How to create a digital presence for your event
Find your people
Whether you are organising a coffee morning fundraiser for a park bench or a music festival featuring international superstars, one of the best ways to reach potential attendees is with an appropriate digital presence. What form this will take can depend on the scale of the event, your resources and the number of people you need to attract. We will take you through some basic steps to bring your event online and tell the right people all about it….
How do I begin to create a digital presence for an event?
If you want to promote your event online, you are going to need a home for your information. You can create a digital presence for an event either on your own website or through your social media. A dedicated website for your event is the ideal, and we will get to this later. But the easiest and most cost effective method of starting to promote your event is to create a social media account.
Facebook is still the best place to start.
Facebook is still the most popular social media platform in Ireland (70% of Irish people have an account) and setting up a Facebook page for your event is a straightforward way of sharing information and reaching your audience. To start off, you need a personal Facebook page. But don’t worry, no personal information will be seen on your event page. Find ‘Pages’ on the menu of your Facebook account and follow the steps.
Here are some useful tips to remember when starting off.
- The user name is very important. It will make it easier for people to find your page, tag it and create a custom url for you. Create a page username that can be used beyond the event in question i.e. don’t include the year. You don’t want to have to start from scratch again next year!
- Make at least one other trusted member of the organising committee admin of the page.
- Use the ‘about us’ section to really sell the event, making it clear who your audience are.
- Invite all your friends to like, follow and share your page.
Other social media platforms
Before you decide which other social media accounts you need, if any, for your event, think about where your potential audience spend their time online.
Instagram is the second most popular social media platform in Ireland, and an ideal platform on which to promote events to women aged 18- 44. The platform is awash with information on fashion, design and wellness, and a good fit for events in this space.
While Twitter on it’s own is unlikely to give you enough scope to promote your event, creating a Twitter business account will allow you engage directly with your potential audience. Use it to build relationships with influential people in the industry, and improve the events reach.
LinkedIn lends itself to the promotion of business events. It is also a good idea to promote your event here if you are looking for corporate sponsorship or your event appeals to those working in a specific sector.
Pinterest might not seem like an obvious place to promote an events, but if it relates to food, fashion, crafts, or machines, there’s an audience waiting for you on here. Be prepared to play a long game.
If you are looking to attract a younger audience, both TikTok and Snapchat might have a role to play in helping you reach them.
Be where your audience is
The most important rule is to be where your audience is. And if you’re not sure – Ask them! Also, once you have your pages set up, monitor them to see what is working and put your energy into the ones that are giving you most engagement.
Develop a website for your event
If you have the resources to develop a specific website for you event, this will give you the best chance of reaching a large audience, allow you to control information and inspire trust and credibility. And creating your own website is not as difficult as you would imagine. Web design platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress have templates and step-by-step guides, meaning those with limited technical expertise can still design a fantastic website.
Of course if finances allow, there are web developers that can help you create a digital presence and website for an event to excite and entice your audience.
What next?
So now you have at least one URL for your event. (A URL is the text that you type into your internet browser when you want to go to a website e.g. https://www.inspireme.ie/ or https://www.facebook.com/inspiremeireland/) Next up, you need to create some great content and find your audience.