Building an Organic Following for Recurring Events

Creating a buzz around your event on social media isn’t difficult at all. But what if your event happens every month? Every week?

Social Media engagement is as much about retaining your current followers as it is about gaining new ones. In this article, we’ll detail a few ways to keep your existing audience excited, and a how-to on gaining more followers.

Create Exciting, Engaging Content

The first rule of social media engagement is to be consistent with your posts. Post frequently enough to catch people’s attention and maintain visibility, but not so often that your followers feel bombarded with your posts. This usually averages to one post a day- you can decide on a number based on your target audience. Devils Circuit’s strategy has been incredible- they’ve created excitement and anticipation for their events every year, in every city!   

Utilize different formats and make the most of them by posting content through different channels- images, videos, even polls and blogs. As you build a fan base, request users to write about your event on their personal blogs or timelines. Another great way to engage followers is to take lots of pictures at the event, especially of people, and posting an album on your timeline. Ask your users to tag themselves as this builds a relationship between the individual and your event itself. Create a ‘Highlight Reel/ Video’ from the previous edition of your event to excite the crowd like the example below.

The best way to build a lasting relationship with your followers is to be responsive. Always reply to questions, comments, and tags. Even if you receive some flak or negative comments, make sure you reply to them and address any concerns or complaints from your followers. The beauty of social media is that your content is out there for everyone to see and judge. It is your job to make sure they see the right things.

Make everything Share-able (and Share-worthy too!)

Privacy settings matter- before posting, always ensure that the privacy on your posts is set to Public. This is the only way your followers and fans can share your posts and spread the word even further. Your loyal followers are the biggest force multipliers in this scenario. As they share posts about your event, you are reaching out to more and more people from within their network.

This holds good for blog posts as well. Most people would argue that a blog post can be shared by just giving someone the link. Wrong. When it comes to social media, time is of the essence. Create a ‘Share’ button on every single one of your blog posts.

You could use this plugin for WordPress to create a share button on your blog. If you have email subscribers or followers on your blog, periodically channel them to follow your social media streams.

Interaction-Influencer marketing and guest posts

Influencers are the best way to ensure an exponential increase in your follower base. If you’re not too well-versed with Influencer Marketing, here’s a how-to:

Once you’ve gained a significant number of followers, try and pinpoint ones who are most influential on social media- these would be people with the largest number of followers or a large fan base. If you don’t find any within your followers, there’s always the next step. Reach out to social media celebrities or bloggers with a large fan base. Finding the right influencers is crucial and it all depends on the type of event you’re planning. For example, let’s say you’re planning a music concert that happens every quarter. Try and identify local musicians with many loyal followers, and reach out to them with requests to post about your event. In most cases, this is the best bet to gaining even more followers- like Monica Dogra promoting ‘Play for a Cause’ here.

Buzzsumo is an incredible app that helps you find the right influencers for your events. If you can find a celebrity to vouch for you and become a brand ambassador for your event, that would be the best thing yet. Even if you don’t have an ambassador, reaching out to other blogs to feature your event is a great idea!

Guest features and testimonials are also an exciting way to promote the event. Create some visually appealing and graphic templates that could be used and re-used with quotes/testimonials/feedback from followers. An added bonus is to create a testimonials video that can be used on all your social media streams.