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LIGHTS, CAMERA, COVERAGE! DOMINATE LIVE EVENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

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By Bri Labbate, Social Media Manager

Brand events are a blast, and a beast. When it comes to activating a brand at an event, our social media team has left no stone unturned, whether it’s covering rodeos, pet trade shows, golf tours, press events and beyond. We’ve pared down our best tips for empowering social media professionals to ensure flawless execution and measure success. 


Before the Event:

Know Your Audience:

  • Identify and observe the social media behaviors of those who will be attending and interacting with the content on your social channels to guide your content strategy.
  • Create a detailed profile of your event attendees, including demographics and interests. Understand what they will expect from your brand at the event.
  • Consider potential new audiences who will be present. Depending on the type of event, attendees may represent a diverse array of content spaces and niches. When thinking about expanding brand awareness and relationship building, this has potential for exciting opportunities.
  • Don’t forget your brand’s target audience! Events can reach a wide audience, but are they always the right one? Hone in on your targets and remember: quality over quantity.

Research Influencers and Partners:

  • Identify relevant influencers and brands who will be on-site.
    • For client Pendleton Whisky, we often work with influencers within the Western space. We’ve worked with Western fashion and lifestyle creators, rodeo and PBR athletes, announcers and more. At Pendleton Round-Up, we collaborated with Western influencers @tessamcdonald3, @roy_dinges and @westdesperado, among many others, to share content for the brand highlighting the event.
  • Establish partnerships with influencers and brands to amplify your event coverage
    • To gear up for Global Pet Expo, the pet industry’s premier trade show in the U.S. that occurs in March, we contracted several pet influencers who would be in attendance to do some promo Instagram collab reels, as well as leveraged the show’s coffee artist to generate buzz around the show and give attendees an idea of what to expect.

Plan a Content Strategy:

  • Develop a comprehensive content strategy that aligns with your brand’s goals and resonates with your target audience.
  • Determine which of your content is considered pre-event, live and post-event.
  • Plan a mix of content types, such as live streams, behind-the-scenes glimpses, interviews and interactive posts to keep your audience engaged.
    • At Global Pet Expo, the social team scheduled a variety of content to keep the feeds engaging as we sorted through live content and user-generated content (UGC) for real-time posting. We created content with Global Pet Expo staff, promoted sponsors, challenges, giveaways and daily recaps, all the while sharing live content of pet products seen on the show floor and tagging the pet brands represented. We also shared Instagram stories in real-time from a plethora of tagged Global Pet Expo mentions.
    • At the Underrated Golf Tour, the social team coordinated various interviews with the staff, athletes and parents to showcase personalities and keep the audience engaged.
  • Pro-tip: Create a bank of copy ideas, relevant accounts to tag and hashtags that you can quickly and easily pull from for posts that will be executed on-site.

Prepare Content Capture Equipment:

  • Ensure your team is well-equipped with the necessary tools and technology for live content capture, including high-quality cameras, microphones and stable internet connections.

Define Your Goals 

  • Don’t leave the event questioning whether your work was successful or not. By defining goals of how many impressions, engagements and new followers you want to earn, you’ve already set yourself up for success and can use this information to guide your recap report. 


During the Event:

Leverage Real-time Engagement:

  • Assign a team member to manage real-time engagement with your audience during the event, responding promptly to comments, messages and mentions, fostering a sense of community and connection. 
  • Monitor any hashtag activations and tagged posts to reshare in real-time or for your future content. 
    • While at Global Pet Expo, there was a dedicated team member monitoring all DMs and resharing Instagram stories. This allowed us to prioritize content capture on the show floor, while still leveraging real-time comments, questions and assets. In addition, we created a Saved folder on Instagram to throw in the best of content that came through hashtags and/​or tags to use as needed in the future. 

Utilize Live Content Capture:

  • Observe, observe, observe! Adhering to your planned content, while also capitalizing on those in-person, visceral moments are what you want to capture while on-site.
  • Maximize Instagram stories for real-time content sharing utilizing native features such as emoji reaction stickers, brand GIFs, etc. Make those who are attending the event interact, plus make those who did not attend generate some serious FOMO. They will appreciate that they got to attend vicariously.
    • At select events for client Pendleton Whisky, we utilize brand stories and influencers to drive follower growth on the Pendleton Whisky Instagram channel. We select key personalities and influencers to take followers behind-the-scenes at the event each day. Tap through our takeover highlight for the 2023 PBR World Finals here.
  • Don’t underestimate the power of collaboration. Collaborate with the identified influencers and partners to co-create content, whether it’s a joint live stream, a takeover of your social channels, utilizing the collaborate feature on Instagram, or co-hosting an event segment. Lean into the influencers’ reach to expand your brand’s exposure.
  • Take advantage of trends and sounds to add more reach and relevance to your posts. 


After the Event:

Measure and Analyze:

  • Once the event is over, dive into the data to evaluate the impact of your social media efforts, referencing your pre-defined performance goals. 
  • Measure key metrics such as engagement rate, reach, follower growth and conversions to assess the success of your brand activation.

Develop a Content Recap:

  • Create a post-event content recap to share performance highlights, key takeaways and memorable moments from the event.

Assess Your Content Strategy:

  • Determine which content performed the best and why that might be. Was it the timing of the post? Did you tag accounts that have a high follower count? Uncovering why some posts were more successful than others is always a great way to strengthen your craft and further explore your audiences’ preferences. 
  • If you were blown away by the amount of content you were able to capture, decide if your current content strategy could include or be adapted to include the assets throughout the year. 


Activating a brand at an event is a thrilling endeavor for social media professionals, but it requires meticulous planning and execution to turn brand events into unforgettable experiences. If you’re a brand looking to enhance your social media strategy or harness the power of social media coverage at your event but aren’t sure where to start, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here. Our skilled social media team boasts extensive experience in planning and executing live social events and we’re here to help you maximize audience engagement for optimal results.

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