So you have finally decided to run a workshop or host an event. You have set a date, booked your venue and planned out your day. Now all you need to do is sell tickets. Easy right?
With so many tools available to use it may seem easy and it is totally possible, but it most definitely takes work. It’s not a matter of telling your tribe once and you’ll be booked out. If it does work that way for you, that’s amazing, but for most of us it takes a little bit more work.
One of the amazing tools available to us is Facebook. Love it or hate it but it has the potential to reach billions of people and I’m sure that your tribe makes up part of this group.
Facebook is a wonderful tool to promote your event or workshop, and there are a number of ways you can utilise it. Let’s look at 3 ways to promote your offline event on Facebook.
1. Post it on your business page and/or personal profile
Your Facebook page should be the first place on Facebook where you start promoting your event. You can even start doing this before you have decided on a topic by asking your tribe what they most want to know or learn. You can then be sure to deliver what they most want to hear from you.
You can also use this space to build up excitement for your event by posting teasers, pictures of you working on your content, a sneak peek of the event venue and other behind the scenes shots. Involving your tribe in the ‘making of’ will create a stronger connection. Then when the time is right to promote your workshop and sell tickets they feel like they’ve been part of the journey.
When you go into your full launch period, make sure that you keep talking about it. Don’t just post it once but keep reminding people that you’re running this event or workshop. Come up with different pieces of copy and images to post on your Facebook feed.
The key is to remind people quite a number of times. Give them time to warm up to the idea and then make sure you keep being seen.
2. Use Facebook Advertising
You may have come across the term ‘pay to play’ and yes, it’s one that is quite relevant for Facebook. In order to get your event or workshop seen by more people, it’s a wise decision to invest some dollars into Facebook Ads.
Facebook advertising allows you to specifically target those who are most likely interested in your event or workshop. To start, I recommend targeting those who already follow your page to give you the best chance of having your post seen. This you can simply do by boosting the post you are already posting on your page.
I also recommend running an advertising campaign that specifically targets people who have visited your website or are on your list. This is called re-targeting and it works because they’re already familiar with your work but may just need the reminder.
You can also run a brand new campaign to a brand new audience, but this is usually a little harder because they are most likely not familiar with your work. Nevertheless, it might be worth testing.
3. Host a Facebook Contest
Another option to promote your event or workshop is to host a Facebook contest. This is a great way to get people to interact with your Facebook page. Ask them to do something in return for prizes, such as take an action on your page or submit something. Make sure you familiarise yourself with the rules as Facebook is quite strict on contest rules.
Fun ideas are ‘caption contests’ where you ask your audience to caption an image, a Q&A contest where you ask for an answer to a multiple choice question or a photo contest where you ask your audience to submit a photo. You would award a prize to the winner of the contest as an incentive to participate. If you can link this contest to your event you create awareness for your event and can steer people in the right direction with a call to action like booking tickets or signing up to your list. Make it fun!
To make the most out of building connections and engagement, make sure you interact with your audience before, during and after the event. Build up excitement before the event, show behind the scenes during the event, talk about what is going on during the day and then keep the momentum going after the event by sharing what was said, lessons learned, pictures of speakers and lots of other fun happenings. Go into your page and post personalised comments to those who left a comment on your post, thank everyone for attending, tell them where they can find photos of the event and how to stay in touch to find out more about the next event etc.
Be active online and make an effort to build relationships. Have fun promoting your event or workshop!
This article was originally published on EH Magazine. Find out more about EH Magazine.
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