9 Social Media Marketing Tactics You Shouldn’t Skip When Promoting Webinars
Promoting webinars can be all shades of fun, however, no matter how useful and valuable a webinar may be, you can’t expect to break any attendee records if no one knows about it. Among other digital marketing channels, promoting your webinar on social media can be a great way to spread the word about your webinar and generate some valuable buzz.
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However, there is more to it than creating an event on Facebook and inviting all of your followers or posting about the webinar a couple of times in the upcoming weeks. Let’s look at nine social media marketing tactics you should consider for successful webinar promotion.
1. Highlight the Speakers
One of the biggest draws to any webinar are its speakers. You want to make sure everyone who sees your social media post knows whom they can expect to hear from. More importantly, you want to emphasize why these speakers are worth listening to.
Ideally, you want to feature a headshot of each speaker. If you can, make sure they are at least somewhat similar. You don’t have to shoot custom photos (although that’s not a bad idea, if you can swing it), but try to make everyone’s head roughly the same size.
Everyone’s names and qualifications should also be featured. In as few words as possible, try to summarize everyone’s expertise and what they will be contributing to the conversation.
The same principles should apply even if it’s just one speaker and even if it’s just you. Aim to hook your followers with an enticing question or fun fact.
Take a look at Vidyard and how they promote their webinars on LinkedIn. They feature each speaker’s role and the company they are representing, and all the images are black-and-white, professional headshots.
2. Make Sure Your Posts Are On-Brand
When sharing any social media update, aim to keep it on-brand. No matter who is speaking, don’t brand your webinar promo photos with their colors. Use exclusively your brand colors and imagery.
This will ensure that your followers easily recognize your brand when your event announcement pops up in their feed. Additionally, whoever promotes it on their own socials will also be helping you widen your reach.
Branding uniformity and cohesion are very important in digital marketing, as it helps you stand out and become more memorable. Use your brand colors often and add your logo to each image you post.
Let’s take a look at Kinsta and what they are doing on Twitter. All of their photos feature their traditional purple, alongside other vibrant colors. The color combination is perfectly aligned with their website branding, so there is no mistaking their webinar for someone else’s. They use the same principle when marketing their webinars on LinkedIn.
3. Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin
An important rule in social media marketing is not spreading yourself too thin. Instead of trying to be present on all social media platforms, aim to invest in only as many as you reasonably can.
For example, if you have a small team or if you are doing all the social media posting, don’t create more than one or two pages and profiles. It’s better to be super active and highly relevant on one platform than to rarely post and never have the time to engage with your followers on four or five.
Choose the platform that is most likely home to the majority of your target audience. It could be Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, depending on the niche and industry you are in. You might do incredibly well on Instagram and TikTok, too, if your audience is younger. You can also invest in buying followers for your Threads, to enhance your visibility and find a wider audience.
Note that you can use a social media post scheduler to easily blast out a notification, but you will not have the resources to engage with your audience without at least one dedicated team member.
For example, Gili only has a Facebook and an Instagram account. They don’t really need an account on Twitter or LinkedIn, and they could certainly start doing TikToks, but they don’t need to. They are, however, active on the two platforms they have selected. It’s no coincidence that they are thus able to boast much higher conversion rates.
4. Use All the Relevant Hashtags
Social media is often all about the hashtag. While it was once a thing only on Twitter, it has since become the preferred way to search for events and news on all social media platforms.
To make sure your webinar promotion reaches as many interested individuals as possible, aim to include as many relevant hashtags as you can. Think outside the box, and branch out much further than the #webinar and #niche ones.
Take a look at which hashtags are popular among your followers and other brands in your niche and industry. This is often the best way to tap into trends you were not previously aware of. A third-party tool can also be a great way to uncover high-volume hashtags that get a lot of clicks.
MarketBeat is a good example to look at. While they don’t use a plethora of hashtags, they do always use the most relevant ones. Notice how they vary for each post.
They aren’t just targeting one specific audience; they’re sticking to the topic of their announcement and making sure they highlight the most relevant points.
5. Don’t Be Afraid of Trends
Speaking of relevance, you also shouldn’t be afraid to branch out a bit and use pop culture references or other trending topics that your audience will understand and most likely is already following.
For example, if something major is happening in the news, or if there is a meme going around, you can use it to promote your own webinar, as long as you are able to connect the two organically. You don’t want to be jumping on trends just because they are viral.
You also don’t need to be referencing something that is currently trending. Quotes from old movies or songs that used to be popular will do just as well. The important thing is that you understand what your audience is interested in, what they will find funny, and what they might be likely to share.
Brakes to You is a great example. Their Instagram has numerous interesting, original memes that reference trends and the time of year but are adapted to their business. They’ve done a good job of tying relevance in with the viral.
6. Teach Outside the Webinar
The purpose of any webinar is to teach its audience something. However, if you teach only when there’s a webinar coming up, you will not establish yourself as a thought leader and industry expert.
This is why you should aim to focus on teaching your audience while promoting the webinar, without directly mentioning it every single time. If a webinar promotion post is nicely nestled in between several other educational posts, there is a higher chance that people will want to attend. You’ll have already demonstrated what you know and what you can teach them.
You don’t necessarily have to stick to the same topic, but you can also tease plenty of facts and hacks that the webinar will showcase. Make sure you are not too obnoxious, though, as you can also achieve the opposite effect.
Take a look at BaseLang. They do a great job of sharing blog posts, images, and infographics that teach their followers something in a couple of minutes or less. This is a great way to ensure that there is plenty of interest in any webinar they are hosting. Plus, it enables them to steadily grow their follower numbers, as they provide actual, consistent value.
7. Share Your Old Webinars
A great way to promote your upcoming webinar is also to promote your old webinars. You can create additional interest if you have a recording available online or if you can provide a recap or transcript.
It will give your followers a chance to better understand what they can expect in terms of length, style, the Q&A section, and so on.
Since your old webinars probably still offer some way to convert, this can also be your chance to capitalize on content you’ve already created and drive some more traffic and clicks. Be strategic about it, though, and don’t overwhelm your audience with nothing but webinar talk.
Apptentive, for example, have all of their webinars readily available on their YouTube channel, allowing them to easily promote them whenever they need to. Tying several webinars together and organizing them in a cohesive manner is always a great way to round off a topic and provide followers with a sense of completion.
8. Feature Reviews from Previous Attendees
The pandemic has also created a veritable explosion of webinars. At one point, everyone seemed to be playing quizzes, baking banana bread, and hosting webinars. Since they have turned out to be a great way to achieve all kinds of marketing goals, there are more of them now than ever before.
Chances are someone has already talked about what you are about to speak on. Why should someone watch your webinar, and not someone else’s?
This is where you can leverage the power of user-generated content. By featuring the experiences and reviews of previous webinar attendees, you can quickly sign up people for your next one.
All you have to do is ask everyone who attends your webinar to give you a review. This will also help you make the next one better. You will understand what your appeal is, but also what you can improve, especially in the tech department.
Posting a review from an attendee can thus help you generate more interest. Take a look at Kuru Footwear and how they do it. There are plenty of product reviews on their Instagram profile that tell other followers what kind of quality they can expect.
The same principle can easily be applied to webinars, where just a couple of satisfied attendees can do wonders for your subscriber counts.
9. Provide a Recap
Finally, let’s not forget that repurposing content is an excellent way to source the content you will be sharing on social media. You don’t always have to come up with something new, be it a blog post, a video, or a simple tweet. You can rely on the research and content creation you’ve already done in the past.
When it comes to webinars, you can easily reference an important or interesting point that has popped up in them. You can also provide a recap, in the form of a blog post, that retells the main points to all those who may be interested in the topic but don’t have the time to watch the entire webinar online.
Find social media-appropriate snippets from your old webinars and use them as a talking point on social media. They can be an excellent segue into promoting the next one.
AppDynamics have mentioned their webinar recap on Twitter, for example. They have taken the most important findings and turned them into a blog post, thus killing several birds with one stone. They don’t have to worry about coming up with their next topic, and they get to re-promote their webinar.
Wrapping Up
Promoting a webinar on social media can actually be fun, especially if you take the time to think outside the box and give your audience the kind of content they are actually looking for. Remember to stay on-brand, but also to move away from the standard tropes every other brand is utilizing on socials. Be authentic, be engaging, and make an effort to showcase the value of your offer from the get-go.
About the Author / Akeem Okunola
