The Busy Event Planner’s Guide to Social Media: Where Should You Focus?
Whether or not you use social media in your personal life, you’re going to have to incorporate it in your business if you want to maximize your outreach. Some clients may only find you through your social media channels, especially if they’re younger.
But running your business keeps you busy enough—who has time to maintain up-to-date Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube accounts, on top of actually doing your job?
Don’t worry—you can still successfully use social media to promote your business without spending your whole day updating twenty different accounts. Here are our tips for figuring out your focus to get the most out of your social media use, headache-free.
First, know your audience
Different forms of social media attract different audiences. If you want to focus on events for older clients, like milestone birthday or anniversary parties, a site like Instagram—most popular with a younger crowd—might not be your best bet. Do a little research into what age groups tend to gravitate towards which platforms before diving in; there’s no point wasting time on one site when the same content posted to a different site could be way more effective.
Arguably, Facebook was the first truly global social network. While it started out as a platform limited to college students, it’s now expanded to include over 1 billion users from various countries and age groups.
The Pros:
- Huge user base = wide reach
- Easy to set up a page for your business
- Easy to house and display new photos
- Post-scheduling feature so you can post when your fans are online
The Cons:
- Popularity with younger age groups is starting to decline
- Algorithms used to decide what content is shared and with whom means that not all of your fans will see your new content
Twitter:
Twitter is another major social media phenomenon, with over 140 million users across the world. With Twitter, your posts are limited to 140 characters, so it’s good for sharing short announcements, as well as links, photos, or videos.
The Pros:
- Search feature allows you to find competitors based on keywords—and allows potential clients to find you
- Wide reach across varying age groups
The Cons:
- Profile restricted to 160 characters, meaning you can only share limited information
- No easy way for potential clients to view galleries of photos you’ve shared
- Character limit may tempt you to compromise spelling and grammar, which can reflect poorly on your business
This application is growing in popularity, particularly with younger crowds. It’s an image-based platform that lets you snap a photo, apply a filter to edit it, and share it with your friends and followers.
The Pros:
- Great for sharing photos and building a profile that highlights previous projects
- Even if you’re not a great photographer, filters will improve the quality of the photos you post to make them look more professional
- Many couples flock to Instagram to look for inspiration for their own wedding, so your content has a good chance of going right to your target audience
The Cons:
- Image-heavy platform means less space and attention for text and information about your business
- Fewer older users than sites like Facebook
- Links are not clickable in photo descriptions, making it more difficult to share your content and get potential clients to your website
Pinterest is another image-based platform. It’s relatively new, but it’s seen a real explosion in popularity. You can use to “pin” images to your online board, re-pin images from other users’ boards, “like” photos, and leave comments.
The Pros:
- Sourcing is easy—when an image is re-pinned, the source and pinner are automatically re-pinned as well
- Like Instagram, many people go to Pinterest to look for inspiration for weddings, parties, and other events
- Easy to share your own photos, but also to get inspired by creating boards of other people’s work
- “Secret” boards let you pin photos for your own personal inspiration without anyone else seeing them
- Collaborative boards let you work with clients to achieve a certain look or theme
The Cons:
- Image-heavy platform means less space and attention for text and information about your business
- Fewer older users than sites like Facebook
The bottom line
Like we said before, the most important thing to think about when you’re creating a social media presence is who your audience is and how you can target them most directly. That being said, sites like Instagram and Pinterest are great ways to get inspired and keep up with the latest trends, so they might be worth having even if they don’t generate much attention for your business.
For achieving a wide reach, Facebook and Twitter are great tools. But if the thought of maintaining and regularly updating two major social media accounts has you tearing up your jam-packed day-planner, don`t despair—third-party sites like Hootsuite let you manage posting, messaging, and activity for multiple accounts through one handy interface.
Consider checking out LinkedIn, too. Once you’ve set up your profile it`s relatively low-maintenance, but it`s an easy tool for networking with other professionals.
With all there is to consider while planning an event, knowing the right Social Media channels to use to reach the people that need to attend is crucial to making your event a success. I appreciate the information you’ve shared.