly-by-night. Share your expertise and knowledge of your specific area widely and contribute to the online community regularly. Don’t just promote yourself and what you do all the time: be the gift that keeps on giving and share widely on all of your social networks. Be valuable. Don’t just drop in and out when you want something – your relationships within your brand’s network are like real life ones where there is give and take.
Curate your content
The most interesting and engaging people and influencers are not only sharing regularly but are careful with how they curate those posts. It’s no use shouting into the void, so think about producing content that helps people with a common problem within your industry or that is likely to be interesting to your followers. Here are eve’s top five tips for providing value on social media:
- Write useful ‘how to’ guides that will help people – and link to it on social networking sites. List form content is always popular and likely to be reshared widely as well as top 10 or top 5 listicle style blogs.
- Try podcasts – post them on your company website then link back on your social media accounts. Podcasts have grown massively in popularity over the last couple of years and once again, likely to be reshared and gain a heap of traction. This enables you to reach people who prefer to digest information in different ways, too – or those who don’t feel that they have time to sit and read. Think commuters, mums, and anyone who prefers to gain information by talking and listening than by reading a guide.
- Think seriously about engagement. Posting the right content is one thing, but be sure to proactively communicate with others, too. Get involved with discussions to push yourself as an industry expert and don’t forget that being active on social media really is just digital networking. (We hope) you wouldn’t turn up to a networking event and babble about yourself and what you do the whole time – it’s a conversation.
- Find relevant Twitter Chats to get involved with to find likeminded accounts who are interested in what you’re talking about online, and ask questions to your community. Ask their opinion on something, contribute to hashtag threads and don’t be precious about sharing content that isn’t yours.
- Take note of stats. Every social media platform has a dedicated analytics section which enables you to see which of your posts have performed well and those that have (hopefully not) tanked. Not everything you talk about will gain traction and you can’t expect to be a viral social media sensation overnight but utilising analytics will help you to understand what your followers like.
Find your people
Try to be proactive when it comes to finding people that are going to be interested in what you’re talking about online – and those who you find interesting, too. Create a feed full of inspirational and useful content for yourself by following the right people and you’ll have ample relevant content to share from other accounts.
Start by looking up those who have similar accounts to your own, or peers in your industry and look at who they are connected with and who engages with their content. Check out influencers, partners, affiliates and suppliers as well as bloggers, journalists and writers within the events industry. Google Alerts is also a good way of finding out who’s talking about topics of interest.
Back to basics
If you don’t know where to start or want to spruce up your social feed with some quick fixes whilst you come up with a content plan or more solid social strategy, it’s time to go back to basics. Take a look at eve’s top three quick and easy social media boosters:
- Say who you are and what you do succinctly. Make it really clear who you are what you do so that people can see straight away from your bio that you’re someone they’d like to connect with.
- Make sure you include all of the basic information such as a profile photo, header image, location and your work bio. This all helps people who are searching for people in your location, industry or by any related keywords to find you.
- Include links back to your website and tag relevant accounts when posting about them. Include location tags.
Keep on posting!
Had a break from social media lately or feel like you haven’t been posting enough? That’s ok, but aim to post at least once a day. Regular posting= more engagement and traction and way more interest in your page. This is particularly important if you’re using Instagram because the algorithm favours posts which gain high levels of engagement within the first few minutes and the accounts that are most active. Try to be consistent with your posts and create a schedule using a platform like Buffer or Hootsuite to make it easier for yourself.
“Too many people are looking to gain something for themselves from social media and they make the mistake of talking about themselves too much. It’s an online community, a live conversation and just like any conversation the ones who only talk about themselves gets blocked out quickly. It’s really important to listen and to be an active and value adding participant of our industry’s online community and then you will naturally stand out for what you are great at.” – Matt Beech, Marketing Director, Event industry marketing agency Patch Media