Live events can be a great way for businesses to boost brand awareness and strengthen customer loyalty. In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever to integrate your company’s in-person events with real-time live event coverage on your brand’s social media channels. As part of our social media management services, we work with our clients to provide live event coverage that is optimized for each brand’s audience and goals.
Here are 7 examples of how we’ve leveraged social media live event coverage to reach our client’s business objectives.
1. Break attendance records for your big event
We’ve done a lot of live social media event coverage over the years for New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. In April 2016, the same month that Facebook rolled out the ability for all users to share live videos, we utilized the new Facebook Live tool to provide live-streaming event coverage of French Quarter Fest on the Visit New Orleans account.
More recently, we worked with NOTMC to promote the 25th anniversary of White Linen Night. In addition to a paid social advertising campaign leading up to the annual art event, we also provided live coverage of the event via Instagram Stories on @GoNOLA504. Our photographers shoot real-time photos and videos of the events we cover on social media, and our community managers write interesting copy and use tools such as polls and location geotags to create engaging Instagram stories.
With these eye-catching photos, FSC Interactive was able to showcase all aspects of the event, gaining more than 15K impressions from this 7-slide story. Our social media coverage before and during the event contributed to record-breaking attendance numbers for the 2019 White Linen Night.
2. Hype up fans on game day
The Bayou Classic football game means big business for the city of New Orleans. For the 45th Annual Bayou Classic last year, FSC was enlisted to drive fan engagement and online ticket sales through social media advertising and live event coverage. Our Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns leading up to the event boosted ticket sales, and during the 2018 Thanksgiving weekend festivities, we provided live social media coverage via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Fans and alumni of Grambling State University and Southern University were able to get their questions answered and stay connected to the events, even if they weren’t able to attend them in person. Our live coverage created massive excitement and buzz around the 2018 Bayou Classic weekend and reflected the spirit of camaraderie of the entire weekend of activities.
3. Share your special event with a world wide audience
FSC Interactive was enlisted to provide live event coverage for the 4th annual Ada Lovelace Awards, a celebration of women in technology from the Gulf South region. What began as a small ceremony in 2015 to honor the contributions of New Orleans area women working in technology fields had grown to recognize the accomplishments of women from across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. Nearly 100 women were nominated in 2019, and an awards ceremony was held on March 26, 2019 at the Civic Theatre in downtown New Orleans as part of New Orleans Entrepreneur Week.
FSC Interactive provided live event coverage, including a Facebook Live video stream and announcements of the winners in real-time via Twitter so that the friends and family of the winners and nominees could be there to support the event, even if they couldn’t be there in person.
4. Increase philanthropic giving via real-time social media management
FSC Interactive provided social media management for Greater New Orleans Foundation’s GiveNOLA Day, the biggest giving event of the year in the Greater New Orleans area. In 2019, we rolled out a social media advertising strategy and took advantage of organic social best practices on their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to grow GNOF’s fan base and increase their social media engagement with potential donors ahead of the big day.
This wasn’t the first year we’ve partnered to make GiveNOLA Day a philanthropic success either. We’ve also worked with GNOF for prior GiveNOLA Day events to provide real-time social media coverage, community engagement & monitoring to increase awareness of the event and boost donations.
5. Share the excitement of graduation day
We’ve worked with a number of universities during our 10 years in business, and during our time working with Loyola University New Orleans we helped them stay relevant on social media with current students, potential students, alumni, and the community.
For their 2014 commencement ceremony at the Superdome, we worked with them to incorporate student selfies in real-time into the big celebration. Using the visual marketing platform Pixlee, we were able to collect, manage and display the user-generated photos submitted via the #Loyno2014 hashtag and by email on the Superdome’s screens, as well as the two screens that flank the stage and the concession monitors throughout the Superdome. Along with the live event photo display, graduates and their families were able to relive their special moments on both Facebook and the university’s website with the addition of Pixlee social hubs to both locales.
Loyola was the only university in the New Orleans area that year to showcase live social media posts on multiple giant video screens throughout the Mercedes-Benz Superdome during its spring undergraduate commencement ceremony. We were thrilled to be a part of making it happen!
6. Celebrate a grand opening
Live social media coverage is a great way to boost the visibility of a grand opening event, and we did just that when The Outlet Collection at Riverwalk in New Orleans celebrated their grand opening in May 2014. We provided live event coverage for the full weekend of grand opening events, leveraging Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to spread the word.
Over the course of 6 days, more than 1K fans were organically added to The Outlet Collection at Riverwalk’s Facebook page, and weekly reach shot up 121%. We monitored Twitter, answering customer questions about mall hours and on-site events. FSC’s event coverage partners, Red Button, encouraged customers to flood into stores with #SpecialTweets, giving the first person to show a tweet in a certain store a gift from that store.
FSC posted approximately every hour to the malls’ Instagram account, giving followers a glimpse of all the happenings on the property: food, products, sales, activities, ambiance and more. We also partnered with local influencers like Jenn of @hauteofftherack to boost visibility and increase excitement around the weekend’s events. During this time period, The Outlet Collection at Riverwalk’s Instagram following nearly doubled.
7. Boost brand awareness for an iconic brand
FSC Interactive has been working with the iconic Hotel Monteleone for many years, and providing live event coverage and on-site social media activations is one of the ways that we help this 130+ year old hotel stay relevant in the digital age.
In 2016, a fan reached out via Hotel Monteleone’s Instagram account to inquire about arranging a surprise proposal to his girlfriend on the roof of the hotel. He wanted to bring in a photographer to document the experience, and we saw this as a great opportunity to use Facebook Live to capture and share this moment. The video reached more than 36K people and received 2,300 post clicks and 3,300 likes, comments and shares.
That same year we also created a custom Snapchat geofilter for Hotel Monteleone’s Carousel Bar, which was used to boost visitor engagement during both Jazz Fest weekends. We’ve also provided live event coverage for conventions and festivals hosted by the hotel, including Tales of the Cocktail, the world’s largest cocktail convention.
Want to boost social media engagement at your next event?
Whether it’s increasing ticket sales or attendance at your event via strategic social media advertising prior to your event, or boosting social media engagement during the live event itself, we can help!
Contact us today to learn more about our social media management and live event coverage services.