8 Tips for Successful Festival Social Media Marketing
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Pick the Right Social Media Platforms: Where does your target audience live online? You can\'t be everywhere at once. You\'ll spread yourself too thin if you try to jump on 5, 6 or 7 social sites all at the same time. It\'s better to start with 2 or 3 social media channels and do them right.
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Socially Engage Your Sponsors; In exchange for a fee or providing free services or materials, a business can display their logo or name to your festival\'s fans and attendees, and use their support of your festival in their own PR materials. Many corporate sponsors want to target their marketing to your supporters: event sponsorship is a win/win.
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Branded Hashtags: Hashtags rule on social media. Create a unique festival #BrandedHashtag and use it for all your cross channel digital marketing efforts from posts to the website to blogs to emails.
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Hold a Contest: Contests get people excited about your event and help spread the word. Design a contest for social media.
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Pay to Advertise; Social media is increasingly pay-to-play. You can post on social media, but statistically, it\'s likely the majority of your followers will never see your post. Budget paid advertising on social media in your festival marketing budget. Facebook and Instagram still rule for low cost but effective social media advertising.
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Recruit Brand Ambassadors: Brand ambassadors can be anyone who is willing to use their social media sites to promote your message to their followers.
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Enlist Influencers: Social media influencers can have a major impact in spreading the word about your festival to their followers. Whether your ideal festival influencer is a celebrity or a trusted fan of your event, influencer marketing - especially on Instagram - is key to growing your audience and building buzz about your festival.
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Use An Event Ticketing System That Integrates With Social Media Do you sell tickets to your festival? Many online ticketing sites integrate with social media, so when someone buys a ticket to your event, there is a link to the most popular social media sites so they can share their love of your festival with their followers. Most of these integrated ticketing sites allow you to write and customize the messages to share, so you can boost your festival marketing.