Don't lose the click: How to captivate your audience in a distracted age.

Planners, it’s the Wild West out there. While social media is considered the best way to grow your sales, getting your content seen amidst all the noise is challenging. One staggering statistic states that 46,740 posts are made on Instagram every minute!  But don’t lose hope! If you know how to navigate these digital waters, you can find your audience and build a thriving digital community that leads to more registrations, sales, and brand awareness. You’ll also save money on traditional marketing practices and improve sustainability. It all depends on how strategic you are with content creation.  A detailed, flexible content marketing strategy will boost your brand and prepare you to adjust to the digital world's ever-changing trends. As AI tools enter the marketplace, having a base level of digital literacy will be even more critical than ever.  Explore our guide to social media marketing for event planners to learn the tricks to creating irresistible content!  https://giphy.com/gifs/filmeditor-will-ferrell-elf-xUySTIOsf7QxHx1gk0

Create detailed buyer personas.

Great content begins with a thorough understanding of your audience. Given the algorithm’s mysterious power over visibility, the smartest way to be seen is to make your brand a natural suggestion for its intended audience. The algorithm will do the rest (mostly).  Begin your content strategy by building a buyer persona. It’s a digital representation of your customers composed of key data points, including age, interests, motivations, and paint points. This “roadmap” will help you make quicker content decisions, increase brand trust and deepen your audience relationship.  Other data points 

• Location 
• Gender 
• Channels followed 
• Professional title 
• Industry

Examine your existing audience across all platforms and determine the shared attributes of your most engaged followers. This information, plus outside research, should provide enough data for an effective buyer persona. Pay attention to pain points; these offer “doorways” into deeper emotional connections and organic digital marketing opportunities.  While you’re at it, identify which content your audience engages with most. This will provide a creative foundation for the next step. https://giphy.com/gifs/ayanna-pressley-alopecia-im-not-here-just-to-occupy-space-create-it-RjxCHlwCnhUnSuyh7h

Diversify your content.

Once you’ve got your buyer persona, the question remains: “What do we make?” The short answer is—everything. But okay, we’ll give you a little more than that. However, as you begin content creation, it’s vital to remember that repetitive posts are going to become background noise. You need to diversify your content to keep your audience interested.  Short-form video is the current “content star” of most platforms, especially on Instagram and TikTok. There are many possibilities even within this category. The underlying factor for successful content marketing is authenticity. Media-literate Millenials and Gen-Z are averse to anything that feels like an ad. Tell your story, and the audience will come.  Storytelling Ideas 

• Origin story: how you started 
• Challenges and how you overcome them 
• Event recaps to leverage FOMO 
• *Authentic* Industry Insights 
• Attendee stories 
• Vendor/sponsor highlights 

This event storytelling can (and should) be communicated through various content formats, like photos, videos (long and short-form), Instagram stories, and Tweets (or Xs? Exs?). The fun of content creation is the limitless potential for individual expression. Embrace it and know that if you’re having fun with your content, your audience is too!  Content Types 

• Photo collage 
• Social media contests 
• Livestream Q&As/BTS 
• Polls & Quizzes 
• How-tos/edutainment

Let your creativity run wild! Then, examine the data and hone your strategy based on what your audience engages with most. Remember, this is a process just like event planning. Your content marketing should evolve as you do.

Leverage trends and memes.

Once you create diverse, audience-tailored content, you’re halfway to virality! But if you want to shine, you’ll have to leverage trends and master meme marketing. Social media is an ongoing conversation within a digital community. Add to that conversation authentically to attract its most active members.  Trends are the engine of attention and the surest way to “game” the algorithm, even if none of us know how it works. Social media trends allow your brand to ride the coattails of an already popular subject or post straight to virality. This applies to content formats (e.g., short form over photo collages) and individual memes.  Example: Expedia created a brilliant riff on the popular #tbt (throwback Thursday) with their #ThrowMeBack campaign. They asked users to share nostalgic posts from previous trips with the hashtag for the chance to win a free trip back to that destination. Guess how much engagement they got?  300,000 and 96% growth on Instagram—in TEN WEEKS!  Event planners can use humor and pop culture references—the building blocks of memes—to increase brand relatability. Fostering a community with a common cultural vocabulary will deepen connections with audience members, increasing brand awareness, engagement, and registrations.  Trends need to be used authentically. Don’t just willy-willy pump out event planning versions of popular memes. Gen-Zers can smell an ad. Instead, engage with trending hashtags, memes, current events, and subjects that organically align with your values and experience.

Partner with influencers.

Here’s some good news, planners. You don’t have to do it all yourself! Partnering with influencers is an efficient way to boost your content marketing. According to a 2019 Edelman report, consumers are 53% more likely to buy from a brand they trust. Influencers are key to improving brand relatability and trust. Influencers build their followings with personal, relatable content that users connect with personally. They form close parasocial bonds, making any suggestion by a favorite influencer more likely to seem authentic. When an influencer promotes your brand, it doesn’t sound like an ad. It’s an authentic recommendation from a trusted digital “friend.”  Many organizers become event planner influencers themselves! But if your reputation is still young, partnering with an influencer can boost your social cache. They can instantly boost your visibility and engagement, fast tracking your reputation as a premium event planner.  They say the best promotion is word of mouth. Influencers offer a scalable form of this promo style, which feels more authentic and trustworthy than traditional marketing.  Seek out value-aligned partnerships with influencers. Their brand image, tone and messaging should match yours. This ensures an organic partnership that boosts both party’s values and prevents your audience from sniffing out a purely commercial exchange. If you’re lucky, you may form long-term partnerships that last years! https://giphy.com/gifs/vh1-lhhny-love-and-hip-hop-new-york-sidney-starr-MV1mwCJ5Ysg8l8c5K9

Become a social star.

Being seen on social media is easier than it looks. It requires diligence, organization, patience, and a sprinkle of creativity. It’s not too different from event planning, really. Think of it like hosting a social media cocktail party! You’re creating a digital experience that your audience can engage with; a space where they can connect, learn, and have fun.  It may be tricky at the start, but you’ll find your “voice” in the digital space the longer you try. In our digital world, the event planners who become digitally fluent will foster meaningful relationships with attendees and maximize their visibility. To top it off, it’s free to post!  Now, go out there and be the content marketing star that you are!