How to market an event on social media

Create a strategy

Before you dive into social media event marketing, you need a strategy. 

This includes thinking about which platform you’re going to prioritise. It’s helpful to think about where your audience spends the most time. Have a look at how previous posts have performed and think about the age range of your attendees. 

Next, think about what you want from social media. Ideally, you’ll be looking to achieve ticket sales, raise brand awareness, promote audience engagement and, if you have one, drive visits to your website. 

Pick one or two of these and start from there. This way, your messaging will be clear and you’ll find it easier to see results. 

Interact with your audience

We’re taught to ask questions from an early age. 

So, when carrying out social media event marketing, create a weekly series of posts asking your audience questions related to festivals, live music, gigs, club nights and more. 

Got footage from a previous event? Even better. Use the footage to create a carousel of Instagram posts and ask your followers which was their favourite moment from that event. You’re showing people what it’s like to be at your event and making them feel part of your brand. 

Use brand storytelling

Brand storytelling helps with social media event marketing, too. If you’ve been running your event for a while, you can dive into the history, put your team on camera, talk about growth and why you run events. 

Here, the key is to think about what makes your event unique. Maybe you’re going to book an act you’re excited about, you’re expanding your event, or you have a history of championing acts and scenes that others don’t. 

People like to see the stories behind the events they love. So, by including team members, speaking about the passion that fuels your hard work and recalling the memories of hosting your event, you’re building authenticity and trust with your audience. 

The length of your brand storytelling piece is up to you and will depend on your resources. You might have to look externally if you haven’t got a digital content expert on your team.  

Entertain your audience

At this point, tagging your friends, family or significant other in a funny Instagram Reel or TikTok post is a genuine form of communication. It’s like You’ve Been Framed for the digital age, and we’ve each become our own versions of Harry Hill.

So, why not get in on the action? Don’t worry: we aren’t asking you to create full-blown comedy scripts; your team has enough on its plate. However, capitalising off the back of a TikTok trend can be a way of making your audience laugh. 

If you’ve got a funny, social media whizz on your team though, get them involved! 

You can be a little crafty here, too. Lots of people use entertaining content to announce new tours and releases. It means you can entertain and promote in one go, a two-in-one social media event marketing strategy. 

Use Instagram Stories

Instagram’s Stories feature allows you to place a clickable link in your story post and customise the text. Here, you can post some promotional content with the link to your website. 

Whichever method you choose, ensure that your Call To Action (CTA) is worded straightforwardly. A CTA is a piece of text which encourages people to take action, so you want to be clear and concise to encourage clickthrough’s.