Why Social Media is Your Best Friend for Award Ceremonies

By: Tetiana Hanchar Tetiana Hanchar
Date: Aug 14, 2017
Comment: 0
Category: Awards Marketing

Tweet it, tag it, repost it. – The prayer of social media promotion should be learned by every event planner, who sets out on organizing an award ceremony. The use of SM platforms is unavoidable if you want to build hype around an upcoming show.

So where do we start? To have a good subject for promotion, you have to construct a stunning ceremony that’ll carry attendees’ hearts away.

The rules of organizing a successful awards ceremony

Find the right location for your event. The venue that underlines the principle theme you embed into the ceremony is spacious enough and easy to get to will make your attendees grateful to you.

Play to the strengths of your marketing department. Creating a campaign that’ll illuminate all the strengths of your award ceremony in terms of design, partnerships, and program will turn your creation into pure attraction!

Provide incentives. Encourage people to interact with your show as much as possible. Initiate pre-event discussions, assign responsibilities, and you’ll get an engaged community before the ceremony even starts.

Use social networking at the ceremony. Boost the recognition of your awards ceremony and grant a great incentive for discussing your awards show online with the help of social networking.
Follow up with attendees. Don’t stop at the point of ceremony closure. Your recent attendees may all become your prospective loyal audience. Establish a long-lasting relationship with the guests through online follow-up activities.

How to use social media for observing activity

Want the recognition of your awards ceremony breaking all geographical borders? Then make a hustle and bustle around it online. Social media platforms are not the platforms for post-and-forget when it comes to ceremony organization. Either it’s Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, SM platforms that you use are your stages, where you stand from the moment the organization starts and long after the ceremony is closed. Stop talking to the audience from your stage at least for a moment – and people will start leaving you.

So how should you organize your social media activities before, during, and after the event? Treat yourself to free tips here!

Use Facebook at awards ceremonies

BEFORE

Once you have the concept of the ceremony in your mind, start visualizing it on Facebook. Select the cover photo for a Facebook group, together with the pictures you might want to include into the photo album. This might be the images from the last year show, the photos of participants or venue, and any other relevant visuals.
Create a pre-event posting schedule. You’re in charge of how much information your Facebook group visitors will get about the show. Make bright announcements and intriguing statements, provide updates on any new solutions. In other words, make it exciting!
Capture predictions. Set up the polling campaign on the winner betting to spice it up!

DURING

Livestream it. Let the group members peek inside the ceremony.
Don’t miss any vital update on the show proceedings.
In case it’s not a one-day event, encourage people to attend by offering last-chance tickets for the following show days.

AFTER

Show how it was. Create inspiring social media posts on the results and the best moments from the ceremony.
Disclose your further plans. Are you planning on setting the ceremony next year? Then after-event time is the best period for announcing it.
Ask for feedback. Show that you care about what people think about the ceremony. Provide space for comments, start polls, and don’t forget to keep responding.

Use Twitter at awards ceremonies

BEFORE

Start collecting relevant hashtags at least a week before the show kick-off. These will become your trackers for ceremony promotion on Twitter.
Half-disclose the contents. To make it intriguing, provide some short announcements about the participants or show elements, but always leave the curtains half closed.

DURING

Tweet quotes and news on ceremony proceedings actively.
Take photos from the venue, capture slides, and participants’ speeches for your tweets.
Retweet any relevant updates of other users to boost engagement.

AFTER

Follow-up with the tweets on ceremony results.
Capture the funny moments / weird outfits / inspiring speeches in your tweets.
Retweet a blog post about the ceremony and the posts created by other users.

Use Instagram at awards ceremonies

BEFORE

Collect the hashtags to attract your audience
Display the preparation phase through image posting (consider capturing as many funny and intriguing moments as you can)
Announce “The best ceremony Instagramer” contest and promise free tickets to those who’ll share the biggest number of posts about the event in their accounts.

DURING

Photoshoot everything. While you’ll leave formal images for Facebook and Twitter, Instagram should be used as the principal platform for sharing selfies, stand images, and participants’ photos from the event.
Tag. Don’t forget to tag all speakers /ceremony organizers / nominate, who end up in your Instagram images.

AFTER

Capture the results (in case you have any visuals on this point).
Leverage on any post-event activities.
Post the videos with winners’ and nominees’ speeches.

Top 5 lessons for using Social Media

#1. Excite your attendees

To build high anticipation, promote exciting news and feed the curiosity of your prospective attendees on social media. The strategy is for you to choose. Either it’s a photo from the prep day or a fact hinting at the personality of a special guest, make it eye-catching and intriguing.

#2. Provide a peek inside

Social media may give you the views from the show that even an attendee can’t get. Post the photos from behind the scenes on your SM platform and keep your audience engaged for a long time.

#3. Livestream

When you feel that the most crucial moment of the ceremony is coming, don’t forget to stream it live on your social media. That’s what even news channels don’t always manage to capture.

#4. Hashtag it right

Conduct research of the widely used hashtags for your ceremony. If you want to be easily found, pave the way to your platforms yourself.

#5. Recap

A successful awards show doesn’t end with the attendees leaving the venue. Stay active on your social media platforms, post regular recaps, and let the juices flow through your audience.

Using Social Media for awards programs: Example

The integrated approach to promoting Oscar 2017 that, as it might appear, doesn’t really need to be promoted was a well-elaborated campaign. According to the stats, social media mentions have fully reflected the results of the contest, with “Moonlight” and “La La Land” taking the top. The live streaming from the politics-referred speeches, the fun of confused “Best picture” announcement, and much more, were immediately reflected on SM platforms. The show also made a great use of external posts like a stunning Mr. Gamez infographics and Shutterstock images for motion pictures. Finally, selfies became the signature dishes for Oscar 2017.

If you want to hit the highest bar, follow the most prominent examples. That’s why we dare to leverage an Oscar 2017 campaign to illustrate what success of modern social media promotion means.

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