Lack of time is a constant trend among meeting planners.

That's why we've compiled this list of social trends for 2018 that are easy to implement for your event marketing. They'll save you time for little-to-no money and could lead to big gains. 

Repurposing Your Content

Tell us if this sounds familiar: You have a piece of content that really resonates with your audience. Whether it lives on your blog, Facebook, Instagram or some other channel, everything about it was engaging. In the afterglow of your content success, you sit down to your computer feeling absolutely paralyzed about how to do it again.

Instead of concentrating on how to get those results with completely different content, think of how you can take that content that has succeeded and repurpose it onto other channels. If it was a blog post that was data heavy, pull out that data and create an infographic. Pull out quotes for images to post on Facebook. Do a Q & A livestream video on the topic. Whatever worked for that particular piece of content would like work for another social platform.

And even better, by repurposing your content you are actually saving time instead of letting social media eat up more of it. 

Micro-influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has become a term synonymous for paying huge amounts of money to get celebrities to hawk your products. But it’s more than that.

Influencer marketing is working with those that are most likely to influence your audience to buy. For that to make sense, you should be making more money than you’re paying your influencers. In the case of most events, that means you need to look at micro-influencers rather than celebrities.

Starting your own micro-influencer program can be as simple as identifying those that are already very enthusiastic about your brand and rewarding them for what they’re already doing. That starts a cycle that keeps them talking about your brand, and you can use that reward to direct how they talk about the event.

For example, we have used photowalks to reward micro-influencers on Instagram for sharing photos of Cincinnati. We have even taken that further to give them behind-the-scenes looks at local attractions like Cincinnati Museum Center or American Legacy Tours, that we want to be top-of-mind for potential visitors. It’s a perfect exchange that gets the CVB and attractions the marketing photos we love, and gives influencers an opportunity to take photos that very few people have access to. 

Livestreaming

Livestreaming has been a buzzword for awhile now, but this should be the year that it really matures in the event marketing with social media space. It's great because instead of creating a perfectly edited video, you can save time by just streaming what you see to an audience that is very forgiving of imperfections.

The easy way to use this is to livestream the event as it is happening; possibly show your speaker presentations. But posting that on Facebook could potentially give your fans a lot of information for free. So what should you do instead?

The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport does an excellent job of creating “Wish You Were Here” moments on their Facebook page with livestreaming. Considering that all of these moments are occurring in an airport, a place people don’t normally wish they were, is both incredible and quite true to the experience that the airport strives to create when you’re there. Whether they are livestreaming festive music or therapy horses, it always draws potential customers in.

In the end, the trick to your own livestreams is figuring out exactly what will draw your potential customer in and create a reason to buy. And that’s really what the goal of all social media marketing should be. 

What social media trend have you found easy to implement that saves you time?