Whether your business is having their grand opening in a new community or you’re hosting a conference with several thousand people, everyone wants to increase their event attendance.
Where many businesses fall flat, in my experience, is that they think that just creating the event on Facebook will send event registration and attendance skyrocketing on its own. They don’t really promote it outside of one initial post, and then they leave it and wait.
This is a mistake. Facebook events can do incredible things for your business, but only if you leverage them correctly. In this post, we’re going to take a look at six of the most effective and foolproof strategies to drive up your Facebook event attendance with plenty of time to spare.
1. Optimize for Event Attendance
When you’re creating your Facebook event, you should optimize it to ensure maximized visibility. This means considering keywords that users may type into a search bar—just as you’d optimize any page on your website—and placing keywords in your description.
You should also choose the relevant category and Facebook-selected keywords in order to increase the likelihood that your event will be shown to the right audience. Make sure that you check “kid friendly” or “free admission” if either apply, as either of these can drive up attendance significantly in certain audiences.
2. Post Updates Regularly
You should post about your event fairly regularly, sharing updates of the event to your main Page while linking back to it and posting new updates to the actual event page, too. The former helps send your followers to the event so they don’t miss it; the latter will help increase engagement on the event, keeping people invested in it. As people engage with content on your event’s page, this may also show up in newsfeeds of their friends, increasing the visibility of your event even further.
Update regularly with content like reminders, behind-the-scenes info on preparation, crucial information like where to park, and exciting updates about new things that will be included.
3. Use Event Hashtags on Instagram & Twitter
Cross-promoting your event on other platforms is always a good move; some brands’ audiences will be more active on Twitter or Instagram instead of Facebook, for example. And when it comes to Twitter and Instagram, hashtags are key.
A lot of people underestimate how effective hashtags can be when you want to increase attendance, especially for local events. Every time one of my local clients has a grand opening, I make sure to use a combination of #grandopening #localevent and a location-specific hashtag (like #Dallas or #iloveAtlanta). Business conferences and webinars could use hashtags like #businessnetworking to help land themselves in front of the right target audience.
Whichever hashtags you use (and don’t forget, you can now use hashtag stickers!), make sure…
