The role of social media in promoting and enhancing conferences and professional events

This is branded content.

Keen to create a buzz around your next professional event? Consider using social media to promote it.

Why? If you're strategic about it, you can make major marks in the online space in the lead-up to your gathering.

By using cyberspace to your advantage, you can drum up real interest around your conference or event - both before, during, and after it's happened - via a range of different social media marketing strategies.

Here's how to do it.

Event marketing via social media. It's a no-brainer.

Why? There are so many different platforms, channels, and ways you can use social media marketing to promote your professional events.

Here are some of the most effective methods:

What's a social gathering without any people in attendance? Similarly, professional conferences require an in-person audience of attendees - or, for want of a better term, a good number of bums on seats - to be viable, effective, and worthwhile.

When you're organising a professional event, then, you need to be able to generate genuine interest in the upcoming gathering and encourage your target audience to attend.

So how do you do this with social media? Make attention-piquing announcements. If you want your audience to be especially intrigued, try releasing 'teaser' announcements a couple of days before dropping the news that you're hosting an event.

Also known as 'drip campaigns', this tactic of teasing your social media audience can keep them right where you want them: on their toes, and biting at the bit for your event news to be released.

Have you ever attended a wedding that had its own hashtag? "#MeganandJosh2023", guests may have been asked to caption their social media posts of the day with.

This ingenious method - which is, essentially, the basis of the concept of branded hashtags - can also be utilised to promote professional events and conferences.

Let's be real for a minute, though - most social media platforms are predominantly visual. To support your branded hashtags and the visual content that will appear under them, then, don't forget to arrange your branded marketing collateral.

You can very easily source branded flyers, pamphlets, and lanyards for sale in Australia to help set the tone of your event. This collateral will also appear as the backdrop of the hashtagged images that will appear around the event on social media.

The best part about using branded event hashtags? While a branded hashtag can, of course, enable conference attendees to upload their photos to one centralised online location, and also, to find other posts that are listed under the same hashtag - by the same token, event organisers can also click on the event's hashtag to view all of the social media posts attendees have uploaded.

This can be extremely helpful for businesses and marketing departments - particularly for the collection, collation, and curation of on-brand marketing content for their social media platforms.

So, the conference you took so much time, effort, and energy to organise is done and dusted.

But it's not over yet. The best part about hosting a professional event? You can use the content that was captured on the day, to continue promoting your business.

A great example of this strategy in action is demonstrated by a Melbourne women's walking group known as Hype Girls Social Club. The event organiser takes video content at each of the group's weekly 'Slay Strolls'.

She will then upload this footage (with the walkers' consent, of course), to both Facebook and Instagram later in the week.

These uploads serve two purposes: not only do they enable event attendees to reminisce on a Sunday morning well spent walking with other like-minded women, but they also entice new followers to come along.

In this sense, organisers of professional events can utilise the social media content taken at recent conferences to engage interest, generate awareness, and promote the reasons why audiences should attend future gatherings.

There you have it - our top tips for capitalising on social media to promote and enhance your professional events.

To recap, first, utilise social media platforms to generate excitement before the event by making targeted announcements online.

Once they're all on-site, you can then capture your attendees' engagement throughout the day, through the use of officially branded and themed hashtags.

Make sure to keep things going well after the conference is done and dusted, by continuing to use the content that's been gathered on the day to promote your business after the event is over.

The best part? You can even add this captured content to your portfolio of marketing collateral moving forward, as well as use it to promote any future business gatherings you're planning to host.