Decoding social media for event marketers

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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine Podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today’s show, we have the one and only, it’s Rachael Dines from Shake It Up Creative Rachael. How are you today?

Rachael:
Hi..I am good. Thank you. I’m just going to see that we’re almost matching today.

Lee:
We are as well. I believe you’re all the way over in Sussex in England. How’s the weather treating you? Because that’s what we talk about here in the UK.

Rachael:
It is, isn’t it? Well, we had some sun yesterday, which is a rare event. Today it’s a bit cloudy.

Lee:
Well, Rachael from the cloudy land of Sussex, could you just give the folks who may not be aware of who you are a very quick mini bio of who you are and what it is that you do?

Rachael:
Sure. I’m a marketer. I’m a chartered marketer, and I’ve been in the game, I guess, for more than 20 years. I started in-house in a few different industries. Then I went freelance in the last recession. That wasn’t planned. I wasn’t planning to be my business owner, but I was actually pregnant with my first child at the time. So yeah, it was going to be a temporary stop. But then I loved it and I did it for five, six years. Then I met a business partner who went to business, formed the agency. She’s now moved on and it’s all mine. Yeah, I just I love the flexibility and working with all the different people I get to work with.

Lee:
That’s fantastic. What a journey. Isn’t it funny how businesses so often start when we were not planning it and when we least expect.

Rachael:
I know. Often I’m asked and then the story comes back to me from someone else in a very similar manner. It’s less common than, sorry, more common than we think.

Lee:
No, exactly. Well, one of your key skills is marketing and social media. And to be honest, a lot of our clients come to us with questions that I am definitely not skilled to answer. I’m not a social media expert, but I have social media and I share pictures of what but I don’t think that’s really relevant to our wonderful event organizers. So I wonder if you mind if I hit you with a few questions that we get asked that maybe you can help us with. And the first one is, how do we select the right platform? Because if I go over to Shake It Up Creative, I noticed that you have a great presence across all of the platforms, and there are several. You’ve even updated your icon to X instead of Twitter, and you’ve added threads on there. The regular event organizer looks at all these different platforms and thinks, Where the hell do I start?

Rachael:
Yeah, there are a lot and there’s new ones out there as well, which people may not have actually jumped into yet. But I think the thing is you’ve really got to look at where your audience is. I know that’s probably said an awful lot and it does change over time. But really digging deep into the demographics of the platform and trying to work out whether the people that you want to attract are actually using those platforms and hanging out there. We’re all aware that Facebook has now grown into an older audience set and the younger people are all on TikTok and Snapchat. It really does matter thinking about who you want to attract, who you want to engage with, but also about what you can do on those platforms. If you’re planning to release a certain type of content in advance of your event, you need to be able to make sure that you can do that. If you want to build a community on that platform for the event, you need to make sure that it can handle that for you. So it’s thinking about all of those practical aspects combined with who’s spending their time on the platform.

Lee:
So you would advise against spray and pray, which is putting it out everywhere and actually finding a specific platform that A, is going to be where your potential audience is, and B, will allow you to do what it is you want to do. So if you’re going to show up on TikTok wanting to do written posts, which I believe they’re slowly starting to release, I read somewhere, but say back in the day where it was predominantly a video platform, it’s going to be difficult, say, showing up in that place. Or again, if you’re looking to attract an older audience, TikTok might not be the right place.

Rachael:
Yeah. I mean, if you are a very generalised event, say that you were a big Christmas event in London, you could attract any Christmas fan, as they were, then you might want a bit more of a, as you say, spray and play coverage because you want to attract all different types of people. But for most events, they’ve got that avatar of who they’re trying to attract. You know this from your background, you’re looking for agency owners and things. They’re the ones you want to target, and they’re the ones you need to focus on finding out where they’re spending their time.

Lee:
Yeah. I must admit, there’s always a temptation for me to just try and spread myself everywhere because I always think I’m going to miss out. But you’re totally right, honing in on that one specific area. I am depressed that Facebook is now for older people.

Rachael:
Because- Oh, I know.

Lee:
It’s great. My children are not on Facebook, sadly. Talking then of content, what content could an event organizer put out there in order to attract people to their event? Because very often clients don’t really know what to talk about. They might maybe put a picture up of the venue and then not be sure what else to say, and then it’ll be crickets for a few weeks. Are you any advice on what things an event organizer could talk about that would build an audience, obviously, but also attract people to actually come?

Rachael:
Yeah, it’s really about digging down into the detail again. There’s lots of things you can do. You can get videos from speakers in advance of the event and get them to talk about what they’re going to be saying or what people can learn from them and put those out in video form content. You can do lots of real snippets of event information. Okay, we’re going to have, I don’t know, free donuts or it’s going to be loads of swag or whatever it is that you think might just make people sit up and listen and go, Okay, maybe I should check that out. It’s not just about the boring stuff, the where and the when and how are they going to be there and how you can get there. Yes, that’s super important as well, but it’s really about attracting people and getting them to engage with the event. We have to remember that with the laws of marketing, often somebody will see something maybe for the first time and not be sure you need to get in front of them again, and probably again and again until they’re starting to think, Actually, I keep seeing this and people are talking about this, and maybe I should consider going to that.

Lee:
No, you’re absolutely right. I think one of the things that will tend to put me over the line as well is, like you say, that what am I going to learn? What is the outcome of the event going to be? And when I see event organisers sharing testimonials and videos of the previous year, which really captures the energy and captures what other people have… Sorry, how other people have been impacted by that event, that’s one of the things that really puts me over the line into, Okay, I need to be there. That looks phenomenal. I want to be in.

Rachael:
That environment. The reasons for attending events are different for different people. I think that what you’re going to learn is very important. But for some people, they really want good networking and the social side and maybe putting out a video of the karaoke night that happens at the end of the event or whatever it is, just showing that really fun environment that might just get someone to click and buy. Especially for- It might scare other people off, of course, but you’ve got to mix it up.

Lee:
Oh, that’s true. Yeah, well, it might scare other people off.

Rachael:
That’s for sure.

Lee:
I mean, on that you mentioned that we need to be the rule of marketing. I don’t know how many touch points it is, but somebody needs to keep seeing your thing, your event, your messaging, etc, multiple times before it is they’re going to make a decision. So how far in advance do you think we should start marketing our actual event?

Rachael:
This is always really tough because with free events in particular, if you go out too early and you get people to sign up, a lot of people will just allow that commitment to be bumped and they will either just not show or they will give away their space to someone else at the last minute and it really affects your numbers. That’s something to be very mindful of if it’s particularly free. With a paid event, if it’s a big ticket item, I think the earlier, the better. If it’s an annual big conference or exhibition and you’ve got an audience sat in front of you, you want to make them an offer that they can’t refuse whilst they’re right there and engaged, and have just had an amazing time at your event to sign up for the next year in advance. Yeah, sure. Put things in like, okay, you can change your mind by this date, or we’ll give you a free good bag if you sign up by this point or make it scarcity. We’ve only got 100 tickets at this reduced price to give away, but you’ve got that captive audience right there. If it is something that repeats and you want them to just keep coming again and again or just tell their friends, then definitely don’t miss that opportunity.

Rachael:
But yeah, it does depend on the value of the event, the capacity of the event. There’s no golden rule to it. But I think generally, the more expensive it is, the more of a commitment it is to people, the earlier you need to start planting that seed.

Lee:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, people are going to want to budget for it, aren’t they? They’re going to want to prepare. They want to get the most out of it if it is the more higher ticket event. I know personally for free events, when I register for them, I register them as a reminder in my head that I might go to that. And then very often, like you say, it’s very easy to bump that in favour of something else that feels more urgent at the time when it comes to, do I really want to go down to London today or tomorrow to that specific event that I’ve got a free ticket for? As opposed to, I’ve paid a lot of money for this ticket, I am going there, come hell or high water.

Rachael:
Yeah, and if you’ve got to book accommodation and travel, if it’s not local to you, that’s also a big thing to consider. So you want to be planning at far in advance.

Lee:
Absolutely. I remember as well you mentioned about when you have the audience actually in front of you. That’s something that Chris Ducker did, and he did it year on year at the Youpreneur Summit. And that was extremely effective, where you had 24 hours at the very end of the event on the last day. He said, Look, there’s 24 hours here. There’s a code. This is the website. If you want to book on and get guaranteed ticket for next year, then this is it. And the price was something extremely competitive versus what it was going to be the following year, etc. And that meant, I think I went three years in a row, worked for me every single time. Yes. All right.

Rachael:
But this is not just about advanced sales, money in the bank. It’s also the fact that those people have already had a good time. You know it’s easier to sell to people that you’ve already sold to rather than finding customers. That is just a rule of sales, but they will start shouting about it in their networks. I’m going or I had amazing time or consider going. You can also get back out to those people and give them a referral offer. You’ve got this pool of people that are just going to do magic things for you.

Lee:
I think that leads quite nicely then onto the next question. Do you have any strategies or ideas for getting attendees to talk about the events, I guess, in advance and also during the event to get some buzz out there?

Rachael:
Yeah, I think this is twofold. I think from an event organizer’s point of view, you need to be providing things to make that a really, really easy task for people. So give them a graphic that says, I’m attending X event on this day. Will I see you there? And just send it out to them. All they have to do is share it. Give them the hashtags. Do half the job for them, because then it’s more likely to happen. On the other side, if people are proud to be attending that event or there’s something that they feel is amazing and of value to people in the network, they will share it and talk about it. You might need to incentivise that a little bit too, but they should be quite happy to say also come along and benefit. Because for them, the more people that are there, the bigger and better it is as well.

Lee:
So do most of the work you can for them, make it really, really easy. Give them the hashtags, even give them example tweets or whatever it is that they need, whatever platform they’re on. They will, like you said, naturally share something if they’ve been really impacted by an event. And I guess then on the incentivisation that you mentioned as well, I remember again, going back to say, the Youpreneur Summit, there was always a competition during the event itself. And it would be if your picture was shown upon on the screen as one of your tweets on the specific hashtag that they were doing because they were trying to trend on Twitter for that particular event. I can’t remember what the prizes are. Let’s pretend it was an iPad. Don’t quote me on that. But somebody then won that prize, etc. I remember trying to think of everything I could possibly do. I never won the prize, sadly. But I was trying to think of every possible picture and post that I could put up there on social media to share what was going on at the event.

Rachael:
I love that. I’ve seen to events too, where there’s been a big prize for the most posting on the day. That content lives on out there once the people have gone home. So it is a brilliant idea.

Lee:
Absolutely. And all of that, too, is user-generated content that you can essentially repurpose, I guess, in the future as well. Hey, look, this was from last year. Didn’t they have a great time? Et cetera. You can make tweet walls. I know I’m talking about Twitter right now, which I should be saying X, but it doesn’t feel right. I’m focused here on Twitter because that’s my experience of it. But obviously these are things that you could do in a wider level.

Rachael:
Yes, and it’s really good to actually take people’s content. If you’re seeing that they’ve done reels or video clips on their own profiles, save those, build them into a new reel for yourself and use it. It’s regurgitated, but super effective.

Lee:
That’s true. Now on incentivisation, I know, have you any ideas on how we can get sponsors to talk about the event? I mean, they’ve invested either in sponsoring my conference or they’re physically coming to my trade show and are going to have a booth there. But we do find clients are a little frustrated with their sponsors. Their sponsors have all of these already made communities already that they should be promoting the fact that they’re either sponsoring or physically at an event. But sponsors tend not to. Have you any ideas on how we can either educate them or incentivise them about the same?

Rachael:
Yeah. I mean, from personal experience, I think a really good example here is Brighton SEO. Their sponsors seem to be really invested and engaged in the event. We will obviously, it’s data access. If they’ve signed up for that, we will get emails from them in advance and you can book meetings and talk about the games and the prizes that you can win when you go there. They’re doing all of that activity because they’re proud to be associated with that event. They invest thousands and thousands in some of these stands with making it a very interactive place to come and visit once you’re there. Why would they not want a busy stand? If they’re putting that money into it, then they need to be talking about it and telling people, come along because we’ve got this. Come and see us because you can win these or sign up for a demo or whatever it is. But I think the way is to make it has got to be a two way relationship. You don’t just want to be taking the sponsors money. You want to know, okay, what do you want to get out of this event?

Rachael:
How can we help you achieve that and making sure it happens?

Lee:
So making an event that they will be proud of and an event that is focused on not only the attendees and helping them get what they need, the outcomes that they’re looking for, but equally, what are the sponsors or the people at your trade show? What is it that they want to get rid of of your event? And then educate and encourage them to share on social media, because again, it’s going to be helpful for them, isn’t it? If they are telling their existing audience, Hey, you know what? Existing clients, etc, you can come and meet us physically at this event. We’re going to be showcasing our latest product or whatever that is. I guess there’s just an element of sponsor/exhibitor education that you can provide without sounding condescending to them, of course.

Rachael:
No, no, no. And as I said before, make it easy for them as well. Give them graphics that say I’m sponsoring this event, or come and see us at, help them do the testing.

Lee:
Yes, absolutely. Tim, business partner over here at Event Engine, he said with me, I’ll need to find it, so I’ll try and make sure I put it in the tools, folks. But there’s this tool that allows you to generate exactly what you just described there, which is a whole lot of images you can input, say, your exhibitor list, and it will put everybody’s logos in the right place and their company name to generate all the images for them. And you can essentially send them a social media pack and say, use this. So I don’t know who the company is, and it’s not an affiliate or anything, but I’ll make sure I share it because you were telling me about it the other day. Now, one of the things that we’ve been approached, and I again have no clue because I have wasted so much money on social media, paid social media, that is. I guess the question here then is, why should I choose paid or why should I choose organic? Because I know it’s going to be a different answer for each event organizer. But I guess what are the reasons that people go either for paid or for organic?

Rachael:
I think personally, you probably need a combination. I don’t think it’s an either or situation. It depends. If you’ve got a big high sign-up and you think you’re going to fill it quite early on, then you might not need to put budget into paid. But at the end of the day, if you need to put thumbs on seats and it’s creeping up in date and you need more people to be aware, then you might need to put some budget behind it. But try and be really creative with that content. It’s not just about… It’s like PR. It’s not just saying that something exists. It’s telling a story behind it and making it attractive. All those things we’ve talked about in the past, take the same approach with your paid social as well and show what it’s going to be like to be there or talk about the bots and the learnings and everything else and try and make it really attractive.

Lee:
No, it’s true. I remember for the paid campaigns that we did, we were simply telling people the event existed and that was pretty much it. The date, the location. I think I spent 900 pounds eventually through Facebook advertising and we got absolute crickets. However, if I now look at the social media that I’ve engaged with that has attracted me and the events that I’ve then gone to, it’s been a completely different story. Like you were saying, they’ve either shown a flavour of the previous year event, or they’ve told me specifically who the speakers are going to be or perhaps what someone’s going to be talking about, or resonated with a particular problem that I have, and I’ve then gone ahead and done that. So hindsight is great, isn’t it? But looking back, I’m embarrassed at the amount of money that we’ve thrown at paid ads and gotten nowhere. I also don’t like LinkedIn, by.

Rachael:
The way. Don’t be embarrassed. Everything’s a journey. Everything’s a learning journey.

Lee:
I messed up on LinkedIn. I think I put a digit in the wrong place. And instead of spending 30 quid, I spent 330 quid. That was just on one campaign. I was so gutted. So well. But I think what you’re saying here, though, is that organic, if you’ve already got an audience, great. But regardless, paid is probably going to be helpful because on the flip side, we thankfully are saving grace for both our organic and all of that money that I spent on paid ads. We thankfully had our retargeting set up, which meant that we were then able to retarget all of those people who’d either landed naturally on our site through social media or had gone in through those campaigns. We built up those pixels, thankfully, through both LinkedIn and through specifically Facebook. I don’t think we ever did it on Twitter. We were then able to put new messages to them, improve on that, and therefore actually get some bumps on seats. I guess there is a happy ending in the end.

Rachael:
Yeah, there is. Yeah, I know that retargeting is worth its weight in gold. Definitely try and incorporate that into your campaign list.

Lee:
Well, I guess the last question is just a tough question. I never know how to answer this. We’ve got event organisers who will do multiple events, and they might do events in, let’s say, five different industries, and within each industry, they might have two or three events. They are now wondering, do they do their social media as the event organizer? Or would it be better for them to set up mini social medias, as it were, for each event or at least for each industry? They’re never really sure which way to go because obviously they feel like they might be making a lot of work for themselves if they create multiple accounts, but at the same time, they worry that if they do it as the event organizer, it’s going to be a messy message of all sorts of stuff for different industries going out.

Rachael:
Yeah. I would say it’s definitely about making more specific. I know it’s more work, but it’s that time investment that will pay off. If you’re targeting separate routes of people, you can’t really do it from the same account, just the one general account. At the end of the day, without being rude to those who then organise these organisers, I don’t think that people really care who’s organising the event. It’s about what the event delivers for that person. So it’s the name of the event and the speaks of that event, and you need to get personal that way.

Lee:
Absolutely. I mean, if I’m going to list off any events that I’ve gone to and that I’ve attended and I’ve loved, including, say, Brighton SEO, then I don’t know who the company is behind it, to be honest. I mean, they might actually be called Brighton SEO Limited, to be honest, because that’s like a whole business in its own right. But literally- It’s not. But I have no clue who organised that. I went to the Gadget show once. I don’t know who organised. Actually, I do know who organised that. I think I went and researched it. But it wasn’t obvious to me. It was that the brand is the event, isn’t it? As opposed to the people behind it. I guess if we think that all of these events are going to have a small team handling the actual event organisation, then it’s not unreasonable to give the responsibility to a couple of people within that team to look after that social account, as opposed to just laying it all on at the head office, which probably isn’t the best idea anyway, because they’re not involved in the day to day.

Rachael:
And there’s temporary resource available. You can get marketing VAs, you can get bring on social media managers. There’s no reason to not have that resource in some form or another.

Lee:
Amen. No, that is.

Rachael:
Very good. I’m really bossy there, don’t I?

Lee:
No, I like it. I’m enjoying this very much. So as we come into Land, I just remember me advertising on social media for my event back in 2019, and I advertised my early bird rate. And I had to commit to A, a price, but B, a cutoff. And I was also worried about that cutoff. Because I thought if I cut off too soon, then I’d have to start selling it at more to other people and it might become this ever-increasing battle. So it was a real struggle for me when trying to work out what to price my event at, what to give away, what to offer, et cetera. Do you have any insights into that?

Rachael:
All I would say is a bit of a warning, I suppose, to event organisers that maybe are a bit less experienced. Be very careful with your pricing strategy. If you discount very heavily, very early on in great numbers, that does become the expectation. It’s the same with products. You have people constantly searching for the codes and the discounts. I won’t name them, but I used to work for a professional sports team, and we used to have three and a half thousand night person event capacity. We wanted it full because it was very dependent on the atmosphere. A lot of tickets were given away to schools and to other organisations, which is okay, but unfortunately, it went too far. A few years later, the business did fold. I’m not saying that was the reason, but I think it contributed heavily. There was too much giveaway, too much discount. People weren’t paying to come. They were obtaining tickets from one route or another. Just be very careful how you want things to pan out long term, thinking about those discounts that you put in place.

Lee:
Rachael, thank you so much for all of your insights. This has been a fantastic episode. All that’s left to say is first, thank you. And second, what’s the best way for people to connect with you? And then we shall say goodbye.

Rachael:
Well, thank you for having me. I’ve really enjoyed our chats. And as you said, we’re on all the socials, so you can find Shake It Up Creative on Instagram, and on X, and on Facebook, and LinkedIn, and all of those delightful places. Or you can check out our website, which is just shakeitupcreative.com.

Lee:
And folks, all of the links to all of those socials will be in the show notes along with the tool that I mentioned earlier as well. So be sure to check out the show notes. If you’re over on YouTube, please leave us a comment with your biggest takeaway. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. And if you’re listening on your podcast, Player of Choice, then please do come over to the website. There is a link in the show notes. Let us know in the comments again what was your biggest takeaway from this episode. Rachael, thank you so much. You are a legend. Take care and have a wonderful day. Cheers, you all.

Rachael:
Bye.