Crafting Compelling Social Media Content for Events (with Clark Campbell)

Clark Campbell: Every client is so different. But I'll usually ask, hey, are you looking for more engagement on your social media? Is your brand really concerned with perception and look and quality and feel like, are you just trying to improve and enhance your brand and how people see you through social media? Or are you trying to literally drive registrations during your event? I couldn’t care less about views. I could care less about reach. Honestly, if you tell me that you want reach and views, I will tell you we're not the right fit for you. But if you tell me you want link clicks out to registration for next year, or if you tell me that you want comments this year or you want to go from 9000 followers to 9800 followers, we can talk. Because that is something that's more measurable. It's actionable.

Alyssa Peltier: Great events create great brands, and it takes a village to put on an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences to your brand. And we're that village.

I'm Alyssa.

I'm Paulina.

And I'm Rachel.

And you're listening to Great Events, the podcast for all people interested in events and marketing.

Rachel Andrews: Hi everyone. What is going on in the wide, wide World of Events? My name is Rachel Andrews, and welcome to another awesome episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. Today, we have some exciting, awesome guests on talking about social strategy and engagement at events. And let's be honest, we've all experienced it. The full social media plan and things that you need to do around events, FOMO or engagement at the brand level and at the event level, there's tons of things that we need to think about as we're planning events. As a marketer, as a planner, I know firsthand how much we all have on our plates. And it's also sometimes really hard to think about that when you're focused on the planning and the production and the marketing of it. And we're pretty burned out when it's time to be creative.

But I want to talk today about the social aspects of events and how we can get more engagement from our audience. So today I have two very talented social media pros who are going to walk us through how they think about planning social engagement for their events and for your brands and their overall event strategy or social media event strategy and event promotion strategy for 2024. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome our guests onto the show. Heather Pocorobba, who is the Lead of Social Media Strategy and Corporate Communications here at Cvent, and Clark Campbell, who is the CEO and Co-founder at RVRB. That's RVRB Agency. Welcome, guys.

Clark Campbell: Hi. Thank you so much. Good to be here.

Heather Pocorobba: Thanks for having me, Rachel.

Rachel Andrews: So exciting. So why don't we just dig right in? Before we get started on all the great meat of the interview and content today, why don't we just give a little bit of a snapshot into you all. Heather, why don't you start? Just give a little background on yourself. You've been at Cvent for a little bit. You help us with our social media strategy for a lot of our events. Why don't you give the audience a little bit of glimpse into your background, how you got into it, and then pass it to Clark.

Heather Pocorobba: So I'm Heather Pocorobba. I'm on the corporate comms team here at Cvent, and I lead our organic social strategy. Many, many years ago, when I was back in college, I fell in love with social and the ability to connect with people where they're at, to get to know people, have real conversations, learn from them and see what they're doing and building up communities that way. So fell in love with that, transitioned that into different careers. And what I love about Cvent right now is bringing all those connections in real life and online with hybrid and social is a great way to tie that in.

Rachel Andrews: Awesome. And we worked with Clark for Cvent Connect. Actually, his team did an amazing job working with Heather on all the things that we produced for Cvent Connect. Clark, why don't you give our listeners some background on you?

Clark Campbell: Absolutely. I'm honored to be here. This is so much fun to get to talk about social media at events. My background: I actually was a music major in college and then completely made a right-hand turn. I was working on staff at a church at that time. And the crazy, tragic story of how I actually got into social media was we had six tornadoes come through our town in one day and killed nine people. And 300 homes were destroyed. And I woke up and I used social media the next day to rally people.

It was just kind of like, “Hey, I need to do something. Let me use social media.” Way too long of a story to tell you here. But two weeks later, we had over 2000 volunteers and we fed 8000 meals using a hashtag. And then people started asking me to use social media to help them amplify their thing, their experience. It hasn't been many crisis since then. It's usually been events and large scale entertainment or sports or conferences, but that's my background. Music, church, and then social media. So it's kind of all over the place.

Rachel Andrews: I love that. Well, can you tell us a little bit about RVRB and just the agency as well so we can give our listeners that background?

Clark Campbell: RVRB is, we've been around. We used to be called social lion and I can explain maybe later why we changed our name over to RVRB and it's just RVRB with no E's in it. We just have this niche for going into these event environments or very fast paced experiences and amplifying the emotion and the experience onto social media platforms so that the client can tell that story in real time when people are paying attention. So we're based in the Southeast and Chattanooga and Atlanta and Nashville area. We've got people all over right now. We're mostly a remote team and about eleven, I believe. But we travel all over the world, literally all over the world, helping amplify and tell stories at events.

Rachel Andrews: Very cool. So event process essentially hires like we did RVRB to help elevate their social media for their events. So let's dig right in, right? Let's start with the word FOMO. Why not just go straight there? Let's just jump right into it and discuss that. Because I feel know it's becoming more antiquated to talk about FOMO. However, that being said, we still use it all the time. But I know in your world, you want to create something different. So let's banter here. Why not FOMO? And what should we talk about instead?

Clark Campbell: Heather, are you tired of hearing the word FOMO?

Heather Pocorobba: Oh, I definitely am.

Clark Campbell: Me too.

Heather Pocorobba: I think everyone has something different to bring and different ways of interacting with things. So I don't want to see what people think I'm missing out on. I want to see how people are enjoying and living in that moment. I want to see them and feel their enthusiasm and their energy and maybe to be a part of it later, but it's not taking away from what I'm doing. There are so many things that we could be doing and focusing on. So I don't think of it necessarily as missing out, but there's just so many things that we can enjoy and interact with in different ways.

Clark Campbell: So the reason I don't like the word or phrase or acronym FOMO is because it starts with the word fear. I don't like as a person that has dealt with and overcome some debilitating anxiety. And side note this for later, I don't think anxiety has to be debilitating, but when it gets debilitating, it's a bad thing. Very bad thing. But from someone who has gone through that. I know that uncontrolled fear is very unhealthy, and our kids are full of internet fear. There's all kinds of reasons for fear. But I don't like saying that I create FOMO because it starts with the word fear, because it's just icky.

I would rather create desire or help our clients create an appetite for the event or the experience that we are helping them amplify. So, FOMO, it's really the thing that most people say still, and I think they're going to say it for a while, because the truth is, we don't know what to say. Whenever we're scrolling through Instagram and we're like, ooh, they're at John Mayer, or they're at the sphere in Las Vegas. I wish I could be there. And there is this sense and this feeling of, ooh, I'm missing out. Or as Heather, who is probably more mature than all of us, says, that'd be cool to go there one day. And she doesn't go into the whole fear side of it.

Rachel Andrews: There's not so much FO, but there's a little bit of MO.

Clark Campbell: Yeah, I'm going to use that. So I like to call it, I think I was preparing for a podcast or something recently, maybe a presentation, and I wrote can don't miss out next year. What does that spell? Oh, D-MONY. Without the E. D-MONY. I know Rachel's rolling her eyes right now, and Heather's probably like, that's genius. But D-MONY is what I want to create in our clients, and their fans and their audiences is don't miss out next year. That's more of a me.

Yeah, don't miss next year. So that's my opinion on FOMO.

Rachel Andrews: It's definitely catchy, like yelling out, D-MONY.

Clark Campbell: We're creating some D-MONY.

Rachel Andrews: Oh, I love it. So how can planners create that D-MONY? I think we should talk about, like, you guys strategised hard for our event, and I know you do it for other events. Clark, where do you even start when you're talking D-MONY? I cannot say that with a straight face, but I will get there during this podcast. So, D-MONY, how do you create that D-MONY strategy with your event profs or your marketing managers or your social media kind of experts?

Clark Campbell: Sure. So doing this for ten years now, maybe longer, because we were doing it back in the early days of social media at churches, the thing that we hear most often after we produce content at an event when the client's jaw drops is I felt like I was back at the event when I just watched that, or someone that's not there, that's back at home that goes, oh, you guys made me feel like I was there. And I don't even know how we do it other than you're digging for gold. Our gold that we're digging for is emotional intelligence and finding the truest, most authentic emotion of that event, especially the emotion that the client wants to amplify and really letting that come out through content. And that does take some planning, but it's equal part, I got to show up and find it. If Cvent was to have told me, we have so many happy people that like to go to the parties that we have at night, and they're going to be so wired and amped and, like, jazzed. Well, until I got there, I couldn't see that with my own eyes. And once I saw that, I told our team that go amplify that, because that is what most of the attendees are going to remember.

They're going to remember learning, of course, but the emotion they're going to remember is, I had a freaking good time.

Heather Pocorobba: It's all about feeling, and if we're getting rid of FOMO as our F word, I think feeling is the one we need to cling to and pay attention to. So what are you, as you're planning the event, what are you excited about? What do you think your audience is going to cling to and tell those stories about later, like, at the end of the night? Who are they telling when they're on their phone? Who are they talking to and what are they telling you about? That's what you want to show and those feelings that you need to capture on social.

Clark Campbell: Rachel, can I throw something in there real fast? That's a great point, the pre planning, because we can't fully see or expect the emotion fully. But if Heather and the team at Cvent doesn't give us the high impact moments, we beg for a run of show. That is the special run of show that no one else sees. Like, what are the moments that your producers and your executive team or your event planners? What are they excited about? There's a key right there. What are they excited for the attendees to experience? That's what I want to see on a run a show, because that is most likely going to be the thing that we're going to help amplify, and we need to know that in advance, because if my videographers are on the other side of the venue and there's confetti going off. We're going to be in trouble.

Heather Pocorobba: Advance is the keyword. The sooner you can let your marketing team and social in on those conversations so they're aware and they can start planning instead of last minute trying to figure out how to show it. That's going to make such a difference. And we do that pretty well here at Cvent. Rachel and the marketing team is great for that, but that makes a big difference.

Rachel Andrews: I wanted to go more in depth into the planning cycle, but I want to say one thing. I spoke last week at an event about community, and I think that this D-MONY or engagement or amplifying your brand or excitement or the emotional component is all tied into that community. And one of the things that I think people don't realise is there's a lot of differences of community. Like, a passive audience is not a community. Someone that's, like you said, emotionally connected drives those attendees to come, whether it's in person or virtual, and they're going to see that engaging content and be like, shoot, I can't believe I missed that this year. Those are my people I'm seeing on these videos. This is my scene. This is my community.

Rachel Andrews: And the emotional connection is so closely tied to what you all do, and it does tie into the community. And I think, like IMEX, for example, that's what I was at last week, does a really good job of that. They're amazing at creating this emotional connection of just like, oh, shoot, they're having so much fun on site. I definitely want to put this in my calendar for next year because I don't want to miss out on all the great hugs and people and content and feeling, and that's really the brand. So I just wanted to double tap on what you said there, because I just feel like community is so closely tied to you guys, and you guys are helping bring that community together because it really does change from a passive audience, just like, oh, I just attended this conference. I don't feel anything from it to, wow, I feel an affinity towards this brand emotionally, and I want to make sure that this is on my hit list every year.

Clark Campbell: You just taught me something. Thank you for that. That was good.

Rachel Andrews: I'm here to help. Let's move on to the planning cycle. So obviously, we got, one of the things we need to talk about is, let's call it the before, during the event and after the event and how we kind of tackle that. I want to start with Heather this time because we work very closely on a lot of events and I think that your perception on this would be really helpful for people to know from a content producer of the social side, working with an agency like RVRB on that planning cycle, take us through kind of like how you thought about the before, during, and after.

Heather Pocorobba: So last year was a learning cycle for us. We were all figuring out the best ways to work together, so got some ideas to improve for next year. But a big part of it was just regular communication and sharing what we've noticed works best for our audience. So what do they interact with? What do they engage with? What do they look for? What are they normally excited about sharing and doing before the event as well as on site, and then walking them through what is happening, what the plans are, all the big fun moments. The white party that we had in the evening, which we knew was going to be just a really cool visual with people dancing in the pool. So what are those things that people are excited about and sharing? Those making sure everyone's looped in advance, but the big thing is just the brand. So we talked a lot about the feelings and the vibes that we were trying to capture and show off and why this event means so much to our attendees, because it is something that people really look forward to and they book in their calendar as soon as we set the dates, we want to make sure we make it as valuable for our attendees. And working really closely with RVRB was one of a great way for us to do that so we can show people on site and off great ways to share what's happening and to see the energy.

Rachel Andrews: Same question to you, Clark. I know you kind of approach everything with your bubbly energy, but also you need someone that's also excited about your brand. So I know how you work with us, but other customers and things like that to give us some examples of things that have worked really well before, during, and after.

Clark Campbell: Well, the most important thing with the product that we offer the world and amplifying events is at the first experience with a client. There's got to be a deep sense of trust developed very quickly. We have to understand what your objectives are. Just like Heather just said, understand the vibe that you're going for, understand the voice of your brand. Like, who are you? Who are you talking to? Because we can't create great content unless we truly understand the brand message, the key messages. We're big subscribers and we're certified. Story brand an agency. A story brand agency.

And Donald Miller does a ton of teaching on how to be the most effective communicator you can possibly be in sales or in basic communication. And we totally subscribe to a cool video. Doesn't work unless you have the right message as the foundation. And what that means is we have to understand what you're trying to accomplish as an organisation. What is your audience aspiring to become whenever they show up at your event? And until you know that we're on your side and we're not just there to create a fun, sexy, cool, hype video, we're there to move the needle for the organisation that has hired us. Once you establish that trust with us, we can go so much deeper, so quickly. And when you see that we care about words and business objectives and moving whatever KPIs you have forward, you're going to go, okay, I trust them. They get my business and they get my audience. 

And so that is by far the most important thing is that I build trust. Our team builds trust with a client by showing we care the most about your client. Moving from point A to point Z at the end of the event, or a client that's not on a potential client that's not at the event going, they have what I want. I want to be there. And so my job is to create compelling content that's emotionally intelligent through understanding your audience, understanding your objectives as a company. And I don't just say that we believe it to the core of who we are. And so pre event, establish trust, understand the objective of the event or the client. That's what we do up front. The cool videos will come.

Rachel Andrews: Oh, yeah, for sure. So I'm going to throw a hardball at you, Clark, and for us, I think when you look at social media, you're looking at, okay, does this help me how clicks great people looking at it great. But with your KPIs, you're talking about with the events team, what does that equate to registrations, followers? What is the end goal for a lot of these, other than creating this sense of community and emotion, of missing out on the events, during the event, before the event, I feel like there's a lot of KPIs. You can kind of get into your toolkit there.

Clark Campbell: Yeah, every client is so different. So this can be hard, but I'll usually ask, hey, are you looking for more engagement on your social media? Is your brand really concerned with perception and look and quality and feel like, are you just trying to improve and enhance your brand and how people see you through social media? Or are you trying to literally drive registrations during your event? Are you trying to sell merch during your event? What is it you're trying to do. I could care less about views. I could care less about Reach. Honestly, if you tell me that you want reach and views, I will tell you we're not the right fit for you. But if you tell me you want link clicks out to registration for next year, or if you tell me that you want comments this year or you want to go from 9000 followers to 9800 followers, we can talk. Because that is something that's more measurable. It's actionable because the social channels want you to see all the views and reach and be like, ooh, wow, there's a little piece of me that cares, but it doesn't make your bottom line go up.

So one of my favourite stories is one of our clients had zero new registrations during their event. They have these series of workshops and they're like two or three, $4,000 apiece to go to this workshop. Well, their last workshop, they had zero new registrations during the workshop. We came in, we amplified the workshop, the experience and the fun and the happiness in the community. They had ten new registrations during the middle of the workshop because we helped them amplify that experience. That's ten times $2,000, 20 grand in revenue. Just like that. Just because we help them tell a compelling story.

So the KPIs, it all depends on the client, what they're trying to accomplish. But that's what I care about. I don't care about views. Heather might care about views. And I get it. There's reasons why I don't think she does.

Heather Pocorobba: I don't. And views, it's really hard to know if that's actually relevant to your audience. Is it showing up in front of your audience and are they connecting with it? Does it matter to them? We helped do a teaser promo before we did our big announcement about the dates and location for Cvent Connect 2024, which Rachel got to announce at IMEX, which was great. But the day before, we wanted to do a little teaser just to get people excited. And so matching with the brand, really cared about margaritas. So I put together a video, just making margaritas in my kitchen. Built a fair amount of Margarita mix in the process, but made a video, got it out, and almost immediately, we had one of our previous Connect attendees reshare the post with their own caption about how excited they were and adding a little pun. And so we got to engage with them, and then later, when we made the announcement, got to tag them back.

So we made sure they saw this. And that's how we know it resonates with our audience because it's the person we are trying to talk to and it mattered to them enough to share it back on their channels. Did it get a ton of views? No. Did it get a ton of engagement? No, but it got the engagement that mattered and that it was intended.

Rachel Andrews: I think also I like to call myself, like a little bit of a squirrel brain. I don't know if you know that reference, like, oh, I'm going in this direction. And I feel like that when I read a really long email with a lot of text, I'm like, oh, my God, is there, like, someone that can just tell me in 30 seconds what I need to do? And so I feel like video in that way is really powerful, right? You can just get across a message through visuals and really quickly. And I think that's the beauty of it. I think that that's why people forget sometimes. They're like, I don't know if we have the budget to do video. And I'm like, yeah, but it's going to impact a lot of people that maybe learn a different way. I'm a very haptic hands on visual learner, so we have a lot of those kind of people out there that might not resonate with just reading an article or white paper or something that's too long.

So I don't know, this really resonates with me because some of the fun stuff gets your attention and then you're like, oh, I need to pay attention to this. So it's like maybe using that video to drive them to do an action. Like you were saying, Clark is something event profs should take away from this. If you really want them to come to a workshop or you really want them to register or save the date for something like Heather was mentioning, have that quick video. And then they're like, oh, shoot. Because I don't know, how many emails do you guys get a day? Just roughly.

Clark Campbell: Oh, my gosh, it's insane. You just made me have a mini panic attack by thinking about my email just today alone.

Rachel Andrews: I just think that when you have something quick on social media that you're always on it and scrolling it and just helps your audience kind of know more about the event. I want to dive into the fun stuff at events, too. Next. Sorry, Heather, if you weren't going to say something.

Heather Pocorobba: Oh, I was going to say, well, that's an important thing to keep in mind is in life and in social, everyone is dealing with so much and there's so much in our faces constantly. So many things to pay attention to. So what you're sharing should be important. Or like if it is not helpful or interesting, don't bother with it. It can't just be a marketing or sales pitch. It has to matter to the people you want to see it. Otherwise you're just adding more junk to their already big pile.

Rachel Andrews: I do want to give some event profs and marketing profs, a couple of good takeaways for today. So I do want to talk about some of the fun things. And so I think it's a mix of fun videos, recap videos, or whatever it is on site or after the event. But also I think we should give some examples to the listeners of what you could drive with these videos. If it's just like D-MONY, or if it's like we want to push somebody towards an activation on site, let's talk through maybe some fun examples of things that we've seen or done before on site, an event, and how video can empower the event more.

Clark Campbell: Okay, my first reaction to that question is words. This is a story brand principle. Words lead people to take action if you don't clearly pave a path. Actually, you need to first be able to talk to that audience member through social about what they want very quickly. You're looking for this and the problem is you can't get that because you need someone to guide you around the problem. And Cvent is here to help guide you through that by offering this incredible experience so that you can be a better event professional down the road. So what I'm trying to say is, if you don't have great words in your social content, it will never lead someone to take action. And that might not be in the video itself, it may be in the caption.

But we love, and Heather knows this because we pulled her into being a host, we love a couple of times each event, putting someone's face right on that camera and talking right to the audience as a social host. But not just, hey, look what we're doing over here. Look what we're doing over here. No, we want to talk right to the audience and acknowledge what they want. But the problem is they're facing and how Cvent, or whatever client we're working with can help them navigate that challenge to get what they want. And why are people at Cvent Connect? Because they want to connect with others. They want to become a better event prof. And so we want to say that.

And we want to say, hey, if you're loving this, here's a discount code right now to register for next year. But words lead people to action. So I'm a big fan of communicating that upfront. People are not going to take action on your social content. They're usually not going to take action unless you give them the words that help them know this is what I need to do to take action.

Rachel Andrews: I know, Heather, you have a lot of experience here of pushing people to do things while we're onsite at an event.

Heather Pocorobba: I'm a big fan as well of words matter. So making sure you have that messaging in place and you know what you're going to say. And the ultimate goal of all of your messaging, like what is the one thing you're trying to accomplish? But going back to sort of something Clark was saying social should feel personal. So have a couple people who are on screen and it doesn't have to be super polished. It can be someone just holding up their phone and taking a little selfie video. Have someone talking to everyone else. People want to feel connected and addressed, and you do that by showing personality and being true and authentic. And you can do that in a way that still matches the organisational brand while showing who you are as a person.

And that goes so much further than a brand talking for itself. Have that person talking. And even better, if you can get your employees, your attendees, your sponsors sharing their own personal content on site and before the event. And not just standard hey, meet me at the booth, but are what are you doing there that is worthwhile for IMEX? There was a break with puppies. They literally had dogs at IMEX that you could go interact with and that's really cool. Have people share that content and then you can engage on that post. You can comment underneath with the additional call to actions if you want to and reshare and amplify. But this is going to go a lot further if it feels personal to someone.

Clark Campbell: I want to prove a point there. What you're saying about making it personal, we did a video when we were talking about technology at Cvent last year. Do you remember when we walked around and we made this really cool video walking up and we showed off the technology, but we didn't make it in a way that bragged on Cvent. We tried to make that video about how your technology was helping your clients. So the main focus of that video, that social video that we made, was all about positioning ourselves, which I consider myself part of, Cvent, when I'm working at Cvent, positioning ourselves as the guide to helping an attendee feel stronger when they leave. Not look at Cvent and how cool we are. She made it feel personal because she was like, hey, I'm here to help you. We are here to help you.

And so a lot of events put the spotlight on them, on themselves, and look how cool our event is. And woo, look at our board of directors and all of our great speakers and president and all this. No, people don't care about that. They want to know that that event is there to help them, not brag on the event itself. And so you've really got to focus on making the client the hero, not the brand that's hosting the event.

Rachel Andrews: Very true. I haven't coined an exact phrase for this yet, but I always say attendees are selfish and I include myself in this too. When I go to events, I'm selfish. I only want to do what I'm emotionally connected to, the communities that I want to meet up with. I want to go to my verticals or my segments, my friends, my content, and I want to feel that emotional connection to it. So the more brands can talk less about themselves and more about the people that are actually coming and more event planners. I think event planners do a really good job of this. Most of the time is like, they put attendees first.

They try to anyway. Obviously, management has their own KPIs that you need to hit, but you have to walk this fine line between your KPIs that you need to hit from your business objectives, but also making sure that the attendees have a kickass time and they also achieve their own selfish goals on site. And so I think that you can also use a lot of social to help them do that or empower them to say, hey, I'm doing this on site. Or resharing a video. Be like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. Who wants to do this with me? I think one example I just saw is someone said, take this quiz to find out what kind of attendee you are at this event. And everyone was taking it and sharing it. And then I know quizzes aren't new, but just engaging the community like that to be like, oh my gosh, you're this. Wow, I am this. And you just saw all your different community members or your LinkedIn colleagues being like, wait, I'm this? I'm this? That's so interesting. And I just thought that was really cool to bring that empowerment back to the attendees versus the organisers. Constantly just putting out content that's like, okay, we get it. X and Brand, we get that you're amazing. We want the attendees to do that, right? We want them to have the experience. We want them to feel the emotion.

Clark Campbell: That's a perfect example of what I'm trying to communicate is the content we need to create at all events. And we strive for our clients to create is content that's focused on the customer that's attending the event. Because all of your programming is about the customer. So why should your social media not be about the customer? It just drives me crazy when clients and events point to themselves on social. No, point to the emotional experience, the reality of the fun and the connections that your clients are having at the event that are attending. That is gold for social media.

Rachel Andrews: Totally. Well, that's a great segue. I want to talk like any tips or tricks or things that people should be thinking about as they're planning for 2020 in their event strategy. Social strategy around events. Whoever can go first. I just want to see if top three tips. Top two tips, whatever you have. Kind of as a takeaway for our listeners.

Heather Pocorobba: So the first thing I would say is, well before your event, start paying attention to what works on social. So what do your followers like? What do they interact with? What makes them excited to engage and comment, to reshare, to click through for something that's going to help you shape the kind of content you share onsite. And second, would be authentic and be helpful. So make sure that what you're sharing feels genuine and real, not super polished, not trying to sell stuff. Just be personable and don't be afraid to try something new and just see how it goes. That's part of this is learning and seeing what works and what doesn't.

Clark Campbell: I couldn't agree more, Heather. I just spoke yesterday at an event, and I'm just going to go ahead and tell you the tips that I gave because I believe them so much that I've spoken front of a fairly large group and gave them these. The number one most important thing is that you got to know your goals. You have to, you got to stop and do the hard work and ask, what are we trying to accomplish at this event this year? What does my boss want? What does our team want? What do we want to accomplish on social? And you may have a couple of goals. They need to be measurable. You need to know what we're trying to do. There's a terrible misnomer that social media people are just cool, hip, young social media people. No, I actually believe social media people that lead social content and social strategies should be the best communicators on your entire staff.

So don't place social media in this corner of the intern should be doing it. Put social media at a higher level inside of your organisation or inside of your mind that, hey, this is a very important front door for our organisation during our event, a very important platform. So define your goals, and then I'll just give you the second one. I think Heather just said it was, you need to know your audience in and out. You need to be a better listener than you are a talker on social media. You need to know what they care about, what platforms they're on. Because if we go to Cvent and we make a ton of content for TikTok, but all of the people are, I don't know what your demographics are perfectly, but 30 to 60, and they might lean female, that's probably not where we should be helping Cvent create content. Know your audience. Know where they are, know where they play, and know where they're at during the event. Because they might not be on LinkedIn during the event. They're on. I'm making this up, not telling you this is the case for Cvent, but they might only be on these two platforms during the day. So lean into the places where they are. Know your objectives, know your audience. By far, the two most important things before you ever create content.

Rachel Andrews: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That's such good gold here for people. And I think people get overwhelmed when they think of huge social media plans. I would just say, as my takeaway, start small. I know we keep saying, know your customers, know your audience, but if you don't know, it's okay to test things. It's okay to do this. And let's say you test something and it's no engagement. Okay. You know that that's maybe not the right platform or the right audience or the right content. You got to test stuff every time. I would say that you would need to do that and change it up every time just to see if you get something different, because it changes all the time.

Clark Campbell: And don't just test it from your brand account. Give it to your staff and some influencers at the event, the same content, and let them share it in real time. You may see that it gets 1000% more engagement or success if you give it to a key influencer at your event or if you give it to your staff to post during the event. Don't just hold content for your brand to post. Share it with people that can then share it on their own accounts. One of the biggest tips I can give you is don't just be selfish and hold it for you to post. Give it to people to post.

Heather Pocorobba: Goes so much further from personal accounts than it does brands.

Clark Campbell: That's correct.

Rachel Andrews: Amen to that. Well, any other final thoughts before we let our listeners go to this fine podcast?

Heather Pocorobba: Another thing I would say is just try to be consistent and I know that is hard, but get on the channels, engage, follow people, see what they're sharing. Just comment like other things and make that a regular part of your routine and that's going to help get rid of some of the fear. This won't be as scary and hopefully you'll feel more comfortable testing out those new things.

Clark Campbell: The last piece of advice I would give is if you hire somebody or if you do it internally, make sure that you assign your content creators to shoot in a way that could be used for next year. Don't invest tens of thousands of dollars in creating social media content that can only be used today. It's a benefit if you can use it in both ways. It's a huge benefit actually, if you can use it all year. But also it works for social media today. Make sure because you're killing two birds with 1 stone, you're creating content to post on Instagram later today, LinkedIn, whatever, but you're also going to use it to promote your event next year. That way you don't have to hire two different teams, you can just hire one.

Rachel Andrews: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Heather and Clark, for joining another great episode of Great Events. Lots of great content in here and hopefully some good takeaways, tips and tricks for our event marketing profs and even social media experts if you're listening. Thank you so much to RVRB and Clark for being great partners and joining us today on the podcast. If you want to find them, we'll link their website on our podcast link so you can find RVRB and learn all about all the great social plans and engagement plans. And D-MONY yeah. Thank you again to Heather. She does amazing work for us internally and she's a behind the scenes rock star for all of our social accounts.

So shout out there as well to our rockstar listeners. Thanks again for tuning in. If you have additional things to share with us or any questions, you can always DM us on LinkedIn or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com. And don't forget to subscribe and rate our podcast. Thanks, and see you next time.