Five Ways to Use Instagram Stories to Grab Attention for Events

Event management companies must always be on the lookout for ways to promote their events and increase brand recognition within their audience.

And today, social media needs to be at the very centre of any comprehensive strategy – the majority of audiences hang out on social media, and platforms such as Instagram provide the perfect opportunity to raise awareness about your event and drive attendance.

Using Instagram Stories, you can create compelling and relevant content that helps you broaden your reach, get in front of prospective attendees, and maybe even generate buzz from relevant influencers.

But how exactly should you use Instagram Stories for your event promotion?

Well, let’s explore some approaches that every event company should seriously consider.

Identify Your Target Audience

Although you will be engaging your own social media following, you still need to clearly establish who are you trying to reach, as that will help you develop a more effective content strategy.

Generic posts and messages never generate good results and end up appealing to no one, so if you want your campaigns to capture attention, you need to not only strive to make the posts engaging, but make sure that the tone, the language, and the content itself is relevant to the prospective attendees.

What’s more, you should also be aware of the trends that dominate the Instagram Stories landscape, especially in your field, as that will allow using design elements and approaches that people enjoy and like to engage with, which is the ultimate goal of any campaign.

Encourage Interaction 

Another crucial aspect of Instagram Stories promotion that event management companies must use is making sure that there is enough interaction with your audience.

And the good news is, Instagram Stories makes it very easy to encourage interaction and participation using various tools such as surveys, voting, and other forms of engagement.

What’s more, as you can probably imagine, surveys and voting posts are also excellent resources for gaining insights about your audience, its preferences, and the best approaches that you should use. 

The value of asking your followers about various aspects of your events directly can’t be understated– it helps ensure that you steer clear of problems and produce an event that people will actually enjoy.

Generate Buzz Using Event Announcements

Instagram, just like most other social media platforms, is all about communication and content. So, when trying to promote your events, it’s essential to keep that in mind and make your Instagram Stories gradually progress and tell a compelling story about your upcoming event.

There are a few different ways you could do that, each serving its own purpose and helping you grab and keep attention up until the day of your event.

First off, you’ll need to pique curiosity by announcing the event – make sure to use creative visuals, as well as a strong central message that is the most likely to generate interest and excitement.

As the event date draws closer, schedule regular posts that reveal more details about the event, showcasing its appeal, as well as promoting various details about the itinerary, guests, and entertainment that can be expected.

You can even use photos from the preparations, as they can give a behind-the-scenes feel and generate a stronger desire to attend.

Finally, make sure that you continue interacting during and after the event, as that can help you build on the success that you achieve when promoting future events, conditioning your followers to regularly check for new updates.

Tell Stories to Form Connections

As the name implies, Instagram Stories is built around stories, so you should use this to your advantage and make sure that you use powerful narratives that help form a connection with your audience.

After all, if you just slap a link to your Instagram Story and hope that people will click through, you’ll find your click-through rate plummeting sooner rather than later.

However, if you can find a story angle that revolves around the theme of your event or a significant issue that your audience wants to solve, you can grab and maintain attention, not only engaging your own audience but also getting them to engage with your content and share it with others.

And the best part is, when you have a clear narrative, you can map out your posts and make sure that you never run out of new Stories, never have to repeat yourself, and gradually move your narrative up until your event date.

Use Various Visuals

Instagram is a visual social media platform, driven by images or short videos, so you need to adapt your promotion strategy accordingly if you’re going to generate attention.

We already discussed the ways how you could engage your audience using surveys and other forms of content, but you should also use different types of visuals in order to keep your content fresh and exciting.

Luckily, you can use Instagram Stories to post pictures and videos, both of which provide unique opportunities for showcasing the various aspects of your event.

And even if you use the same type of visuals, you should at least try to make them different, taking interesting and high-quality images that grab attention and make people notice them in a crowd of other content.

Most of these suggestions might seem quite simple, but they should be used by any event company that wants to take advantage of the opportunities presented by social media, as Instagram Stories are incredibly popular, especially among the desirable younger demographics.

Obviously, Instagram Stories won’t become your primary marketing strategy, but it can be an excellent tool that can supplement your other efforts and ensure that you boost attendance and keep social media engagement high both before and during the event.