How to Use Instagram to Promote your Event

• By Sumayya Mahin
• 25-02-2020
• Social Media

Telling stories through images. Who doesn’t like that? It’s pretty magnetic as people are attracted to images and videos, and they are likely to share it if they like your story. Ever since Instagram evolved to be one of the best social media platforms for businesses, the boost it has received is tremendous. About 200 million Instagrammers visit business profiles on a daily basis, so if you are planning to promote your event through the platform, you are definitely going to attract a lot of attention. But how do you plan to use the full potential of Instagram and market your event?

The obvious thing is of course to have an Instagram account. It can be based on your organization, rather than exclusively for the event alone. Your Instagram account virtually acts as the landing page for people planning to register for your events. This is also the space where you promote your event through images and content.

Create an event hashtag
Event hashtags can help you organize your events, and help you sort through it. Your visitors can also use these hashtags when they are searching for particular topics or content, making it accessible to them. To create a hashtag that would be shared thousands of times:
- Know your audience
- Brainstorm hashtag ideas
- Use unique hashtags, but something that reflects your event if you want to stand out
- Engage with people who use hashtags

Get your customers involved
With over 500 million active users, more than 48% of the brands use Instagram for promotion, so it is no wonder that the channel is widely used for events as well. And involving your customers when you plan the event will definitely help you boost your brand and its products.

When you have an interesting story to tell, there is no need for smoke and mirrors. Inspire people, share tonnes of knowledge on their subject of interest, generate the feeling of honesty, and let people be comfortable.

Post your event at regular intervals
Though it may sound like an easy step, the day of the event may sneak up before you are even prepared. So make the best of the platform to promote your event, right from a few months before the event to the day before the event. Follow a pattern that doesn’t seem too intrusive to the audience - give them snippets of the previous year’s events, the speakers and even hilarious incidents if any. You can also offer teasers to promote the present event, information about the speakers, what they will be talking about, new product unveiling, etc. - anything that would generate interest and inquisitiveness.

Encourage users/visitors to share their experience
People love reading about other people’s interesting experiences. There is no exception for Instagram users. One person’s post about an experience in an interesting event or show might seem interesting to ten other people who begin to follow that person and eventually your company. It is the flywheel effect. The popularity takes off on its own momentum. When people share experiences, you can take it one step forward and conduct contests where you encourage them to post pictures about the events, and in return they get a prize/gift.

Additionally, you can also make agreements with partners, sponsors, vendors and influencers and inspire them to post stories about your event, their contributions, and how they enjoyed being a part of it.

The followers create the hype for you
The best thing about social media is that you don’t have to do all the promotional work yourself. You can make your visitors on Instagram do it for you. You can also build a buzz surrounding your brand though contests because that’s one of the easiest ways to create hype on the platform. Visitors who take part in the contests use hashtags, and as a gift or prize for them, you can give away tickets for the shows or events.

Announcements and countdowns build excitement
This would be the easiest part of promoting your event. Irrespective of what kind of event you are planning, you will always have something new to announce. And post about the event through the countdowns in a systematic manner. For example, “It’s just 30 days away” when the event is a month away, and when the day draws close you can post “Just 16 days to go” or whichever day you want to post. Attendees will not mind if the days are spaced apart.

Build your audience through account engagement
The best way to promote your event with the help of Instagram is by targeting the location. For example, if you are conducting a festival in Austin, use the most popular hashtags pertaining to the area, for example, #atx. This would be picked up by the people who are interested in events in that particular location. This must be followed by a strategy that entails engagement.

To do that, you can focus on three other top pictures that come under the popular hashtags pertaining to that particular event location. Follow the top pictures and they will get the notifications that you are following and liking them. They might also begin to follow you back. This way you can create a ripple and people will start liking and following your account. Since this process is a bit manual, you can use the tool called Instagress sparingly. It is an automation tool, so use it wisely.

Tracking your camping through various tools
Just as you need to measure the success of your social media marketing, you need to measure your Instagram campaigns. There are a number of tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to do that. These help you measure the marketing campaign by analyzing Instagram performance, cataloging the data, scheduling future posts and managing the content.

In retrospect
The trick lies in turning your Instagram followers into ticket buyers, and once the visitors are happy with your content, and style of presentation, they turn to the ticket purchase link. By following the above-mentioned tips, you will definitely be able to promote your event and attract followers to it.

However, in order to ensure that the tickets are easier for purchase at their Instagram platform, you need to make the process smooth. The purchases mostly happen on their mobile phones, so you need to link your Instagram profile URL with your registration or ticketing page. The visitors should be able to book tickets directly, rather than navigating all over the website or app, searching for the registration button. Design your Instagram profile page in an attractive manner with engaging and lively content to keep up with the followers’ interests. And hire an experienced android and ios app development company to develop an app like Instagram.