How to Promote an Event on Instagram

Instagram’s diverse and huge community can be untapped with the right marketing tactic and strategy. 

Instagram provides an opportunity to build close relationships with the target audience and increase brand awareness and engagement rates.

Instagram is a big hit right now! 

Statista reports that Instagram currently has 1.21 billion monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide, representing more than 28% of all internet users across the globe. 

The number will increase further, with a projected 1.44 billion MAUs, making up 31.2% of the world’s internet users.

Instagram has the potential to put your brand in front of potential event attendees and engage users to build a strong brand presence online. With over 500 million daily active stories posted by Instagram users worldwide, 43.5% of men and 56.5% of women use the app daily.

According to data published by Pew Research Center, six-in-ten U.S. adults visit Instagram daily. With widespread popularity among different demographics, Instagram provides a massive potential for event promotion.

With the enormous opportunity to capture the attention of potential attendees, you must know how to promote an event on Instagram using the best tactics.

In this guide, we have covered different ways to promote an event on Instagram. Let’s explore ways to increase event registration.

Want to Increase Event Registrations? Check out these 11 Instagram Promotion Ideas

Successful event marketing starts with knowing how to post an event on Instagram to reach your target audience and increase the chances of event registration.

1. Boost your online presence by incorporating relevant hashtags and increase your reach
2. Attract a wider audience by inviting popular speakers, artists or influencers
3. Get more mileage out of your event content by repurposing it
4. Enhance your Instagram event ads by targeting them to a specific audience
5. Engage your audience and gather user-generated content by hosting a competition on Instagram
6. Share compelling stories about your events
7. Give your audience an exclusive sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes action of your events
8. Create an unforgettable experience for your followers by sharing visually stunning and awe-inspiring posts
9. Showcase your attendees’ experiences
10. Sharing follow-up posts and highlights
11. Gather valuable feedback from your attendees

You can keep the buzz alive, get people excited for the event and churn out free promotional content on Instagram. 

According to data published by Pew Research Center, six-in-ten U.S. adults visit Instagram daily. With widespread popularity among different demographics, Instagram provides a massive potential for event promotion.

Event marketers can use Instagram to build momentum pre-event, increase engagement during the event and boost further engagement post-event.

Instagram Event Promotion Before Your Event

In the months, weeks and days before your event, ensure you have all the critical elements for successful event branding on Instagram. Effective and timely event promotion can drive registrations and ticket purchases.

1- Boost your online presence by incorporating relevant hashtags and increase your reach

Instagramming events are all about creating relevance for potential attendees. Using specific hashtags will boost your online presence and show up in searches. Or you can find the best keywords for your event, as it would help if you used a mix of hashtags, such as: 

• Use hashtags unique to your event. For example, #europeanbikeweek is the hashtag used to promote European Bike Week, an iconic motorcycle and Harley-Davidson gathering every year at the beginning of September.
• Some hashtags are industry specific. For example, #fitness or #fitnesswear
• Hashtags are also niche specific. For example, #saasmarketing

The point is to choose a relatively unpopulated hashtag that is easy to recall and use for event marketing. Also, hashtags allow users to connect with the event promotion content.

For example, The Middle East’s first Web Summit, scheduled to take place in Qatar in 2024, has started promotional content on Instagram with relevant hashtags, including #FinyalQatar, #WebSummit2024, #Doha and #Qatar. Not only promoting the event itself but the country where it will occur.

2- Attract a wider audience by inviting popular speakers, artists or influencers

By partnering with reputable speakers, artists or influencers, you can increase your event credibility and boost Instagram event promotion. Use their Instagram clout to bolster your event, and reach a broader audience that fits into your targeted event attendee persona.

More people will be interested in attending the event by inviting popular speakers and artists. It adds a selling point and improves engagement. Also, it can help you gather more media coverage and sponsorship opportunities and create a buzz around the event.

Influencer marketing is an instant game changer when it comes to event promotion. Influencers can bring a fresh perspective and energy to the event and its visibility among users.

For example, a keynote speaker, CCO of WayMore, will attend the University of Macedonia seminar on “Entrepreneurship Support Bodies and Business Consultants”, posted as an event ad to engage users to drive event registration to learn from the industry expert.

3- Get more mileage out of your event content by repurposing it

You put a lot of effort into generating engagement on your Instagram event page, but you tend to forget that your content is the goldmine for untapped potential. You might think only original content is king, but it isn’t always the case. Repurposing is an event content marketing tactic that allows you to take an omnichannel approach to event strategy.

Repurpose your event content into different forms, such as:

• Podcasts
• Micro-blogging
• Animated GIF
• Videos
• Infographics
• Social graphics
• VIP reports for attendees

Every time you re-work the available content, you save time and money. When you parlay your event content into different formats to reach the audience, you make them recall and retain the information. Also, it will give you a deep insight into how your audience consumes the content when presented in different forms.

4- Enhance your Instagram event ads by targeting them to a specific audience

Create an Instagram event marketing funnel from existing posts. Divide your audience into three main categories, top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel. Focus on revenue-generation goals like sales and lead conversion.

Build your target audience based on demographics, interests or location. Set a daily ad budget, time, and start your campaign. Instagram gives you additional targeting options based on connections that include:

• Custom audience: Create a specific audience persona based on your event.
• Lookalike audience: New audience interested in events similar to your custom audience.
• Automatic audience: Audience based on various elements such as location, age, gender, and interest.

Brands on Instagram gain a halo effect, and over 80% of users discover new products or services, while 80% decide whether or not to buy a product or service.

5- Engage your audience and gather user-generated content by hosting a competition on Instagram

Knowing what your audience likes and interests help you effectively promote your events. The key is constantly grabbing people’s attention and driving engagement through user-generated content.

With half a billion daily active users on Instagram, once you find your dream event audience for paid media, it’s tempting to dive right in and start a contest. However, when you plan to run a contest, keep it relevant and measurable through ROI.

For example, having potential attendees share your event ad or update it as an Instagram story is a great way to get the word out. Other examples of a contest can be polls, enter-to-win event tickets, quizzes or trivia.

For example, the post below on Instagram by an attendee of the Web Summit 2022 used all the relevant hashtags, making it a great example of a user-generated post to promote the event.

Instagram Event Promotion during Your Event

It’s essential to maintain hype around your events on Instagram, ramp up promotion and continue to focus on event registration. Once your event starts, the promotion message must include live streams, event coverage and snippets.

6- Share compelling stories about your events

Instagram is the best platform to share compelling stories live from the event and share highlights with the audience. Social proof is a big thing, and sharing stories can have a more significant impact on the viewers.

Choose different photos or video snippets to create a compelling story to promote virtual events on Instagram. Remember to add text to your stories with details about the event. You can even add a location sticker to spruce it up.

7- Give your audience an exclusive sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes action of your events

Even during the event, you can get more people to attend and increase ticket sales by revealing a glimpse into the event. An unedited look into what’s happening allows the Instagram audience to build trust and connection. Why? Because behind the scenes is a smart way to showcase your brand and create a fun experience for your community.

For example, the London Landmarks Half Marathon event page shared behind-the-scenes from the race day to encourage more people to attend the event.

8- Create an unforgettable experience for your followers by sharing visually stunning and awe-inspiring posts

Make your event page on Instagram memorable for the users and target audience by posting images and videos from the event. Post highlights and summaries for people who couldn’t make it, yet they can still participate in the event experience through Instagram posts.

These posts can give people a taste of what they missed and ensure they will attend the next event. Also, it can turn event attendees into event ambassadors.

A Sharable event marketing post that resonates with your attendee’s experience will more likely generate like, comment and share options.

The Giro d’Italia Instagram event post example presents how a post can engage social media users during the event by sharing the best moments from the event.

Instagram Event Promotion After Your Event

Once you’ve finished folding the chairs and closing the doors to your event, it’s time to get post-event promotion sorted. The event is over, but your job’s not over yet.

Event promotion after your event is essential to keep the people talking about it and build connections with the attendees. It serves as a touch-point for future leads.

9- Showcase your attendees’ experiences

Nothing inspires FOMO like a post on a social media platform about the event. Share posts on Instagram showing attendees having a fun time at the event. Build the excitement from the event, and encourage your followers to interact.

At this point, many attendees must have shared about the event on their Instagram profiles, and you can share that as Instagram stories to maintain the buzz about the event.

10- Sharing follow-up posts and highlights

Fill your stories with Instagram event promotion with key highlights of the event and create enticing content to promote your next event.

As the expectation for personal relevance has drastically increased, you can share follow-up posts to connect with the attendees and highlight keynote speakers that joined you for an event.

11- Gather valuable feedback from your attendees

Event attendees are the key to success for your next event. Once you ensure attendees enjoyed the event, you will likely gather positive feedback.

Event reflecting is another key term used by events marketing agency professionals to provide rich insight about the event to the attendees. Valuable feedback is a tried-and-true way to get more business, boost ROI, and develop future interaction opportunities for the next event.

Final Words

Instagram event promotion is the perfect way to build your audience and engage them with content related to your event. You can explore untapped opportunities by following Instagram’s best practices for virtual event promotion. Try other tactics, and see what works best for your event.

Be creative, and stand out from the rest with Instagram event promotion that boosts event registration and leaves a lasting impression.