Introduction

Prepare for your next event using Instagram event marketing. As Instagram continues to grow rapidly in popularity, the ways you can leverage your channel are equally expanding. However, the use of stories is increasing and the launch of IGTV and in-app sales have made businesses to find new ways to engage their audience with their products or services. But have you ever considered how you can use your Instagram channel to promote your events?

Whether it’s a small town business event, networking conference, trade show or co-hosted event. Instagram is the perfect platform to be utilized before, during and after your event to increase general brand awareness. As well as promote event attendance, establish thought leadership and more. While the content you post will continue to vary depending on the kind of event you’re hosting. Many of the same themes will still remain vital for promotion across all events.

Not sure where to start to prepare for your next event? This article is is for you then… read on!

How do you market an event on Instagram?

Let’s discuss on the steps on how to market an event using Instagram.

Getting started

The first thing you need to do is to create a new account. Be smart about it. To create an account for a large festival or conference do make sense. If that isn’t you, just create an Instagram account for your company. This avoids pigeonholing yourself just to build an audience from one small event.

Now let’s flesh up your profile page. See your profile as a landing page for your potential ticket buyers. This is the point where your event either makes a great first impression or just fades away from memory. You need to showcase your event both through the copy and your images. When your tickets are already on sale, definitely link to your ticketing page. Use an catchy call to action like “Grab your early bird tickets now before they run out” to get the point across. The profile equally must have some photos that will make people want to explore the account. This is the key.

Content creation

Before you use Instagram for marketing, you need to get in the flow to publish awesome photos. Luckily it’s very pretty easy to do. That’s why people are using Instagrams in the first place.

What do you post?

You have created your profile and prepared your content, now think of ideas of what to post to engage with your Instagrammers.

Announcements: No-brainer here. No matter what kind of event you plan, there’s something new to announce about it.
Countdowns: Is your event 200 days away? Post about it then. How about 50? Post about it again and again. Don’t hesitate and be thinking that your audience will be annoyed. People do scroll through their feeds so quickly unless you are doing a countdown by the hour, you’ll be just fine. This builds up excitement in them for your event.
Trendjacking: This one will take a little more creativity. Trendjacking is for you capitalize an existing trend to promote your brand. Remember not all your photos need to be directly tied to your event.
Flyer promos: Don’t just think but see it as a direct ad for your event. But use it sparingly as no one likes to follow a self-promoting Instagram handle.
Event photos: A no-brainer. You will use these before, during, and after your event. This is the definition of social proof of your event.
Inspirational quotes: Make sure the quotes are relevant to the audience you will be targeting.

Building your audience

Account engagement

Using Instagram for marketing, you must identify your event’s target audience. The easiest place to start is location. Let’s say you want to plan a bacon festival in Austin, Texas. You need to head over to Instagram’s and search #atx under the tags column. #atx is a very pretty popular hashtag used by Austinites. When you search the hashtag, Instagram will show you the most popular ones.

Contests

Contests will work pretty well for marketing on Instagram. A solid strategy is to organize contests where the winner will get a couple free tickets.

Shoutouts

Th last growth strategy for how to use Instagram to market your event comes in the form of a shoutout. A shoutout is a post you use on another Instagram account that will encourage that account’s followers to follow you.

Urbizboost recommendation

For an event, we recommend you research for influencers in your city. City influencers might be publications, restaurants, or just ordinary people. When you get them, you will have a couple local publications to reach out to for a shoutout. You’ll need the account to share an image and caption that you will curate yourself. Most importantly, get them to mention your event in one of their photos. Next thing you will is to find the contact emails of your target influencers and pitch them. At least to help sweeten the deal, communicate that you’ll return the favor by giving them a big shoutout. This way they will get exposure to your own audience as well. The shoutout strategy equally do work for influencers that are relevant to your event type. As you grow your audience, it’s equally important to create your own hashtag for the event. The power of having an event hashtag is that your attendees will tag their own photos with your hashtag. This will not only help to increase your reach but also give you more photos to publish into your feed.

Promote your events using Instagram

Instagram is a perfect tool you can use to spread the word about your event when doing Instagram event marketing. To incorporate the use of Instagram into your event planning, you will create excitement before, during, and after the big day. Here are some few tips to make the most of this free platform to boost your event marketing abilities.

Before the event

Hashtags

Creating a #hashtag that will be specific to your event, and another that will be specific to the volunteers. To use these two hashtags before your event will do wonders in creating buzz! Using them for every post that will related to the event will make people to click it and see the collection of related posts. Any additional hashtags that will related to the photo and event are equally very helpful to ensure that your photo is easily discoverable.

Review photo-taking tips

Never you feel that you don’t have the best photography skills, because you shouldn’t worry! Simply brush up on a few simple steps that will help you take more eye-catching photos and increase the chances of them being liked and shared by your followers.

FOMO

Create a great buzz that will generate FOMO: the fear of missing out. Posting information that will instill the fear of a missed opportunity will make people wanting to see more and it will likely get them to your event. Use Instagram to post video or photo teasers that will include special games guests, or vendors.

Contests

Giveaways and contests will get people excited, and they will encourage followers to spread the word for you! To be able to increase exposure and encourage more engagement, post an Instagram contest with just clear rules and instructions to follow. Rules will involve tagging friends in the comments of the photo or just them reposting the photo to their personal profiles. Incentives for this contest will include for instance, to offer free admission or free swag to people who will complete the assigned steps.

Get Volunteers Involved

Volunteers are perfect people you can use to promote your event! Just get them fully involved by giving them their daily duties that will include; Instagram posting. For the volunteers, give each a target number of photos, and have them share the photos with the specific event hashtag. Make sure to use your volunteer management tool to send reminders and provide them with a checklist that will details what NOT to forget in their posts.

During the event

Instagram stories

Make sure you take advantage of Instagram stories with photos and videos from the beginning to the end of the event. This will include live testimonials from attendees during the event!

Post consistently

Avoid getting spammy – you don’t need to be posting every five minutes – post at intervals throughout the day, for example, every three hours. Remember, you will put several photos and videos in one post, so it will be easy to categorize your moments and share a lot and avoid blowing up your followers’ feeds.

Go behind the scenes

Your Instagram story will include behind the scenes footage about your experience to prepare the event. People will enjoy seeing what it takes to make the event a success. They will feel like they’re in on a secret, like you trust them, which will build loyalty. Your volunteers will equally share posts like this, too.

After the event

Share attendee posts

You will give your attendees some recognition by sharing and commenting on their posts. Excitedly show your appreciation for their attendance and participation. Successfully use and spread the word for your personalized event hashtag, you will be able to find these posts easily!

Share press coverage

If possible, do share links to any news coverage of your event.

Ask for feedback

This is how you will get better next time! Ask your attendees to share their own experiences. Chances are, many of this feedback will be positive, which will help you create a buzz around the event; any constructive criticism will help you improve.

Share testimonials

When your attendees share their positive experience with you, then share that with your followers!

Learn Instagram marketing ideas from what others have done

Give events their own unique visual personality

Instagram event marketing will help you visually encompass your own event’s brand identity. See it like a scrapbook – every photo and video will add an extra dimension, that will show people what your event is all about. By creating a personality, audiences will better understand and connect with your event. You will portray your event in whatever way that best suits the market you’re trying to reach. Be consistent. Develop a unique style guide for your Instagram posts.

Tell stories from behind the scenes of the event

People love the opportunity to see sneaky glimpses behind the scenes. It will help followers connect with the event as they will feel involve and part of the planning process. Event marketers do often post photos or videos of event crews, guest speakers, attendees, sponsors and other participants. Try and find out if the people in your photos and videos have Instagram accounts. If they do, make sure you mention their username. And when you ask them nicely, they can even share it with their own followers!

Share interviews with high profile participants to build interest

Looking for a means to leverage the popularity of any influential people that will involve with your event? Don’t only get their face out there, equally get their voice out there too! Short, interesting interviews will go down a treat.

Encourage your audience participation with contests

Instagram event marketing competitions and sweepstakes will always help you spark interest in your event, engage your followers, and sometimes even gain new followers. Honestly, who doesn’t love to win stuff? Encourage your followers to comment, mention friends or start to use your event’s hashtag in their own posts are just a few means you might do it. Or, you can just use Instagram as a tool to announce the contest and direct your followers to a website to participate.

Present useful event information in creative ways

One of the coolest things about Instagram is you can easily inject vibrancy into any basic message, even the seemingly ‘boring’ event details. Things like transport, ticket collection, parking, dress attire, will be communicated in cool, creative ways. Just you packaging your message in a more creative way. Your audience will be more excited to read it and remember it. And that’s your dream, right?

Create a buzz around the venue or location

Sometimes the venue or location of the event is one of the major reasons why people will come! This is very relevant when the place has an element of beauty, an interesting history or is renowned in some ways. In this instance, pictures will do it justice far easier than words will ever do.

Share user generated content

Remember this is not a tactic to bring down your own work – it’s actually a perfect way for you to interact with your followers and show them you really value their contribution. Plus, it will encourage other followers to create their own content in relation to your event. Thereby spreading the word even further in the hope you will pick theirs up too.

Promote your event with Instagram stories

Prepare an eye catching visual

To choose the right visual for event promotion is very crucial. In fact, 65% of people are visual learners, so to have an eye-catching image will help grab their attention. Your first step will be to choose the right image that will illustrate your event. For instance, you will use photos of speakers or attendees. Then, you will need to put text info on the image: tag your featured person, add your branded hashtag, and so on. Using professional Instagram stories templates to create eye-catching visuals will help you slot.

Plan your Instagram stories campaign in advance

Timing plays a major role in event attendance. Understand that’s never too early to start promoting your event. If you need to attract more visitors, try and announce your event very well in advance. By the same token, to promote your event with Instagram stories requires an early planning. Plan your Instagram stories campaign to fit the needs of your targeted audience this will help in Instagram event marketing.

Team up with influencers

Nowadays, influencer marketing is now a must. People do seek out recommendations from peers before they make the decision to buy. To collaborate with a niche influencer will help to prove that your event is worth attending. Whether you invite celebrity guests to talk more about the event or you ask local influencers to promote your event on their social media profiles, you will still get wonderful results. Why? There’s no one way to approach an influencer partnership. Your creativity is the major ingredient to a successful promotion. So, learn how to partner with Instagram influencers to generate website traffic.

Write down key information

When this is done right, event descriptions will drive attendance. That’s why it’s very important for you to have a strong and clear description of your event. Inform your potential attendees more about your event. When and where it will take place, who will be speaker(s), and why it’s worth attending. When you promote your event with Instagram stories, be brief. You will just have 15 seconds to hook the audience before your viewers will scroll to the next Story. Stick to the major information about your event. That will be enough to grow the interest potential attendees.

Make the most of Instagram stories features

With the growing popularity of stories, Instagram has rolled out business-particular features that will help engage Here are different stories features that you can use when promoting your Instagram event marketing:

Geotags and location hashtags

When you organize an offline event, you’ll need to make sure people find it. Add geotags and hashtags to tell your followers about your event location.
Swipe-up link: If you have 10K+ followers on Instagram, you will add a clickable link in your stories. It’s a perfect way to provide interested followers with more information and start selling event tickets in-app.

The countdown sticker

This feature will help you create a sense of urgency. You will inform your followers when it’s time to buy tickets or to attend your event. When followers tap on your countdown sticker, they will give an option to get a reminder or re-share it to their account. Instagram event marketing will promote your event without any trouble.

Know when your audience is active

No matter how good your Instagram story will be, it’ll mean nothing unless your potential attendees is able to see it. Luckily, there’s always a coloured circle around your profile picture that will signal your followers that there’s a new story they haven’t yet seen. To reach more people, you should always analyse when your target audience is active with Instagram insights.

Create a separate story highlights album

If you are the type that do organise events regularly, it will be a good idea to tell your followers and profile visitors about this. The best way you will do this is to create a separate Instagram stories highlights album. And this will go a long way to help in your Instagram event marketing. In the album, you will add photos dedicated to the event you are planning. Why? These albums will always appear right below your Instagram bio. Making it easy for potential attendees to learn more about your events.

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