How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

It’s time to get clever with content marketing…The coffee cart is booked, and the balloons are sorted. Your radio ads are running, and RSVPs have started to come through. But have you considered how content marketing will play a role in your upcoming event?

From social media to EDMs, content marketing is a cost-effective way to communicate your next event. We, along with Event Director, Kate Stewart, from En Pointe Events, have created this guide to help you execute a successful content marketing strategy from pre-event preparations, to on-the-day celebrations, and post-event recaps.

Armed with incredible attention to detail, impeccable organisation skills and an apt for effective communication, the team at En Pointe Events is highly experienced in organising successful property events of all shapes, sizes and styles, and so understands the importance of implementing a comprehensive content marketing plan to support your event.

Discover our top content marketing ideas to implement for your next event inside...

Contents + Social Media......................4

+ Pre-event.................. ...5

+ During the event.......... ....6

+ Post-event....................8

+ Blogs.............................9

+ EDMs..............................9

+ SMS...............................9

+ Conclusion.......................10

4 How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

Social Media The world of social media is your oyster when it comes to promoting your event. Not only are social media platforms free to use, they offer a medium to instantly connect and communicate with your followers.

Facebook posts, Instagram stories, live videos and Snapchat filters; the opportunities are truly endless! Here are some ideas:

5 How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

Social Media Pre-eventBefore your event takes place, there are weeks and months dedicated to effectively planning it. There are so many ways you can utilise social media during this time to promote your upcoming event and raise awareness within your target market. They include:

• Create an event page on Facebook and promote via Facebook Ads. This will allow greater exposure to your target market and deliver this information directly to your followers.

• Gather RSVPs through your Facebook event. This can help you to keep track of the level of interest in your event, and give you a rough idea of the number of attendees.

• En Pointe Tip: While setting up a Facebook event is great for communicating updates, we advise most clients to ask guests to register via a platform such as Eventbrite. Doing this means that the number of attendees can be capped once it reaches a certain point, allows for onsite check-ins, guest tracking and data capture.

• Tag your suppliers, stakeholders andstallholders in any posts about yourupcoming event. Get savvy with suppliercontent. Ask your suppliers if they haveimages you can share. They’ll definitelyappreciate the cross-promotional opportunity!

• Develop a hashtag strategy. This isimportant for ensuring posts about yourevent can be easily found, shared andcategorised, enabling greater opportunitiesfor views and engagement. You may like tocreate a branded hashtag for your event,and encourage attendees, suppliers andstakeholders to use it in all of their posts too.

• En Pointe Tip: This one is a big YES! Often,this incredibly important strategy is left as anafterthought, and our clients are left unsureof how to implement it effectively. Things toconsider when developing your event hashtagand social media strategy include:

– Is there an embargo date?

– Are there any photos you’d like

suppliers and community stakeholders to publish pre-event and that you can provide?

– What handles, hashtags or geo-locations do you want people to use?Remember to keep the hashtag simpleand check that it isn’t overused orlinked to something inappropriate.

– Is there one hashtag than can be usedacross an umbrella of events?

• Plan out your pre-event posting frequency.It’s important to determine how muchcoverage you want to provide in the weeksleading up to your event. You may plan to postonce or twice each week, three weeks beforeyour event, and three posts each week in theweek before your event. It’s important to postfrequently in the days leading up to the eventto ensure it remains top-of-mind for youraudience.

6 How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

• Post reminders on Instagram and Facebook Stories in the lead up to your event. Stories are a great medium for authentic and casual communication with your followers.

• Set a countdown in your Instagram stories. Instagram’s countdown feature is an excellent way to remind your followers of your event in a fun and fresh way. The day before your event, set a countdown in one of your Instagram stories and watch as it counts down the hours, minutes and seconds!

• En Pointe Tip: Keep your guests informed. Communication is key! Let guests know where event updates will be posted so they can stay in the loop. This is especially important for weather updates or any factors that could prevent the event from taking place.

During the eventSocial media is such a fun, interactive, diverse and effortless channel of content marketing to use throughout your event. Some ideas include:

• Post behind-the-scenes images or stories while you set up. You can even boost the posts to those who like your page, to let them know that you’re excited for them to attend. This form of authentic communication is usually enjoyed by social media users.

• En Pointe Tip: Allocate a social media monitor. Often, it’s best to allocate someone to monitor the social media activity at your event. This includes answering questions, posting content and being interactive with the online community. This is a time-consuming job that requires dedication and can distract you from other roles that you may be trying to juggle. That’s why we advise allocating a specific person to this role.

• Film a live video using your mobile phone. Whether on Instagram or Facebook – or both – a live video is a raw, authentic and fun way to engage with your audience. Due to the uncut nature of live videos, they’re also really easy to execute as they don’t require any professional skills. During your live video you’ll need to consider the following:

– Have a steady hand for filming.

– If the subject that you’re filming is moving, don’t pan your frame – keep it still. Too much movement is distracting.

– Film in vertical for better social engagement.

– Make sure the sun is behind you, not in front of you, so the camera can clearly focus on the subject you’re filming.

– Try not to zoom too much as this can compromise the quality of your video.

• En Pointe Tip: Consider the legalities. Ensure you have suitable and clearly visible signage or release forms on-site that communicate permission to use images and photos of event attendees, including children.

7 How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

• Hire a photographer or videographer to capture the event. A videographer is particularly useful because in one day of filming, their videos can be repurposed to create multiple short clips, such as builder interviews and purchaser testimonials. These will be great to use as future content that isn’t specific to the event.

• Tip: If you set up a filming booth, you could interview children and adults and get them to say various messages around key dates, such as:

– All I want for Christmas is…

– Happy Mother’s/Father’s Day

– I’m excited to live in [project name] because…

These clips can then be used for future content, providing you with a variety of fun and engaging material to use throughout the year. If you need some inspiration for some key dates that your attendees can reference, download our Key Dates Calendar.

• En Pointe Tip: Brief your photographer and videographer in advance. Have a think about what style of photos you need - styling shots, candid images, organised groups, and any formalities. Do you have a preference for

landscape or portrait shots? What are you going to use your video for? Consider all these points and brief your photographer ahead of the event, so they can successfully fulfil your requirements and requests.

• Set up a Snapchat filter. This is an excellent way to encourage attendees to share images from your event and increase interest and engagement.

• Encourage user-generated content. Getting your attendees to share photos and hashtags from your event is the best way to reach a wide audience and drive engagement. Why not host an inexpensive competition to encourage people to share the photos they take at your event? Inform attendees that if they create a post with your branded hashtag and tag your social account, they’ll go into the draw to win a prize. From the photos posted, select your favourite and towards the end of the event, announce the winner.

This competition can be advertised on social media leading up to the event and verbally communicated by staff during the event. You can even have a booth set up where people can take fun photos with props.

• En Pointe Tip: Consider your user-generated content intentions. We often find that people will take photos at events but not share them socially or on a platform that can be accessed publicly. Have a think about your goals in relation to user-generated content.

– Do you want to set something up to capture guest data?

– Are you aiming for maximum social media traction?

– Or would you like to provide a value add to guests? For example, printable photo booth images they can take home with them. If you go for this option, you can often receive a soft copy gallery of images which can be useful for content also.

• Provide your suppliers and builder partners with an image and some words that they can use to send to their networks. This affords your event and brand exposure to their audience.

8 How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

Post eventThe content marketing opportunities don’t end when the event does – so make sure not to lose momentum! Now is the time to come up with creative ideas to continue to share all the content you’ve created from your event. Some ideas include:

• Post an image gallery on social media. Tag all respective parties that you are able to, such as staff, stakeholders and suppliers, and encourage attendees to tag themselves and their friends. (While Instagram only allows a maximum of 10 images in each post, you can post an endless amount on Facebook.) This is a great way to encourage engagement and interaction.

• Create a ‘thanks for joining us’ post and be sure to tag your suppliers and stallholders. This is just a small gesture to not only show your appreciation but achieve cross promotion.

• Tip: Turn your still photos into a video for higher engagement. Gather a selection of images and create a slideshow-style video from them. Add a bit of background music and a few headlines and voilà – a beautiful and engaging video that’s sure to increase your engagement. You can even create this directly within Facebook, for free!

• Don’t forget – you can always refer back to your event at a later date with a #ThrowbackThursday post.

• If your event had links to a charity or fund, prepare an infographic with the results from the day. Your community will always be interested in knowing the positive impact they’ve made.

9 How to Harness Content Marketing for your Next Event

After your event, you can write a blog post about the success of the day, what was achieved, who won your competitions and any other interesting or important information.

Blogs are an inexpensive content marketing tool that are great for SEO, so there’s no reason not to get typing!

What better way to reach your purchasers, potential leads and community directly than with an email! Sending out an EDM with all the information on your upcoming event is a great way to speak to your existing leads and purchasers. You may like to schedule your EDMs periodically, for example:

• A few weeks before the event: Save-the-date message informing the community of the location, date and time of the event.

• A week before: Provide more detail on the activities, entertainment and food that can be expected. Link to the event page and remind attendees to RSVP.

• A few days before: Highlight stallholders and specific activities that can be enjoyed at the event. Link to the event page and remind attendees to RSVP.

• Post-event: Thank recipients for getting involved and attending the event. Include links to image galleries on social media and any other content that covers the results of the event, such as blogs, videos or infographics.

• Tip: Why not go old-school and print some flyers to distribute to residents already living in your community?

Not to be overused, but SMS can be a useful tool to remind your database of the event. It’s no secret that the majority of people are now much more active through text messages than emails.

You may like to send a text to your database the day before the event with key information on the date, time, location and activities.

• En Pointe Tip: SMS is very a useful channel in the case of an event cancellation, event postponement or weather update.

Blogs EDMs SMS

ConclusionNow that you’re equipped with the many ways you can incorporate content marketing into your next event, what initiatives are you likely to carry out?

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you try any of the suggestions throughout our guide – we’d love to hear about the success of your content marketing and event strategy!

hello@propertyrepublic.com.au www.propertyrepublic.com.au

We’d love to hear from you

hello@enpointeevents.com.au www.enpointeevents.com.au

To create your extraordinary event