Having a ‘Culture of Curiosity’ within your organisation requires asking questions of your data, questions that light the wick of curiosity.
Have you ever wondered who the people on social media are that are saying good things about your event or business? These people who have seemingly taken it upon themselves to promote your event brand with no interaction from yourselves. You think it’s great they are raving about what you do and sharing your insights, but what do they get from it and why?
Your Influencers
These people are referred to as influencers, individuals who have the ability to influence the opinions or buying decisions of your target audience, largely thanks to their social media following. Influencers are social relationship assets and can be responsible for affecting key contracts, supporting new product releases or part of a resource pool that increases market awareness and industry shifts before they happen. Influencers are evangelists for your company.
As an event organiser your main priority is to market and get people to your event and while traditional methods such as print marketing, broadcast marketing, direct mail marketing and telemarketing are all trusted ways of attracting attendees, influencer engagement is another effective way of getting your event out into the world among as many people as possible.
With the power of social media, each influencer you engage with gives you access to a whole new community of people. You are not just touching your immediate network, but connecting to the networks of their networks.
Influencers can come in all shapes and sizes. They may be event speakers, exhibitors, attendees, venues or other organisers. Essentially those who have shared and brought traffic to your site are your influencers. These are the visitors who took the time to share your page with their network, broadening your site’s reach by bringing new traffic.
Influencers are worth their weight in gold and understanding who they are and how important they are for your event is the key to making a success of your digital marketing efforts.
Investing time to thoroughly research your influencers can pay off in the long run. Looking at who is influencing the online conversation in your industry is a good place to start, searching popular industry hashtags can connect you to those most active on social media.
Read their content and find out what is important to them and discover how your event could add value to what they are committed to. You could also look closer to home and engage with your event speakers, attendees and exhibitors who are already likely to be fans of what you do, use them to help spread the word avoiding the lack of attendees.
Once you understand your influencers, how they behave, what social platforms they use, what they are interested in and their social value, the key is keeping them engaged. How do you keep your influencers engaged?
Good content
Content is king and is a crucial element of all digital marketing strategies. Good content, whether it is a blog post or social media update, will encourage influencers to engage with your event, whether they realise it or not. If the content is genuinely good they will take time to consume it, like it and share it.
Varied content
They say that variety is the spice of life and this can be true of content. Mix it up and really give your influencers something to talk about. News, research, white papers, blogs, features ad case studies are all great forms of content for sharing.
Don’t overfatigue
Keep interactions with your influencers fresh, relevant and active. Don’t waste your efforts posting the same content over and over, focus on quality and a quantity that you can manage.
Reach out
Follow your influencers on social media. Make comments and show interest in what they are doing. Think about ways to provide value to your influencer such as free tickets to your event.
Acrotrend Solutions works with event organisers to achieve higher visitor attendance and conversions to their paid or free-to-attend events.
How Can We Help?
For more information on how we can help you grow your visitor attendance, request a free consultation.