Event Promotion - Social Media MISTAKE #4: Avoiding Paid Social Media Advertising
Here’s the thing about social media: It is a double-edged sword.
The best part about social media is that it is free. The worst part about social media is that it is free. You can post as much content as you want to your Facebook page at no charge. The challenge is that most people and businesses on Facebook are also posting free content. All this free content results in mountains of content for Facebook to distribute to users. So how does Facebook deal with all that content?
Facebook deals with the massive amount of free content by putting every post through a ranking algorithm. The algorithm then ranks your content based on hundreds of sophisticated behavioral and analytical factors. That means, if someone follows or likes your event page on Facebook, there is a low probability he or she will ever see what you post.1
That leaves you with an important choice: Do you compete with everyone posting free content or are you willing to pay to get a targeted message to the fans of your event? Enter paid social media advertising.
PROFIT ACTION - Focus on Paid Social Advertising
If you are willing to pay to boost posts and advertise, Facebook will give you much more exposure and better post placement. That means that significantly more people will see your content. By paying Facebook, you cut through all the noise.2 Paid advertising also allows you access to Facebook’s sophisticated Ad Manager platform.
It is not enough to create arbitrary content and boost that content. Each post needs to be engineered to drive people to buy tickets to your event.
Here is another powerful counter-intuitive strategy: Use boosted Facebook posts to drive people off of Facebook to your event website. Why would you want to take someone off of Facebook? Because, on your website, you have 100% control of the marketing message. When on Facebook, they control the message, and your target market is constantly fed distraction. As a result, Facebook makes money (through advertising), and you are left with little to nothing.
The real trick is to get your event marketing and promotion messages to resonate amid all that noise. To do that, you need to pay for advertising on social media.
To get additional context on the above mistake, click on the link below:
Here are some additional social media resources you can use to market your event:
- Do You Make These Social Media Mistakes with Your Event?
- Measuring Your Social Media Event Promotion Efforts
- How to Leverage Facebook and Your Event Marketing
- Beware of the "Social Media" Event SMACKDOWN!
- Social Media, Your Event Marketing, and "Insider Info" . . .
- Social Media Comments and Your Event
- The Downside of Promoting Your Event with Social Media
Article Footnotes:
1. Lucey, Blaise. “Want Real Results from Social? Start Paying.” Marketing Land, MarketingLand.com, 31 Mar. 2016, marketingland.com/want-real-results-social-start-paying-170298
2. Patel, Neil. “Do You Really Need More Facebook Likes? The Data Driven Answer.” Do You Really Need More Facebook Likes? The Data Driven Answer, KissMetrics.com, blog.kissmetrics.com/facebook-likes-data-driven-answer/
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