Social media is a critical component of any marketing campaign – especially at trade shows.
But where to begin?

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Understand Your Goals And Target Audience

Before you attend a trade show or event, identify your goals for the event. For example, do you want to generate leads or sales? Or is your objective to expose your brand?

Furthermore, understand your target market and determine the best way to communicate with that group on social media. Understanding your goals and target audience will help you prioritize your social media time investment in ways that help you achieve event objectives.

Invest In Mediums That Offer The Greatest Return

While everyone wants to have a robust social media presence on every platform, it isn’t always feasible for every marketing team. Invest time and efforts into platforms that appropriately communicate your brand messaging to the right audience.

For example, a real estate company may use Pinterest to showcase properties and décor ideas for home sellers while a software company may not use Pinterest at all, as their product is better demonstrated on YouTube or other social platforms.

Selecting the right social mediums and focusing efforts on those mediums will help marketers achieve more with their resources.

Use Show And Event Social Buzz

Research your trade show or event to understand what kind of social buzz is created around the event.

Does the show have a dedicated hashtag?

Are there social media meet-ups?

Use the social media resources already built by the show to not only improve the efficiency of your efforts, but to also reach your exact target audience: the people who are attending or interested in the event.

Outline Your Content Sharing Plan BEFORE The Show

Walking into a trade show with a content sharing plan not only reduces the stress of trying to engage in social media on the fly, but also focuses your message to ensure you communicate the right points to your audience.

Automation tools allow you to schedule posts in advance, further enhancing your event social media efforts by reducing time investment and improving the quality of your engagement.

Measure, Measure, Measure

Every impression, like and share on social media is valuable for your brand.

Think of social media marketing in terms of advertising. How much would it cost to gain 1,000 impressions on your target market if you took out an ad in the event brochure? That amount is the value of the impressions you make on social.

Measure social media milestones and assign value to these milestones to help you better understand that return on your social media investment. Measuring your results can help you determine where your energies are best spent for future trade shows and events.

Social media serves as a valuable medium for marketers to leverage to expose their brand and increase interest, leads and sales. By prioritizing social media efforts at trade shows and events, marketers can not only reach the right people at the right time with the right content, but they can also increase the return on the overall event investment.

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Social Media at Trade Shows

Trade Show Planning Checklist