Why is it essential to promote events on social networks today?

Promoting your events on social networks has become essential.The aim is to bring your event to life beyond the guests who will be attending, and to use it as a means of communicating with your social network audience. The benefits are manifold: boosting brand awareness, image and dynamism, and, above all, asserting positioning, expertise and differentiation from the competition.

What concrete advantages does this offer over other communication channels?

Instagram, for example, is a very comprehensive social network that primarily serves as a showcase for your brand or establishment.It’s also an answer to a recurring question: how do you federate a community by creating a close bond?This direct relationship makes it possible to achieve numerous objectives in terms of visibility, brand awareness, conversion, discoverability and, of course, loyalty.

Which social networks are the most effective for promoting an event?

Where Tiktok’s algorithm is focused primarily on discoverability, Instagram is the most comprehensive, since it not only fetches a new audience, but also builds loyalty and federates it.Instagram can be used to tease out the event, announce it, promote it, direct registrations, sell it and bring together a community of participants.The icing on the cake is the communicating audience effect, which gives your event high visibility in different communities, thanks in particular to collaborative content (a post or reel will be published on several accounts) and UGC (User Generated Content) sharing.

How do you measure the success of a social networking campaign? What key performance indicators (KPIs) do you recommend tracking?

Just as a press relations campaign isn’t easy to measure in terms of impact, there are many interesting statistics to be found on social networks, and Instagram in particular.The main ones are :

• reach or coverage (number of unique accounts that have seen the content) VS impressions (number of times the content has been seen);
• interactions (the total number of interactions made on content: likes, comments, shares, saves);
• profile activity (clicks on links);
• audience (number of subscribers);
• engagement rate (indicator of overall profile health).

I like to pull out a top 9 of content to analyze which ones worked best with my audience. Believe me, you can sometimes get surprises! You need to take this into account to find the right balance between promoting your event – or your products/services – and the content that subscribers are interested in and follow you for.

What content formats work best to drive engagement around an event (videos, stories, interactive posts, etc.)?

Reels and carousel posts are the flagship formats on Instagram.Stories, however, have made a comeback.They’re the ideal format for engaging, sharing and selling.

Each format has a very specific role: the post will officially announce the event and can be pinned at the top of the feed for the duration of the news. The latter will also be collaborative to duplicate its visibility. Stories will be used for teasing, reinforcing the announcement, polling the audience’s interest in the event, linking to registration, communicating the program, sharing the filling gauge and encouraging UGC. As for reel, it’s the best format for inviting the audience to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the event, before, during and after. Personally, I’m partial to “best of” reels, which let you relive the emotions of the event in less than 1min30.

How often should organizers publish content before, during and after the event to maximize their impact?

A sustained, multi-format editorial schedule needs to be drawn up in advance to maintain a regular, rhythmic frequency. Bear in mind that your content will never be seen exhaustively by everyone. So don’t hesitate to repeat yourself, even if you feel you’re being too redundant! The average announcement date is 1 month beforehand, but for certain events and professions, allow more leeway for guests to organize their schedules. Instagram, for example, recommends a frequency of 2 to 3 posts/reel per week and 10 stories per week (i.e. 2 per day, not counting weekends). For high visibility, a collection launch, the creation of a brand or a major event, the frequency should rise to at least 1 post/reel per day.

What common mistakes do you notice on social networks, and how can you avoid them?

The first thing I notice is a wait-and-see attitude: you publish a post announcing the event, and then you wait without understanding why the event isn’t a success.Spoiler alert: you’ve only done 1% of the work.In fact, there’s a whole mechanism to be put in place and respected in order to give your event every chance of success.Here are a few examples (not an exhaustive list):teaser and build up the audience’s interest in your event, offer exclusive information in advance of the event to a limited number of subscribers in exchange for their email (and take advantage of the opportunity to enrich your data base), make a splash announcement coupled with an influence and publicity campaign,relaunch-relaunch-relaunch, do a countdown as the event approaches, relay the event with live stories, do a reel best of the day after the event, strike while the iron is hot and collect opinions & testimonials…