With the event industry flipped upside down these past 18 months, there’s a tremendous opportunity to create new best practices, ideas, and innovation. The world just learned to navigate fully virtual events, but now it must tackle a new challenge: invent engagement for hybrid events and recreate excitement for in-person ones.
So what’s new here? We sat down with Gina Michnowicz, CEO & Executive Creative Director of The Craftsman, our agency partner, to get her take on how we can maximize engagement and social strategy when you’re planning your next event. Check out what we learned:
What are the top three trends you are seeing for social engagement?
Organic can still drive engagement if your content is entertaining and relevant to your audience.
Paid media does not always drive engagement. If your content is not differentiated or on point for your audience, it won’t convert even with paid media supporting it.
Live and video assets still drive the most engagement.
What is your advice for event organizers right now?
Plan for hybrid events. This extends your audience to those who cannot be there in person. If something should change, then you can convert to online-only more easily. We are eager to be in person but as we learned last year; we need to plan for the worst and hope for the best.
The in-person event can have exclusive opportunities but some activations should extend to both online and in-person attendees. Use social media tactics to drive more engagement with these unique experiences.
What is the most unique activation that you have seen recently?
You can only attend so many mixologist events on Zoom. The most unique are the ones that are unexpected like a big musical act, poet, or an AR experience. Groove Jones had an AR activation for AT&T to garner engagement. The case study is here. Attendees played the game and saw how they were doing compared to others on the real-time leaderboard. The results were astounding--85% of attendees engaged with the experience!
Are there any new trends or recent updates in social media that we should know about?
Social media changes all the time. The recent iOS changes for Twitter and Facebook are still a bit of an unknown. There seems to be some drop-off but it is probably more related to your inability to tracker users on iOS.
Clubhouse made its debut late last year. Many thought it would keep picking up steam because of the early popularity. It felt like listening to a panel at an event. As we see events go back to in-person, I suspect we will see popularity wane a bit. People are yearning to be in person so this could impact Clubhouse.
Twitter and Facebook have been adding and removing features such as Twitter fleets. Facebook Super launched where you can pay for celebrity cameos. It appears to be live still but not sure of the adoption at this point. Social platforms continue to battle for the younger generation against Snap, TikTok, and Instagram.
Returning to in-person events, what tactics are most successful for driving attendance?
Email is still one of the most effective ways to drive attendance. We have driven some registration with organic social media posts. Paid social can drive attendance but it is a bit less reliable tactic. Adding gamification can be a way to make sure your attendees actually attend the event.
What are some ways social media can be used to increase the number of both in-person and virtual attendees?
Peer-to-peer engagement is one of the reasons that social media increases the numbers of both in-person and virtual attendance. You are more likely to go if you know people are attending the event.
During the event, social events help drive people to event tracks or exhibition halls. Engagement during the event is really the sweet spot for social media in my opinion. It takes gamification, swag, and other incentives to get social media participation but I do think it is well worth it. This can entice people to attend the following year because they see all the benefits from people who attended the event in a given year.
If you’re looking for help in planning your next event, no matter whether it’s virtual, in-person, or hybrid, check out our event offerings with cred! We have everything you’ll need, including a free event checklist to get you started.