Getting your dates in everyone’s diary - how to promote your events with success
And access to my comprehensive guide to show you how
Preamble - if you want to get straight to the bit about events scroll to the next title! :)
Last week I gave a TikTok workshop, Tanya’s TikTok Workshop to be exact. And I started the workshop by telling everyone that the reason it was called Tanya’s TikTok workshop was that I’d seen Tanya at a great local creative group we both go to, and across the bar she just called out ‘Laura, I need a TikTok workshop!’
And I thought, why not? As I wrote about last week, I’ve been organising workshops and online sessions for months now with varying levels (no level, they’ve all been empty!) of success. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been useful for me, but if I was measuring success by having people come along then last week’s workshop would have been the first one where I nailed it.
But it also got me thinking. If one of the keys to the success of this workshop was that I literally just created something that someone specifically asked for, how can I replicate that success and also show people what it’s like to work with me and encourage them to do more of that by becoming part of my Content Club?
With this in mind, I was thinking about what I could create next that would be most useful to people that I work with, want to work with, and want to know more about me and what I do. As part of running Leighton Buzzard Local I put up a weekly events round up on Instagram as a post.
One of the challenges that I have is that I often find posts about events but I can’t find out anything about the event itself. Or if I can, some details are missing. Or someone has shared a post to stories and I shared it once but I forgot to take a screenshot and so the story has now disappeared.
It occurred to me that promoting events has all the elements that I talk about over and over again in Content Club - capturing content ideas, creating content, posting, planning content over time - and I’ve found a group of people who follow me who might benefit from having this broken down and laid out for them in a way that’s a bit more helpful.
So this week, I’ve created a comprehensive guide to promoting your events. Right now this is a Google doc that I’m sharing with you today. I will take this and make it look a bit prettier in the future but right now it’s got all the elements you need and a lovely table of contents so you can skip to any bit you like.
If you’re promoting an event, weekly classes, have a product launch, taster session, workshop or webinar coming up then this is for you. I’m going to outline a few of the sections in this post to give you an idea of what it covers, but if you’re wanting to make sure that everyone has your next event in their diary, then this is for you.
Back to basics - where to start
First up, you are going to need to make sure you have a great post / poster for your event that gives everyone the essential details they need.
What is the event?
When?
Where?
How can people get involved / in touch / buy tickets - URL or QR code
Canva is your friend here, there are so many great templates you can use that will make your post look great and I go over some tips for making templates yours in the full guide.
Share this post as soon as you’ve got the details for your event set.
Pin it to the top of your profile wherever you can - TikTok, Instagram etc.
Then take a look at your profile and see where else you can share info about the event
Do you want to change your bio / profile description to mention it in the run up to the event?
Where can you share the link in your profile for people to get more info / buy tickets? Instagram now gives you more than one link in your bio, or you can use something like Linktree to create a page with multiple links, one of them being a link to the event page or ticket info
What other practical information do people need to know about the event?
Can you make this into multiple posts so you have a carousel of posts to share which covers everything someone might need to know about the event?
Getting Creative - build a story around your event
Next up you are going to want to think about what other content you want to create for your event.
This is your chance to tell the story of the event, and pull people in to what it is that has made you set up the event, why you’ve used this venue, the history of the event over the years, or why you’ve created this totally new event.
Think about how you can create content that shows off exactly what people are going to see and do, experience, what they’ll get, everything that comes with going to your event.
This is a great time to think about short videos. Can you do a venue tour? Talk to people who came before? Tell the stories of the idea behind the event? Speak to other people involved?
Get the excitement going with some great storytelling that will make people want to come and be part of it.
Posting - get a schedule in place that you can stick to
The quickest and easiest way to build a content plan is to quickly write out the week between now and when your event takes place and then start to fill each week with what’s going on.
Are there steps along the way that you can be sharing? When will things arrive? Are there early bird tickets people can take advantage of? Note down all of these over the weeks in the run up to the event.
Then start to build in the other ideas that you’ve had for the content around the event. If you’ve got goodie bags turning up one week then that’s content for that week sorted. So if the week after that has nothing in, is that a good time to share the reviews from last year’s event? Note down what you can share in each week as you get closer to the big day.
Think about how often you really can commit to sharing content. If you’ve got plenty of content, which you’ve either already created or can set aside regular time to create then by all means fill out a lovely full content calendar.
If you’re looking at it thinking that it’ll be struggle to get things in the diary that will actually get posted then be strategic about how often you realistically can post. Create a plan you can stick to. You’d be better off with one post a week consistently over time up to the event, than trying to post 3x per week and then just stopping after the first week and not being able to post again.
Community - get others involved to spread the word
Throughout your promotion, think about how you can create a community around your event. From people who’ve joined you before, to the vendors that might be attending, people who support your cause, who live locally to your event, everyone loves to feel like they’re involved.
Don’t just tag a load of people, think about what your content is about and who it would be best to tag each time. So if you’re sharing the stall set up for your event, tag the stallholders. If you’re sharing reviews from last year, tag the people who gave you the great feedback. People loved being tagged like this, where they can see that you’ve put thought into why they want you to be involved and are far more likely to share your posts when you have made it clear you’ve handpicked them for a reason.
Find accounts that promote what goes on locally to you and approach them to see how they share content and whether they can share yours. If you’re local to Leighton Buzzard then don’t forget to tag me - Leighton Buzzard Local - I share a weekly events round up on a Friday and I put all the events that I can find, and all those that tag me in their event posts.
Get the full guide - and work with me!
I hope that you’ve found this helpful. For this week’s post I’ve put just a few tips and tricks and an overview from the full guide that I wrote. You can view the full guide here, which has more detail on everything I covered here, and a great table of contents so you can jump straight to what you need to know.
And if you love this guide, and my posts here on substack and want to get all of this marketing magic to support your small business every month then why not take a look at my Content Club? I’m looking for 50 Founder members by the end of 2025 to get the club off to a flying start! We meet twice a month online where I can answer any of your questions around marketing and really dig in to what you need to get your marketing sorted, your content created and help you tell your business stories with ease. If you’re ready to get started, find out more here.
Chat soon
Laura