You know that you should use social media to promote your event. How do you know what the best social media platforms for promoting events are though?
In surveying professional event promoters for our 2023 Event Promotions Trend Report, social media was by far the leading channel event promoters use to market their events.
Even if you’re an experienced event promoter yourself, you’ll likely find some new ideas in this post. Social media is a constantly evolving marketing discipline where you can always learn something new.
The Best Social Media Platforms for Promoting Events
The type of event you are promoting will determine which is the best social media platforms for promoting your events.
In 2023, there are six major social media platforms that are widely used for event promotions. They are Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. LinkedIn, Twitter (now called X), and Snapchat. Your target audience will determine which platform is best for your promotions.
Entertainment spending ranges from 4.1%-5.6% for all age groups. So while platforms like Facebook skew towards older generations and TikTok skews younger, it is valuable to reach both audiences. Unless, of course, your event specifically caters to one or the other.
TikTok
TikTok is popular with younger audiences. Despite a wide variety of age groups using TikTok now, users over 50 still make up less than 15% of total users.
The engagement rate on TikTok is the highest of any platform, at 5.69%. It is decreasing, but still well ahead of all other social media platforms. Because of the focus on entertainment, it makes a great platform to promote events.
The key to promoting an event on TikTok is creating engaging and interactive content. Keep reading for TikTok post examples for events.
Alaina from Vesta has been successfully promoting events on TikTok for a few years now, garnering millions of views and interactions. She’s often invited out to cover and promote events. Check out our podcast interview with Alaina for tips on how to promote events on TikTok.
A lot of people won’t think of LinkedIn for promoting events, but I can tell you from personal experience that it’s worth consideration.
If your event has a professional audience, LinkedIn is a must. LinkedIn has a very high average engagement rate at 3.16%.
You can create events on LinkedIn as a post type, invite your network to that event, and timely posts about events tend to get higher than average engagement rates in my experience.
Later in this post we’ll share some insights on how to make the most out of your posts about your event on LinkedIn.
Instagram has a broad spread of users across interest groups and ages. This makes it a great social media platform to promote events. There is also a heavy emphasis on visuals on Instagram, and events have an advantage here.
The average engagement rate on Instagram is 0.47%. That is still a very strong engagement rate for how mature the platform is.
Instagram has a combination of post types that perform well for promoting events.
In the attempt to engage wider audience segments, try to design captivating Instagram stories. Well-curated stories have some of the highest engagement rates across all social media post types. Wepik is a useful tool for this, providing you with design elements and templates to conveniently make these stories more appealing.
Getting this mix down is important to reaching a wide range of users, as their feeds are highly curated to their usage patterns. If you only post image posts or only post reels, you will be missing an important segment of users.
Below we have lots of ideas on Instagram post examples for events.
Facebook changed the game for event promotion. They made it so that anyone could create an event, invite friends, easily advertise the event, and add any ticketing platform they wanted.
While Facebook has had some decline in recent years, it still has more active users than any other social media platform. Most users are also used to interacting with events on the platform.
Facebook’s engagement rate is relatively low at 0.060%, but it makes up for it in the sheer number of users on the platform. Of course, many event organizers find they have to user paid boosts in order to reach and engage with the audience they want on Facebook.
At minimum, it’s important to create your event page on Facebook so that those who use the platform to search for events will find your event. Otherwise, we also have some creative ways to promote your event later in this article that will help with promoting your events on Facebook.
Snapchat
A lot of event organizers use Snapchat to promote events. We were unable to find an engagement rate. However, Snapchat users are highly engaged and rate their enjoyment of the platform higher than most other social media platforms.
Snapchat is another platform that is popular with younger audiences. Use Snapchat to share disappearing photos and videos from your event. You can also use Snapchat’s geofilters to let people know that you’re at a specific event.
It is challenging to promote an event to new audiences on Snapchat. It is a better platform for engaging with an existing audience.
You can create geofilters and encourage others to create their own Snapchat posts at your event. This is the most effective way to spread the word about your event on Snapchat because their networks will see that post.
You can also create an intimate connection with your audience on Snapchat by sharing behind the scenes content, answering questions, and sharing other exclusive content.
Twitter, now X.com
Event with the recent chaos around Twitter… I mean X.com… there are still a lot of very engaged users on the social media platform.
For sports, entertainment, and business the engagement rate will likely be higher than the average rate of 0.035% on the platform.
Photos have a surprising high engagement rate on Twitter along with short video posts. You can stand out significantly on the timeline with these post types.
Hashtags and tagging other profiles are also an important part of any Twitter strategy for event promotion.
What about Threads?
In mid-2023, Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company) launched their own Twitter competitor called Threads.
It quickly surpassed 100 million users in under a week. This was mostly due to the push that both Facebook and Instagram made in-product to get users signed up for the new social media platform.
However, the active users have already dropped to an estimated 23.6 million users.
That’s still not an insignificant number of users.
It’s too early to really know how to best use Threads for events and only time will tell if it will stick around. It’s worth reposting from your other social media platforms and experimenting with Threads to see if it works for your events.
Why is engagement getting lower on social media platforms?
It’s notable that engagement rates on all platforms drop over time. As these platforms reach maturity, they usually hit a maximum number of active users that will ever use the platform. At the same time, more people see the opportunity and post more content.
The math plays out that the longer a social media platform is around, engagement rates will go down. It’s also important to note though, that the total engagements might be higher because of the total number of users on the platform.
Keep reading to learn how to best leverage social media for promoting an event.
How often should you post to social media about your event?
Post more than once. Even a lot.
How much you post on social media will determine how many people see your posts.
We see a lot of event organizers make one announcement post about their event. They will maybe share another post right before the event is happening.
And look, we get it. You’re busy organizing your event or promoting your hundred other events this year. That’s why we help automate local event promotion, but you should still make a real effort to post more often to the social media platforms that matter most to you.
The simple truth is that two posts about your event is not enough.
If a social media platform is chronological or time-based, it is important to post more often. At minimum once per day. Especially when it comes to Story posts on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook you want to have an active story at any given time.
The social media platforms that have algorithm-based feeds, quality content is more important. A few years ago less was more, but with the rise of the way TikTok runs their algorithm and everyone copying them, sometimes more is still more.
So the answer is… it depends. Let’s take a look at each of the main social media platforms individually to see how often you should post about your event on social media.
How often should you post on TikTok about your event?
On TikTok, you should aim for posting once per day. Thankfully, the TikTok algorithm is relatively forgiving. If you can’t post that much, it is absolutely okay.
The key is to post engaging and interactive content for your event. The TikTok algorithm will continue to show the same users your content regardless of if they follow you or not after they interact with one of your posts.
Use a variety of hashtags to reach new potential users with every post. If you have limited time, it can be helpful to post a lot of content early on and then slow down.
Aim for 1 post per day at minimum at the beginning of announcing your event, leading up to your event, and immediately after your event.
Keep reading for ideas on what to post on TikTok about your event.
How often should you post on Instagram about your event?
Instagram’s algorithm is very similar to the TikTok algorithm now. It has changed a lot in the past few years.
What is different is how vastly different the post types will be from user to user. This is because Instagram will identify what a user is most likely to engage with and show them more of that type of post.
The simple answer to how often you should post on Instagram about your event is around once per day. Posting a few different post types per day will work even better.
Share a good mix of static image posts, reels, and carousel posts to get the most engagement out of Instagram for your event.
Later in this article, we’ll cover some of the best types of posts to promote an event on Instagram.
How often should you post on LinkedIn about your event?
The LinkedIn algorithm is completely a momentum game. If one post does well, the next posts will be shown to more of your network.
Plus when other users engage with your content, it gets shown to their network.
So more than any other platform, getting your posts to be collaborative and interactive on LinkedIn is important.
The best cadence for LinkedIn is once per day. If you post more often, each post won’t have enough time to catch the algorithm. If you post less often, you’ll start to lose the boost in reach from your previously successful posts.
It is also a lot easier to grow an audience as individual users on LinkedIn instead of a business page. However, if you can achieve a high follower count on a business page, it is no longer true that the engagement rate will be significantly lower than it would be on a personal page with the same number of followers.
Many marketers have been noticing the LinkedIn algorithm changing a lot in the last few months. So test out what is working for you.
Further down in this article, we share some exciting types of posts for promoting an event on LinkedIn along with some other creative event promotion ideas for social media.
How often should you post on Facebook about your event?
Facebook is one of the more sensitive algorithms to over-posting. Along with LinkedIn, having one low-performing post can significantly impact the reach of your future posts on Facebook.
Most businesses find the best cadence on Facebook is 3-4 posts per week. This gives each post enough time to build up steam, but also gives you another shot at bat quick enough if one of your posts is a total miss.
How often to post on Twitter / X.com about your event?
Twitter… or X.com recently changed from a chronological feed to a popularity-based feed. This means you no longer get the most visibility on Twitter by posting a few times per day.
Engagement really matters now. If you can get people retweeting and commenting on your threads, more people will see you post.
The best cadence on Twitter and X.com is now however many posts it takes you to create engaging content. You can still post 2-3 times per day and schedule posts out, but only do so if you think those posts will have a lot of interaction.
How often should you post on SnapChat about your event?
Snapchat acts a lot like stories in Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Actually, it is where Instagram got the idea for stories in the first place.
Because of the disappearing nature of posts, at least once per day is recommended to promote your events on Snapchat.
You don’t have to post that often and there isn’t a significant disadvantage to posting less often like there is on other platforms. But why miss the chance to get in front of your audience every day?
Conclusion and More Ways To Promote Your Events
Now that you have a solid understanding of the best social media platforms for promoting events AND how often you should post on social media about your event, it’s time to get creative.
Check out the next posts on social media post examples for events, memes for promoting events, and creative social media campaign ideas for events.
