I’ve been supporting fabulous creatives in Nottingham for a while now get ready for running their first pop-up shop and thought I would share my top tips with you too!

Running events are a great way to get out there, build relationships and meet your clients and customers.

Whether you’re running a pop-up shop, a workshop, an online webinar, a conference or a network getting footfall and people to your event is going to be one of the biggest issues.

So here are my 11 top tips for getting people to your event:

1 – Create a hashtag

You can create your own hashtag for your event, that you can use every time you post your event on Instagram and Twitter. That way people can search for your hashtag and find out everything you’ve posted.

It makes it seem more hip and happening and if you create any graphics – you can add the hashtag to it.

This works really well for conferences. People will start posting the hashtag before attending, so they can start to network before they’ve even set through the door.

While your event is running, you can encourage people to post on social media with the hashtag. This was really successful for the First Tuesday network I ran in Nottingham. We used #ftnottm on twitter and trended in Nottingham every first Tuesday – people came along the next month as they were intrigued by all the tweets.

And then after the event, people are able to find and follow people they met using your hashtag.

A word of caution – do a search on your proposed hashtag before you run with it, it might be being used by someone else!

2 – Create an event on Facebook

Depending on your type of event, you could create the event on your business page, or if you’re running a group and it’s for the group, you can create it there.

Events are a fantastic function in Facebook. Once created you can invite your friends, then if they say they’re coming or interested their friends will see it and word will start to spread. Plus Facebook will send them a notification when the event is nearing to remind them of it.

Make sure you create a snappy title, have a great image, included times and the place and if people need to book tickets on something like Eventbrite, you can link them, or at least include the booking link in the description.

3 – Beef up your bio with your event & hashtag

If you have an event coming up add it to your Instagram and Twitter bios with the event hashtag so they can find your posts about it and hopefully come along!

4 – Use your social media headers

The headers on your Facebook business page are clickable, so use this vital real estate.

You can create a graphic for your Facebook header in canva, add to your page, and then include a description of your event with the event url in the first comments.

Go check out the header on my Facebook page to see how this works.

5 – Add to your email signature

All emails give you the ability to add a signature to all your outgoing emails. So you could have your event listed and a hyperlink to your url.

In fact, if you don’t have a signature on your email at all – go and add one now.

I get really frustrated when I get emails from businesses, but they include no business information – no phone number, no website details.

Give people the ability to stalk you, you are a business, so make sure you look like a business in every place I come into contact with you.

6 – Email

Email is still the biggest driver for sales. So if you have an email list, make sure you let them know about your up and coming event.

If you’re using a platform like Eventbrite for sales to your event, you can email new events out of Eventbrite to past attendees.

In the case of my monthly networking event First Tuesday that I ran for 3 years I used to;

Create the Eventbrite for the next event the day after the last event – I’d then send this out through Eventbrite to all previous attendees.

A week before the event I would send out another email through Eventbrite to past attendees.

And then I would send a third email the night before the event through Eventbrite.

This strategy worked really well for me.

7 – Create compelling content

Here’s a list of the type of content you could be creating in the run-up to your event to get people interested:

·        Images

·        Videos

·        FB lives

·        Graphics

·        Blog posts

·        Podcasts

·        FB stories

·        Instagram stories

·        FB slideshow

·        Boomerang video

·        Hyperlapse video

Don’t forget people like to see behind the scenes, they like to find out about you, and if you have any speakers could you do mini-interviews with them before to generate buzz?

8 – Share, share, share

Now you have great content, an event url, an FB event page and all your headers and bio hyped up you need to get sharing.

Posting on Facebook – make sure you include the @names of business or people you’re collaborating with so you get to reach their audience as well.

In a Facebook group? Post your event in there and let people know what you’re up to.

On twitter – you can post about your event every day in the run-up. Use your event hashtag and include people in the tweet who you’re collaborating with. If there are Twitter accounts that you think will share your tweet, you can tag them into an image, so they got notified about your tweet.

On Instagram – include the event in your stories, make a graphic or create a series of fab images that you can past on your profile.

Use the url linktr.ee on your Instagram bio so you can direct people on Instagram to your event page. Check out my bio @debbiedooodah to see what this looks like.

Post your event on LinkedIn and include the @names of the people you are collaborating with.

Anywhere else you show up online – start sharing!

9 – Share behind the scenes prep

As you get closer to your event, you could let people see behind the scenes, so they can follow you getting all your ducks in a row for your event.

10 – Keep the buzz going at your event

On the day make sure you’re posting about your event on social media. Go live, post pictures, invite others to share with your event hashtag. Make people who aren’t there wish they were, so next time you’re running an event you’ll get more sales.

You can even use something like tweetbeam to beam out tweets with your event hashtag via a projector.

We did this every First Tuesday and we were always trending on twitter for Nottingham on the night of the event.

11 – Follow up

Once your event is over, you can keep the buzz going for a while by posting all the great moments from your event. Trawl social media and look for people who attended and used your hashtag and keep those conversations going.

Curate the best bits and send out via social and email to let people know that you’re event was amazing!

Enjoyed this blog post? Why not keep on reading and get some more advice on how to grow your business in my Work Smarter series!

And if you're looking for some clarity on how to grow your business, check out what it would be like to work 121 with me!

Fabulous image from the Blue Stockings Society for entrepreneurial women by Ursula Kelly Photography