Social media has become a vital tool for event organizers to reach a wider audience, build excitement and engagement around an event, and ultimately drive ticket sales. However, many event organizers make mistakes when promoting their event on social media that can hurt their efforts. In this blog post, we'll explore 12 common social mistakes and how to fix them.
Mistake 1: Not Having a Social Media Presence
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when promoting your event on social media is not having a presence at all. In our digital age, social media is a crucial part of a successful marketing strategy. Not having an online presence can severely limit your event’s reach and shrink your audience.
How to Fix It: Create social media accounts for your organization on the major platforms including; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. When choosing which platforms to build a presence on, it’s important to show up where your audience is. If your target audience doesn’t spend time on LinkedIn it may not be worth investing resources to marketing on that platform.
Mistake 2: Not Having a Social Media Strategy
This is often the most common and harmful mistake that event producers make when promoting their event on social media. Without a clear social media strategy, your efforts can lack direction and focus. It also leads to inconsistent branding as you may struggle to maintain a consistent image and voice across all channels. Lastly, you may continue to miss opportunities to engage with your followers and promote your event.
How to Fix It: Define your goals for social media, identify your target audience, and create a content plan that aligns with your event's messaging and values. Creating a solid social media strategy allows you to build a foundation that will influence your decisions and help you focus your efforts on things that will create value.
Mistake 3: Not Defining Your Audience
Knowing your target audience is key to creating effective social media content. If you don’t know who you’re marketing to, you may end up posting irrelevant content and wasting resources. You may also communicate ineffectively if your tone, language, and messaging aren’t tailored to your audience.
How to Fix It: Take the time to define your ideal event guest and tailor your messaging and content to appeal to them. You can often find your ideal audience by analyzing your current audience. Look at who is already engaging with your content and what they’re interested in, they’re probably part of your target audience. You can also experiment with different approaches to see what works best and adjust it to find the most effective strategy.
Mistake 4: Not Linking to Your Ticketing Page
While this may seem obvious, this is often a detail that gets left by the wayside. However, it is a very costly mistake to make. Without a clear easy way for your guests to purchase tickets, you’re missing out on potential ticket sales. Not to mention the confusion and frustration that your guests may feel when trying to search for your ticketing page.
How to Fix It: Some platforms, like Instagram, don’t allow you to put clickable links in the caption. To combat this issue, you can put the link in your bio and reference it in the post caption in combination with a strong call-to-action to encourage them to follow the link.
Mistake 5: Not Utilizing Social Media Discounts
Social media discounts are a great way to increase your reach on social media. They incentivize your guests to share your event for an instant discount, however, most event organizers don’t utilize this great feature.
How to Fix It: Did you know that Passage is one of the only event ticketing companies that offers instant social media discounts? This is a discount that can be applied to their current transaction, not a future sale. We know that your guests want a discount and you want to increase your audience and get more eyes on your event. That’s why we build features made for your event. The fix for this mistake is utilizing social media discounts and encouraging your guests to share your event on their account.
If you want to learn more about how to use social media discounts and the value they can bring to your event, check out this blog post: The Event Producer’s Guide to Social Media Part 1: Social Media Discounts.
Mistake 6: Using Too Many or Too Few Hashtags
While hashtags can be an effective way to reach a wider audience, using too many hashtags can be counterproductive. It’s better to be intentional with the hashtags you’re using on your posts than using every hashtag you can think of. It can look spammy, decrease the quality of your content, and doesn’t usually work in your favor in terms of targeting the right audience.
On the flip side, not using any hashtags can make it harder for potential attendees to find your event on social media. You can miss out on engagement opportunities, decrease the discoverability of your post, and have a more limited ability to track your performance.
How to Fix It: Try to limit yourself to a few (five is a good number to stay at) relevant hashtags per post, and make sure they are specific to your event and audience. Do the research beforehand to make sure the hashtags you’re using are appropriate for your content and use them consistently.
Mistake 7: Not Replying to Comments on Your Posts
Social media is a two-way conversation, and not responding to comments can make it seem like you're not interested in engaging with your audience. Not only that, you may be missing out on valuable feedback or creating a negative reputation for your brand if commenters feel ignored.
How to Fix It: Keep an eye on your comment section and respond promptly in a helpful and friendly way. It’s important to open a conversation with commenters and address negative comments by offering a solution or explanation for their concern.
Mistake 8: Not Addressing Mentions
Social mentions refers to any instance where someone tags your account through a post, comment, DM, or reply. Monitoring these mentions is important because it allows you to track what people are saying about your brand, both positive and negative. This can help you identify customer service issues, address customer concerns and complaints, and engage with your audience in a meaningful way.
How to Fix It: Take the time to monitor how your brand is being mentioned either through social media listening tools or manually. Then it’s important to respond promptly to those mentions with authentic, personalized responses.
Mistake 9: Posting Too Infrequently
Posting too infrequently can make it hard to build momentum and excitement around your event. It reduces engagement and visibility since your content will be seen less and probably de-prioritized by the algorithm. Your followers may also lose interest in your event(s) if they aren’t seeing your content regularly.
How to Fix It: Consistency is key with social media. The best way to set yourself up for success in this area is to plan out your content and follow a strategy. You can also use scheduling tools to help you stay on track and save time. As with every part of social media, experimenting with different strategies and posting schedules can offer valuable insights into your audience’s preferences.
Mistake 10: Promoting Yourself Too Much
Another common social media mistake is constantly promoting your event on social media can be off-putting to potential guests. This can cause your audience to become disinterested and lead to a drop in engagement. It also decreases your authenticity as too much self-promotion can make your social media presence feel inauthentic. Over-promotion can also lead to a negative perception of your brand as guests may view it as uninterested in providing value.
How to Fix It: Instead, focus on creating engaging content that provides value to your audience and builds excitement around your event. We recommend minimizing your self-promotional posts to about 20% of your content. To maintain interest, mix up your content by posting a variety of formats such as static posts, videos, trending content, and user-generated content. Don’t be afraid to share content about your team or participate in fun trends.
Mistake 11: Relying Too Much on Automation
While automation can be a helpful tool, relying too heavily on it can make your social media accounts feel impersonal and robotic. It can also lead to decreased engagement since it doesn’t allow for real-time interactions with your audience. There are great automation tools out there that can help with consistency and can be relied upon for scheduling posts, monitoring metrics, and performing routine tasks. However, they should be used intentionally and sparingly.
How to Fix It: Make sure to balance automated posts with genuine, personalized content. Don’t rely on automations to respond to comments and messages, those should be personalized. Don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy and be flexible. It’s also important to monitor your automated posts and make sure that your content stays relevant, appropriate, and timely.
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Mistake 12: Not Tracking or Using Analytics Software
Without tracking and analyzing your social media metrics, it can be hard to know what's working and what's not. Analytics can offer insight into what is and isn’t working, where you may be wasting resources, and opportunities for engaging with your audience.
How to Fix It: Use analytics software to track engagement, reach, and conversion rates, and adjust your strategy accordingly. You can set goals and benchmarks for your social media performance and regularly track your progress. Tools like Meta (formerly Facebook) Pixel and Google Analytics are valuable analytics tools that can help you optimize your content strategy.
Final Thoughts
Social media can be a powerful tool for promoting your event online, but it requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. By avoiding these 12 common mistakes and implementing the tips provided, you can maximize your event’s reach, engagement, and success on social media.
Passage is the leading online ticket sales platform with features built for you and your event. From social media discounts to integration with analytics tools, Passage is your all-in-one mobile box office solution.
Schedule a demo with our team today to learn more about our professional features that help event organizers like you reach more fans and sell more tickets.
