One of the best ways to generate buzz for an upcoming event is through social media. Find our top tips for creatively engaging with your audience and boosting attendance below.

Social MEDIA

Looking for ways to stand out on social? Want to grow your engagement with students? Social media polls are a great way to increase digital interaction and boost buy-in for your events! Poll your followers on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to help decide your next movie title, select concessions, pick the pre-show activity or any other details you need to decide. Finished planning? Have some fun with movie trivia questions about the upcoming film. After the show, use the feature to get feedback on your event to help improve it in the future!

1. Poll Your Campus

5 WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR MOVIE EVENT ON

2. Create a Custom HashtagAn event-specific hashtag is one of the easiest ways to generate buzz for your event. When creating yours, make sure it’s short, unique, easy-to-understand, and specific to your university and event experience. And once you decide on a hashtag, stick to it! Consistently use it for every movie event and add it to all your social channel descriptions.

Custom hashtags also come in handy for finding and reposting audience-generated content after the event – perfect for showing off your success, forming connections with attendees and stockpiling pics for future promotion!

According to research from EventMB, 52 percent of event planners specified that Facebook is the most effective social media channel for event promotion. For this reason, and many more, creating a Facebook event should be at the top of your promotion to-dos. A Facebook event page can help you spread the word, provide potential attendees with easily digestible information, directly connect you with your target audience through comments and questions, and award you wider exposure as people see their friends respond as “interested” or “attending.”

3. Make it Facebook Official

We show movies on Mondays and Tuesdays each week. We just started

doing #Take2Tuesday because sometimes students have class or they’re busy. The

fact that they can see it again on Tuesday [makes it] nice to relax, forget about

[classes], have a laugh or have a good cry.

- HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY

If your posts are lacking in re-shares, consider creating social media contests and giveaways to motivate engagement and convert followers into attendees. Make it a requirement for people to tag friends, share your post and/or use your event hashtag to enter in order to broaden your reach for the price of free concessions or a gift card.

If you don’t have room for a prize in the budget, reach out to local businesses in exchange for publicity.

Video is a unique way to showcase the value of your events to prospective attendees. Capture the excitement and fun attendees can expect at your event with great visuals, like friends laughing on a picnic blanket or a cozy couple enjoying a night under the stars. Paired with informative sound bites from event organizers, viewers will be enticed to add your next event to their calendars. Plus, when the video is shared, your overall social engagement will go up.

Beyond social, make sure to leverage your video content anywhere you can: your website, event landing page, newsletter, affiliates and more. And don’t forget to break it up into bite-size chunks to maximize its value.

Not sure what the rules are on promoting your event? Our FAQs page covers the details and restrictions of advertising your showing.

4. Incentivize with Prizes

5. Spotlight the Experience