How to get more participants and visibility for your event? Utilising social media influencers can significantly increase the visibility of your events. There are various ways to involve influencers in promoting your event, depending on the event's style, needs, and resources. Different collaboration methods should definitely be combined as well.
Collaborative content in influencers' own channels
When you aim to create a well-planned package with clear calls to action, pre-planned and agreed-upon collaboration with influencers in their own channels is an excellent option.
Before contacting influencers, it's advisable to define your own needs, target audience, and content activations. The choice of social media channels strongly depends on the age of the target audience – young people are more on TikTok, mom influencers on Instagram, and business executives on LinkedIn. The right influencer is one whose followers represent your event's target audience and who is also genuinely interested in your event. This way, content creation is effortless, and collaboration is smooth.
When briefing the influencer, be clear about what matters most to you. Is it maximising visibility or achieving the best ticket sales? Different call-to-action (CTA) goals require different types of content, and influencers can tailor their content best when they have a clear understanding of your expectations.
Select a collaboration publication schedule based on your target audience's purchasing behavior. If tickets for your summer event sell out the previous winter, there's no need for influencer content to link to ticket purchase pages in April. Instead, focus on maximising brand visibility during the spring.
Be supportive of the influencer and let them know they can easily reach out to you to brainstorm content ideas. Remember that the best influencer content is the one that fits naturally into the influencer's channel and isn't overly promotional.
Influencer-to-influencer PR gifts
When you have a limited budget but want to maximize visibility in a specific target audience, influencer-to-influencer PR gifts are a great choice.
Here, you collaborate with one main influencer to design a PR gift that represents your event, which they can send to, for example, 10 influencer colleagues.
Plan the contents of the PR gift so that it includes only necessary items. Include a handwritten greeting with a request for activation, such as hashtags. When packaging the gift, consider sustainability and use as few packaging materials or plastic as possible.
When selecting recipients together with the influencer, inform them about your event and the types of target audiences you'd like to reach with the PR gift. This way, the influencer can choose suitable influencer colleagues as recipients.
Measuring the effectiveness of PR gifts can be challenging. Monitor the recipients' accounts when the gifts are sent. You can also politely ask recipients if they received the gift. However, remember that receiving a PR gift does not obligate an influencer to publicly mention it.
Ticket giveaways
Ticket giveaways can be combined with both traditional content collaborations and influencer-to-influencer PR. This is a great way to increase visibility for your event and potentially grow your social media following.
In a ticket giveaway, an influencer raffles tickets to your event on their own channel. However, a couple of considerations should be kept in mind.
The timing of the ticket giveaway should allow the winner enough time to prepare for the event after they've been notified.
Carefully plan the giveaway and winner contact process before conducting it to ensure a smooth execution and a positive first impression of your event organization.
Use ticket giveaways to grow your own social media channels as well. Often, a condition for participating in the giveaway is that the entrant follows both the influencer and the event organiser's social media accounts. To increase visibility further, ask participants in the giveaway comments whom they would attend the event with if two event tickets are being raffled.
Involving influencers in event programming
Many influencers are experts in specific subject areas, and you should definitely involve them in your event programming.
You can agree on event marketing with them in advance on their channels, giving your event added visibility.
Additionally, they can engage their followers when planning the content of their speeches. Most influencers have thousands of followers with whom they regularly interact. This should be utilised when considering the content and various perspectives of their speeches.
Summary
Combining events and influencers offers numerous opportunities. It all starts with good planning, clear goals and expectations, and open communication with the influencer. This way, you can achieve the best results and create creative implementations that interest the influencer's followers and the event's target audience.
Do you need help with marketing your event with the help of influencers? Send me a message, and we can plan an effective strategy for you.
Micaela Rosenlew
Influencer Marketing Specialist
+358400468217
micaela@pinghelsinki.fi
Photo by Josh Rose on Unsplash
