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Instagram

Best Ways to Promote Events Using Instagram

Instagram is an excellent tool to promote events before, during and after they take place. Being a big Instagram fan I often use it at events and based on my experience, I would like to share with you why event planners should use it more actively and frequently. Here are some tips on how to better use it to interact with current and future event stakeholders.

Update your Instagram feed weekly

I follow Instagram accounts of events I annually go to and I noticed similar patterns among them. Firstly, the accounts stay dormant until one-two weeks prior to the event when they then become very busy and try to engage the audience with competitions and promotions. While it is very important to interact with attendees during the event, it is recommended to manage the Instagram account throughout the year and interact with past and future attendees, customers, sponsors and other stakeholders. Ideally content should be posted daily, but I realise that it can be very challenging so a weekly update throughout the year is enough.

Have a strategy

Before promoting your event on Instagram, decide what you want to achieve by promoting your event on this platform. Do you want to increase ticket sales and registrations, inform, educate or inspire? It is recommended that you decided upon a strategy within your organisation and assign a person or a team to manage this account. It is important to have a clear strategy so in case this person leaves the company or changes the department, the next person who takes over the account is informed what he has to do.

Call to action on Instagram

While the event takes place only over 2-3 days, throughout the year you can interact with your audience and increase awareness of your event. In comparison to other social networks, you can’t include links in the posts and have the possibility to do it only in your bio. Depending on your strategy, it is wise to add a link to your bio that fulfils it (e.g.- link to registration page). When posting your photo, you can mention that your audience can learn more via the link in your bio. Try to avoid including the link into the post as it has no value to the attendees.

Use #hashtags

Hashtags are important on Instagram and will help attendees to find your event and connect with other attendees. It is advised that you create and use your own event hashtag.  It is very individual how you would like to use them, but in my preference is to use up to max. three in the post and the rest in the comment section. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags, so why not to make the full use of them? You can include related hashtags to your event that will make it easier for others to find you, such as the city where the event takes place, the industry, the speakers etc.

How frequent to post?

It is show-time and now you want to use Instagram to communicate what is happening at your event. If you haven’t used it for the whole year, don’t start posting a photo with every quote from speakers or every booth on the exhibition floor. Try to spread your content throughout the day, posting in the morning, lunch/ afternoon and evening. Don’t overload the feed of your readers by publishing photos every few minutes, as it will get lower interaction. Good thing to do is to follow all the exhibitors, sponsors, speakers and others stakeholders on Instagram and mention them in your posts by giving them full credit.

Follow – up

After the event, first of all thank everyone who attended your event and communicate the follow up process. If you want everybody to know about the date of the next event, mention it in the post and don’t forget to update your bio with the new date and other important information.

Be ready to invest money

At the moment of writing, Instagram does not have the possibility to switch between accounts easily as with Twitter and Facebook and if you have a dedicated account to your event you will need to log-in/out between your personal and corporate accounts. When you assign an external person to manage your Instagram account, it is advised that you will provide them with a smartphone and don’t expect them to do it from their personal device.

To conclude, Instagram is not only about the filter and it requires that you invest thought, creativity, time and effort in it. Different attendees access information from different social platforms and because Instagram is one of the most fast growing ones, by using it you have the chance to reach out to new audience and increase engagement with your existent stakeholders. And, as the old adage says “a picture is worth a thousand words”, so make it memorable!

What are your best practices to promote events on Instagram?

© The MICE Blog

Popular Event #Hashtags on Twitter and Instagram

© The MICE Blog

What hashtags do you usually use when you want to connect with fellow event professionals on Twitter and Instagram to stay on top of event news, or to find the best venue or catering for your event?

In this post I decided to gather the top hashtags event professionals use to connect and gather information.

Maybe the most common and international is #eventprofs. We use it to promote events, when we tweet live from conferences, to share event jobs, events we organise, blog posts and basically everything related to events and event management.

#Eventtech is another popular hashtag, and as it indicates, it’s all about tech. Be it an event app, registration system, event management software or ticketing platform, you can find all the resources when using this hashtag. In addition, event start-ups are also using this hashtag to promote their products and events.

#Eventhour is a twitter chat for event planners, venues, suppliers, event students and everyone in the events industry. In general, the hashtag is mostly used every Wednesday between 9pm – 10pm GMT, when the twitter chat takes place but can be used during the week to interact with the event community. Everyone is welcome to ask questions and start a discussion on any event related topic. Unfortunately, some companies abuse this chat to promote their products. Personally, I rarely click on the links promoted during this hour and regard it as spam. Instead, companies shall use this hour to interact with the event community, engage and contribute to discussions.

#EventAlley is an interactive live talk show for the event industry that takes place every Wednesday at 6pm GMT. Every week they host a guest and discuss new or current topics. Participants are encouraged to ask questions on twitter and express their opinions on the topic. The show is less than an hour and all the episodes can be found on their YouTube channel.

#EventBlogChat is a twitter chat for event bloggers and planners every first Monday of each month at 9pm GMT. It’s a new chat, started three month ago and gives an opportunity to the international event bloggers community to network and share best practice. Every month there will be a topic and five questions around the topic. The chat is run by myself and Caitlin from ‘I’m a Damn Student, What do I Know?’ blog.

#Eventjobs is a popular hashtag for everyone looking for jobs in the industry and often used by event recruitment agencies or agencies to promote available positions. It’s a good hashtag to use to make research if you’re looking for a job or if you are looking for event planner.

Both Twitter and Instagram encourage using hashtags and you can even create your own hashtags if you decide to use them on regular basis (for example, I use #themiceblogrecommends on Instagram to promote venues I like and trust). Because there is a 140 characters limit on twitter, in general I will use one to two hashtags on this platform. On Instagram, on the other hand, there is a limit of 30 hashtags, so I tag the photos with all relevant hashtags.

Other hashtags used by industry professionals are: #EventStudents, #EventPlanner, #MeetingProfs,#EventPlanning, #Catering, #EventDesign, #MICE and #BrandActivation.

Do you have a hashtags to add? Please share in the comments below.

A picture is worth a thousand words: Interview with Dan Strang, CEO / Founder of eventstagram

Couple of months ago I discovered eventstagram and started following their news on Twitter and Instagram. Eventstagram is a live Instagram slideshow for events where participants can view all photos in the same place by using the same hashtag. The photos are shared live on the screen for everyone to see and enjoy them. Eventstagram is very easy to use and all your need is a screen/ projector, laptop or any other device to play the photos and internet connection.

I met Dan the CEO of eventstagram at their Wayra offices to chat about his business, how it all started and what their future plans are. Eventstagram received initial funding from Wyra which is part of Telefónica and invests in up to 20 UK based start-ups each year. In addition to funding, it provides nine month of mentoring and office space in return for small percentage equity in the company. To receive the funding 3,444 companies applied and only 30 were invited to the final and eventstagram was one of the lucky winners.

Launched in 2012, in less than two years the company grew organically and received great support from the events industry. Now they employ 3 web developers, 1 designer, 2 sales and 2 marketing representatives all under the direction of Dan. About 65% of their business is in the US, one of the reasons that from September eventstagram will open an office in New York. The idea of eventstagram was born when a friend of Ollie, eventstagram’s CTO, considered having disposable cameras at his wedding. But Ollie came up with another suggestion of using Instagram. When he didn’t find any solution on the web, being a web developer he just set it up as a wedding present. The couple was able to get all the photos and to create a book out of it. That was a very positive experience where Ollie realised that it can work for any event. Dan came on board to help with sales and marketing and within short period of time eventstagram was used at events in the UK and abroad.

eventstagram

eventstagram1
Dan & Ollie © Eventstagram

While it can be used at concerts, sport stadiums, parties, exhibitions and basically everywhere where there is a screen and an internet connection, now eventstagram decided to further develop their wedding product which accounts for up to 35% of the sales volume. Wedding features include live wedding album with possibility to print it out and table place cards.

To date one of the biggest eventstagram customers is The O2 Arena and if you tag the photos with #TheO2 they will show up on their screens.

I asked Dan what was their biggest challenge when they just set up the company, but it seems that for them there were not much as from day one they had high-end brands and events using their services. But Dan added that biggest challenge for every company is to find the first customer. If you struggle to find a customer propose to do it for free so you get the experience and the brand name.

Lastly a good advice from Dan on how to leverage the business is very simple, “Find out what works and repeat it”.

© The MICE Blog
© The MICE Blog

Being a big fan of Instagram, technology and the start-up scene it was very inspiring to meet Dan and learn more about their product.

Have you tried eventstagram? How was your experience?