The best events are half in the room and half online. Here is how we plan the social side from the very first brief.
Most event plans start with the venue, the line-up and the budget — and the social media gets bolted on a week before, when someone remembers the event needs "a bit of a push." By then it is too late to do it well. The audience that makes an event feel full and alive is built over weeks, not days.
That is why we treat the online side as its own stream of work from the start. Approaching it as a proper social media development project — with its own goals, calendar and a person who owns it — is what separates events that fill a room from events that merely hope to.
Before a single graphic is designed, we get clear on who we are actually talking to. What do they already follow? What makes them share something? What would make them tell a friend? An event aimed at families behaves nothing like one aimed at a late-night crowd, and the content calendar should reflect that from day one.
Defining the audience first also tells you which platforms matter. There is no prize for being everywhere — two channels done properly beat five done badly.
A good plan has three clear phases. Before is about anticipation: teasers, behind-the-scenes, early-bird moments and reasons to care. During is about capture and energy — sharing the moments as they happen so the people who could not make it wish they had. After is the phase everyone forgets, and it is often the most valuable: the highlights, the thank-yous and the content that keeps your audience warm until the next time.
Every post should have a reason to exist. Some build awareness, some drive sign-ups, some simply remind people the day is coming. When each piece of content has a job, the feed stops being noise and starts being a quiet, steady engine for the event.
We also plan for the content we can only make on the day. A short, well-shot clip from the event itself will almost always outperform anything made in advance, so we go in with a shot list and a plan for getting it live quickly.
Vanity numbers feel nice and tell you very little. We track the things that connect to the event's real goals — sign-ups, ticket clicks, shares from the right people — and we adjust as we go rather than waiting until it is over to find out what worked.
Put together, that is what a social media plan looks like for us: audience first, a clear three-phase timeline, content with a purpose, and honest measurement. Done early and done properly, it turns social media from an afterthought into one of the hardest-working parts of the whole event.
Want this handled for your next event? Take a look at what we do, or read more on turning followers into guests.