by Ryan McGeary on
Content marketing is ideal for promoting an event. Creating tailored content for your event helps to build awareness and gets people talking. Generating buzz is critical because most attendees are unlikely to purchase tickets on the strength of an invitation alone. People are also more likely to respond favorably to content marketing than traditional advertising. 80% of business people prefer to get information in the form of articles than an ad, according to a recent poll by the Content Marketing Institute. Below you can learn some specific content marketing tactics to promote your next event.
Guest blogging can be an effective tactic to get attention from targeted audiences. With guest blogging, you post on popular blogs in your industry. There are two approaches you can take with guest blogging to promote your event. Firsty, you can ask speakers if they would like to contribute a guest blog post and then arrange for it to appear on a related blog. Alternatively, you can choose to create the content yourself.
Most blogs will not want to share content that is overly promotional with their readers. This means that you can’t write a blog post about the event itself. Instead, choose a topic that will be covered at the event, and write a blog post centered around it. Try to choose a topic that is likely to stir up interest or a little controversy. Bloggers like to see comments on posts, and if it is successful, you may be asked to write for the blog again. You can use your byline at the bottom of the guest post to include the event details and a link to your website.
One of these easiest ways to find blogs to guest post on is use Google. Use the following format for your Google search
[Industry] “Guest Post”
So for example, if we were promoting an event for the healthcare industry we would enter a search for -
Healthcare “Guest Post”
This should produce a list of blogs that are already allowing guest posts. Reach out to each of the blogs and pitch them your idea for a guest post.
Google Hangouts are an excellent way to build buzz for an event. They also give potential attendees an advance taste of a speakers content, so they can decide whether it is something they want to watch at the event.
To use Google Hangouts, arrange an interview with a speaker from your event. Invite people to attend and ask them to provide questions for the speaker. These questions will form the basis of the interview. You can also use the video recorded from the hangout to promote your event.
Video can attract a lot of eyeballs for your event. On YouTube alone, more than 1 billion hours of video are consumed every single month. Unless you already have a lot of subscribers, consider starting a specific channel to promote your event. This will allow you to release a series of videos which steadily builds up buzz for the event. People who want to receive more video content, can choose to follow the channel. You can use videos from previous events as well as post event footage. Video content can include interviews with speakers, footage from the event, and summaries of what is going to be covered. Don’t forget to include a link in the video description to the landing page on your event website.
Every time that you upload new content, you should share it through your social networks. Share a link to your video on Twitter and make sure to uses an appropriate hashtag so that it is easy for other people to discover. Facebook is another great place to share video content. Studies show that Facebook members are more likely to share, like and comment posts which have video footage in it. You can also set up a dedicated Facebook Fanpage for your event.
Finally, use the “YouTube Insight” function to gain a deeper understanding of your video marketing. This tool will give you an overview of the demographics which are viewing your video content and where traffic is coming from. If a social network is producing better quality traffic, you should focus your promotional efforts there.
Promoting your event with content marketing requires creativity, networking, and a little bit of hustle. However, when it is used properly it is one of the best ways to build awareness and improve attendance for your event.
