- Event Promotion Tips
Discovering Which Social Networks Best Suit Your Brand
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By Mike
- 06 Apr 2016
- 7 min read
There’s no hiding from the fact that social networks have fundamentally changed the way we communicate with each other – and for promoters they’ve become an indispensable way of getting into the consciousness of customers and target audiences.
Marketing yourself on these platforms can be a tricky thing to do well, so it helps to determine a few things beforehand: Where does you audience spend their time? Where are they most active? Where do they go to find stuff? And importantly – what are your brand’s strengths? Once you’ve defined these parameters, you’ll have a much better idea of which social networks are your best fit.
It’s important to know that just because you have a lot of followers, that doesn’t mean you have a big audience. It’s far more important to have the right kind of audience that will happily engage with your brand. And don’t be seduced by the number of users the big platforms have, this is about finding the right followers, not the most followers. Indiscriminate, broad posts will only dilute the message your brand carries – and buying likes will just destroy your credibility.
There’s no denying Facebook is the largest of the social networking platforms, and is hugely useful not only as a way of connecting, but for advertising and as a search tool for customers. In fact Google searches for brands often link to the respective Facebook page as the top search result. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s a necessity to have some sort of presence on there – a page that is up to date and hosts the details of your latest parties is a must.
But while Facebook leads the way in sheer scale, to get the kind of visibility you get on other sites you’ll need to be prepared to pay for targeted advertising (this does however increase your reach exponentially). And recent trends have shown a move away from younger users, with percentage-wise less users active on the site as they find more niche social networks that appeal to them more – with Instagram leading the way in outright growth.
If you spend a lot of time on the production of your parties and have a strong visual identity then Instagram is certainly a social network that requires your attention. One brand that capitalises well on their general visual brilliance on Instagram is Barcelona’s Elrow.
With 36,000 followers they’re clearly doing something right. They use a variation of types of images whilst maintaining their brand identity – engaging, quirky selections are interspersed with flyers for upcoming shows, crowd shots and brief videos of DJs tearing up their parties. You’ll notice that whilst their images of flyers for upcoming events will earn them somewhere in the region of 500 likes, striking shots of their parties and DJs in action at least double that, and sometimes triple it.
Like Twitter, the hashtag is your friend on Instagram – well thought out tags will aid your cause no end (but don’t overkill and use no more than five). This is a platform you don’t want to flood with images either, carefully selected pictures maintaining your theme/identity posted at regular intervals are the way forward. If you’re a brand that takes pride in its visual aesthetic, Instagram is the perfect way of reaching punters. And to top it off, 90% of Instagram users are under 35 – this is for our money the social network all club and gig promoters need a presence on.
Whereas new Facebook algorithms often make it hard to be visible to all your followers without putting money behind posts – Twitter has that habit of making an audience feel personally connected to the person or brand they’re following. With Facebook being somewhere you don’t want to overdo it with posts, Twitter is an ideal platform to be far more active – retweets and personal responses are easily managed and will undeniably bolster your fan base – this personal touch is enormously valuable and Twitter’s key strength.
No better was this showcased than when Skepta snubbed the MOBO awards last November to dish out his mobile number to his fans and then facetime them. Like Elrow this epitomised everything great about the artist as well – Skepta as a man of the people, and grime a grassroots culture and a DIY fan focused music scene. If you catch the right influencer off guard as well it can reap dividends, as we at Skiddle found when we spotted an early Nick Grimshaw lookalike hanging round with a pre fame Taylor Swift (below).
loling 😂 https://t.co/RFFb7g1QRH
— nick grimshaw (@grimmers) March 8, 2016
The ease of sharing others’ tweets also means that artists and DJs you’ve tagged in your posts are far more likely to retweet your message, boosting your reach enormously, and almost guaranteeing an increased reach to the right kinds of people for your events.
Snapchat is another platform increasingly used by promoters – with inventive short videos and event teasers extremely likely to be viewed by a captive audience. If you have a knack for being creative with your promotion, Snapchat requires further investigation, and is rapidly growing yet not adopted by everyone yet. Establishing yourself as influencer in a nascent network helps place you ahead of the curve.
As ever a good tool is to keep a close eye on those promoters with an identity and presence that you admire. How do they engage with customers? How often do they post and what do they post about? Use this as a source of inspiration, rather than something to be blatantly copied, and you’ll be well on your way.
And most importantly, be reasonable with yourself. It’s a hectic enough job being a promoter, so having to manage and stay on top of four or five social networks will rob you of most or all of your time – pick one or two that are the best fit for your brand, and do them well.
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