How To Encourage Event Selfies For Free Marketing
Ahh, the selfie. Whether they annoy or delight you on a personal level, they make amazing sense for business. Companies can enjoy incredible exposure by promoting event guests to take selfies. The main reason is that the selfie doesn’t stop in the subject’s camera, but takes flight on social media.
We want to encourage you to see the selfie as a part of your marketing efforts. It’s particularly valuable because you don’t have to pay for it. It also employs crowdsourcing in some unexpected ways. Let’s check selfies out.
Event Selfies For Free Marketing: Why You Want Guests Taking Selfies
When someone attends an event, they usually take some care with getting ready and often want to show off their look. This is the simplest motivation behind event selfies and one you do little to foster directly. This pretty much means that by doing nothing at all, you’re likely to get a few shout-outs on social media from event attendees.
You can do a few things to encourage more selfies, however, and also to leverage the power of them.
Once an attendee takes a selfie, they’re going to share it. This gives you a potential to reach their entire audience as well as anyone following the hashtags they use.
Make sure one of those is yours.
Event Selfies For Free Marketing: Create A Hashtag For Your Event
Before we get into how to encourage selfies, we want to give you our most valuable advice about attendee generated event photos. You absolutely should create a hashtag for your event. You should also make this hashtag well known before and during the event.
You can do this a number of ways, from including it on tickets and receipts, in your social media campaigns leading up to the event, and with signage at the event itself.
If you have the means, incentivize guests to post with your hashtag by holding a drawing after the event. Give away a simple prize that is attractive to your attendees. You can crowdsource this information through polls if you like. This not only helps you dial in your prize but it fosters guest interaction leading up to the event as well.
After the event, search the hashtag, interact with guests, ask to use their photos in your follow up campaigns and choose a winner. As you can see, this fosters a lot of interaction!
Event Selfies For Free Marketing: Create Photo Ops
When planning your event, consider what you can do to prompt guests to take selfies. Perhaps unusual artwork, displaying amusing or inspirational quotations, or even things like your tablescape can inspire guests.
If they take a photo of your ideas and not a selfie, that’s just as good for you.
To prompt people to take more selfies, think about creating a well-lit area with a stunning backdrop and letting guests know this is their selfie spot. Think back to your prom for some baseline inspiration here. If your guests are reminded to selfie and given a spot they’ll look amazing in front of, they’ll be more likely to memorialize their outfit and evening.
Event Selfies For Free Marketing: Rent A Photo Booth
Photo booths are another excellent way to inspire selfies. Although you’ll need to squeeze it into your budget, you’re nearly guaranteed to see a return on the investment through your marketing and engagement.
Photo booths let you take a backseat creatively and let your photography vendor and your guests take the lead.
Event Selfies For Free Marketing: Selfie Power For Weddings And Personal Events
Although we’ve spoken so far about the marketing power of selfies, they’re also great for creating easily accessible memories after private events. By using the hashtag trick and encouraging selfies at your wedding or family reunion, it’s easy to look back after the fact.
Imagine all of your guests being able to reminisce as easily as searching for your tag. It’s truly magical!
Event Selfies For Free Marketing: Have You Had An Event Selfie Go Viral?
How have event selfies helped you in the past? We’d love to know in the comments!
