Social Media Engagement: Why Does it Matter at Your Event?

Now that there are more tools to help incorporate social media into your events than ever there's no excuse to let it fall by the wayside in your event planning.

Figuring out ways to connect your event to a range of social media platforms, as well as strategies to ensure that your guests engage with them, is crucial now to the success of your event. How your attendees are interacting with social media at your event has far-reaching effects.

Why Social Media Engagment Matters

1. You can create buzz for your event with social media campaigns, and grab your guests' attention and excitement days before they ever set foot at your event.

2. Once your event has arrived, having interesting, exciting, and fun opportunities to interact with social media will keep your guests' attention and ensure that they're more actively engaged with your event.

3. If your event has an overall message or takeaway, keeping your guests engaged with social media will help cement that message and leave a longer lasting impression, both as they interact with your ideas on the day of the event and look over their social media profiles afterwards.

4. When your guests use social media at your event, it then extends your message, client's name, and your reputation as a planner far beyond the confines of your event to all of your guests' networks. If their networks then engage with those posts, the amplification rate of your campaign increases exponentially.

5. Social media can also be used as a channel for customer service. Monitoring social media engagement at the time of your event can allow for immediate customer satisfaction by enabling you to know how to adjust your event to meet their needs or respond to any small fires that need to be put out.

6. Your social media strategy serves as one of the biggest tools for establishing branding for your event, your client, and you as an event planner. How you encourage engagement and the opportunities you bring to the table is an easy way to create a voice, environment, and a point of view.

7. As you see who is engaging with your social media and how, you'll be able to get a much better understanding of who your audience is. You can study the demographics and interests of those who interact with your event most often and most favorably to figure out who you and your clients are reaching successfully and where you need to adjust your strategy.

8. After the event is over, you can use social media to keep the conversation going and keep your event and message in the forefront of your guests' attention. This expands the life of your event and your opportunities.

9. Measuring social media engagement is the best way to quantify the success of your event. Analyzing the metrics of who, how, and how often people interacted with your social media can give you a wide range of hard numbers to report to your clients.

10. You can then use these numbers, as well as your guests' feedback through social media and your other observations, to help you make your future social media strategies and events even better because you'll have a clear view of where you're most successful and what ideas need more work.Perfecting your social media strategy can assist you every step of the way in your event planning. It strengthens your event before it starts, the day-of, and afterwards. It also has great importance for your clients, your guests, and your own business. So, be sure to keep it in mind as soon as you start building your event.

To help you figure out which social media metrics you need to be measuring check out our post: The Top 3 Social Media Metrics You Need To Keep Track Of.