It is difficult to believe that Facebook is less than ten years old, so widespread is its use. Since its inception as a way for college students in the US to keep in touch, it has evolved into a hugely useful tool that can spread the word about almost anything in a matter of hours or even minutes.
If you are an event organizer, it is wise to make the most of Facebook in order to encourage registration and generate more ticket sales. This is easier to do than you may think, as we’ll outline below. Here are 5 ways where you can expand your reach using Facebook for better events promotion:
1. Invite who you already know
Facebook integrates with major email service providers to import your contacts to invite them to like your page. You could also opt to upload your contact list where there are detailed steps by Facebook to tell you how to do it. However, do note that there is a limitation of 5,000 contacts that Facebook can support.
Inviting your contacts to like your Facebook Page
2. Post Interesting content to create interest.
Facebook ultimately still excels as a social media tool that is more appropriate in a relaxed setting so having content that is more engaging and light-hearted compared to serious tone would be preferred. Our Happy Fridays postings on Facebook typically has double the engagement level compared to our normal blog post sharing.
3. Target specific companies? You can do it via Facebook
Most companies would look at Linkedin to do company targeting but typically would cost much more compared to any other social media tools. How about using Facebook to do workplace targeting? Facebook does allow workplace targeting, at a fraction of the cost compared to Linkedin. For example, if I intend to run a campaign targeting specific companies in the Technology sector for a Technology event, I could use Facebook to run ads targeting at specific companies.
Workplace targeting via Facebook
4. Promote your Event App via Facebook
You can specifically target a group of audience for app installs. Firstly, you have to upload your event attendee list to Facebook by uploading a data file.
Next, give your campaign a name, to make it easily identifiable. You can choose to identify the audience by Email or mobile number.
Uploading your event attendees to Facebook
After you are done with the audience set-up, you can click on “Create an Ad” button next to the Audience Name, which will lead to the below screen. Select “App Installs”. You will then be prompted to key in your app URL. Ideally, you should have a landing page which have option of letting users select which mobile OS they are using. If not, you can key in the URL of your Mobile App, but in this case, you can only key in one URL, such as the iTunes or Google Play link where your app can be found.
Facebook can be a powerful event promotion tool if you know the tools available. Try it and see how Facebook can become an essential part of your event marketing strategy.
