Event advice from the Skiddle team

From social media to graphic design and paid media to content production, the Skiddle team is full of experts passionate about delivering the best results in their chosen field. 

Our Account Managers work with some of the biggest events, helping promoters to deliver memorable events to sizeable audiences. It’s safe to say the Skiddle team have a wealth of advice to offer when it comes to organising and promoting events. 

We know the New Year’s period is a busy one, so we’ve spoken to a few members of the team here at Skiddle, picking their brains for some insight on best practices when it comes to event promotion. 

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Balance promotion and value on social media

Over-promoting your night can turn regular and potential attendees away from your event. 

Skiddle’s Social Media Executive, Olivia, says: For social media, it’s important not to be overly promotional. No one enjoys being sold to 24/7. I like to keep promotional content to 10-20% of the strategy, with the remaining 80-90% being content that provides value to our audience, e.g. entertainment, inspiration, and information.

When promoting your New Year’s Eve events, you could split the 80-90% figure suggested by Olivia between regular and seasonal content. This way, you’ve got a balance of promotion, entertaining content that is relevant to the New Year’s period and the content you know your audience visits your page for. 

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Don’t take everything on yourself

It can be tempting to try and take the reigns of the whole operation, but that can lead to shortcomings that could harm the visibility of your event. Delegating tasks to other people is a crucial part of managing a team, and everyone will benefit. You’ll be able to put your energy into what you’re strong on, and other people can bring ideas to the table you might not have previously considered. 

Lisa, Senior Marketing Manager at Skiddle, says: I would always recommend using a designer as they know what they are doing when it comes to making things look good! Clear, simple and eye-catching artwork is key. There’s nothing worse than not being able to read or understand a poster because it has too much info on it.

With a graphic designer on board, your ideas can come to life thanks to their expertise and ability. They’ll be able to design your visual assets to look appealing and communicate your brand identity. Plus, if you’re promoting with Skiddle, our Customer Service team will flag any image with too much text, which means your listing will be taken down.

Sinead – one of our Account Managers at Skiddle – suggests going with the ‘back of the bus’ tip. If you can’t read the text of your event poster from the back of a bus, then your text is too wordy. 

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Listen and learn through open communication

Treating every conversation as a chance to learn can give you a better chance of communicating your needs to people. That could be members of your team, who you’ll be relying on to help you deliver a night that runs as smoothly as possible. 

It could be your customers, too. Without them, there’s no event, so listening to any problems they’ve had your night and taking on board constructive criticism can only improve the experience for regular and potential attendees. 

Equally, if you’re one part of a larger team, ask lots of questions and be open to learning, and find out if a specific task has a deadline so you can prioritise your jobs by importance. That way, you can do your part to the best of your ability and help deliver an unforgettable event. 

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Set up an FAQ page

If you’re promoting an event, you’ll likely receive many questions about the night. That’s why it’s helpful to set up an FAQ page with location, venue address, travel details and anything you see that gets asked by potential attendees. Once you’ve got an FAQ page set up, you can direct all the questions back to that page, setting a Facebook Pixel up on that page to capture the data of people who visit. 

Then, you can use that data to serve retargeting ads to whoever didn’t go on to buy a ticket or clicked away from the web page before making a transaction. If you’re receiving questions via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, that’s people coming from three different platforms, so the return is worth taking time to set up the FAQs and pixel. 

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Facebook Ad checklist

Keeping on the subject of Facebook ads, it can be tempting to spend time getting hung up on whether to use images or videos. Both can work, and Ric, our paid media specialist, advises promoters to get the sizes of their assets right – If you run an ad with a 1920 x 1080 image or video, you are paying the same amount of money to Facebook to take up less space on someone’s screen. Use square (1080 x 1080) for Facebook Feed, 1080 x 1350 for Instagram Feed and 1080 x 19020 for Instagram Story.

When it comes to budget, he recommends Setting a Daily Budget will also give you the most flexibility as you can easily see what you are spending each day and what your total spend will finish at. It also makes ‘scaling’ your ad easy. Scaling means increasing the budget when it’s performing strongly. Don’t increase your daily budget by more than 20%, as this is likely to reset the ads ‘learning phase’.

Click here to read more tips on Facebook Ads. 

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Got a question you need an answer to? Give us a call on 03333010301 or ask us a question over on the Skiddle Promoter Twitter account by clicking or tapping on the button below. Alternatively, you can also find a list of our most frequently asked questions over at https://help.promotioncentre.co.uk/