How To Use Social Media To Maximise Your Events - 10 Yetis Insight

What is Body Power?

Body Power is the largest indoor fitness expo in the world; it spans six halls of stalls and stands for fitness and lifestyle brands. The clientele varies from full time fitness models, bodybuilders and strongmen, to those just getting started the crazy world of fitness.

But to many people, it is much more than an Expo. It represents opportunity and motivation; it is a place to meet your idols, get free clothes and supplements, but most importantly, to get inspired. I had the amazing opportunity to go along and experience this microcosm of the fitness world; so what was I doing there?I was given the opportunity to join the Sculptmode team, our client, and run their social media for the day.

Use your social media presence to boost your real life presence at the event

This first step is pretty simple. If you’re looking to get audiences to come and visit your booth you’ve got to make it look worth their time. Don’t just disappear on the day. Yes you may be busy, but dedicate someone to solely look after the social channels for the brand. On the day of the event crowds will be checking their phones and socials to see where everything is, where the best deal is, and what looks like the most fun. Therefore by filming events, celebrities and general fun and interesting things going on is going to draw people to your stand.

Tease fans with sneak peaks

Tease your audience a few weeks before big events. Start off with hints and suggestions of what’s to come, such as posting images that don’t exactly express that you’re going to an event, but eager eyed fans will notice it and comment. For example, if your brand is based in London and that is well known and established, a photo shoot with a tag location of the city hosting the event is enough to start talks within comments and among fans. Once you have created some interest, it’s time to build the buzz. You can do this in many ways; from online takeovers by sponsored athletes/models or celebrities, to fan challenges that will reveal the brands plans on appearing at an event. This could be done by ambassadors of the brand, sharing small details about their interest in going to the event, or as a brand. You could provide them with a piece of the puzzle on each social/online channel, sending audiences on a chase to work out what you’re revealing, increasing both traffic to all of your channels, as well as channel engagements.

Engage audiences with questions and competitions

Once you’ve created some interest around your event, it’s time to engage your audience. Questions and competitions work as great activation's for your event, kicking off conversations with simple questions such as, “Who’s going to Body Power?” and you can then continue into questions more focused on the brand and bringing audiences to you. On the day of the event, for example, you could post “Who can take on the competition at our booth today?” with a video clip of the possible challenges people will face at the booth. Along with this, competitions leading up to an event are always beneficial in engaging an audience, along with gaining more of an audience. Simple competitions, where audiences follow and like your brand or tag friends, are easy and encourage more participation as the audience are required to do less.

Remember to hashtag and tag events and famous people involved

The biggest mistake that brands typically make is putting up great stories that are just a bit too plain or aren’t optimised to be seen by a wider audience. Simple additions to stories and posts will boost your brand’s content much further than the audience that it already has. By using hashtags and handles as well as influential people attending, the posts and stories will be shared to those audiences searching the relevant hashtags and handles and profiles – pushing the brand out to a wider and new audience.

Keep the same energy online and offline

When presenting your brand online you must really think about the message you want to share; what does your brand represent? What do you sell? Who is your target audience? Etc. And the same thought process must be taken into account when it comes to who sells your brand both online and offline.

So, when you get to events, as a brand you need to think about the layout of your booth, how you interact with customers and who you want working with you. If this is different to your brand’s online persona then you need to rethink what your brand image is or change the booth to fit your online better.

Overall, preparing for a big event is all about creating a sense of excitement right from the start. Building up to an event, creating a consistent story line and engaging your fans with questions and competitions are key to growing your engagement and driving traffic to your online channels.