Social media. Everyone is doing it, but a lot of people are doing it wrong.

Well-written, engaging (simply amazing) social media posts can boost the visibility and attendance of your event, but poorly written, over-tagged, spammy updates can lead to potential attendees unfollowing and unfriending.

Be a Friend
Build a following before your event. Just like with life, you have to be a friend to make friends. Like, share, comment on your friends’ and followers’ content—keep it lighthearted, fun, positive. Or if it matches your voice, be a bit irreverent and witty.

Take a look at the profiles of your attendees or commenters. What are their interests, hobbies, passions? If a lot of your attendees snowboard, and it happens to snow, post something like this: It’s official, snow is falling. Have a grand time on the mountain.

Hashtag That
Create a short hashtag that your attendees can use to talk about your event. If it’s a large conference, use several hashtags and promote them on your event signage and event page.

Use no more than two hashtags per tweet. With Instagram, you can get away with many more.

Hashtags encourage and organize conversations. If your attendees think something needs to be improved (for example, if there is a bad parking situation or you’re running out of water), they’ll often begin chattering about it using the hashtag. Delegate social media monitoring to at least one person. That way, if something needs to be fixed, you’ll catch it.

Carefully research hashtags before you put them out there. Check out who else is using the hashtag and for what purpose. Never use sensitive hashtags to promote your event.

Use handles and tags to mention your performers or the venue.

Make It Pretty

It’s poor etiquette to delete Twitter posts, so make sure that what you have is spelled correctly and polished.

You can edit Instagram captions and Facebook posts after they go live, but triple check all of the handles and hashtags before you tap publish. Avoid sloppy updates that use “ur” for your or “4” for “for.” Write updates in a word processing program first to smooth out your content.

Use a tool such as Grammarly to check your grammar—Grammarly is a browser plug-in that “green lines” grammar errors— ones that even an eagle-eyed editor would miss.

Use Tweetdeck or a similar tool to schedule out posts, so that you can make sure you have the right handles and hashtags. But proceed with caution—when tragedy in the news strikes, it takes social media by storm and can make your previously scheduled tweets seem insensitive.

Short, short, short. Yes, it’s tempting to include all the information about your event into one little tweet (along with five exclamation points), but shorter works better. Two things to include are links to where to buy tickets and the event hashtag.

Did we mention there would be pizza? RSVP for a slice of the action: [event link]

The ideal character count for tweets is 71-100, according to this AdWeek infographic, although Twitter allows 140.

Even though it’s convenient and faster to link your Instagram to your Facebook and Twitter, it’s best to write individual posts for each account.

Include images or links to videos. Create a highlight reel of your past events or a photo montage of your performers.

Tie It Together
People love facts and trivia. Tie your event in with fun facts.

Can you guess the most widely produced wine in the world? Hint: it’s going to be at tomorrow’s wine festival: [event link]

If something loosely related to theme of your event happened in the news, re-post it.

Let your performers takeover your social media as part of a planned influence marketing campaign.

Interact with your audience. Respond to comments and questions, but avoid angrily responding to random haters. You can damage your reputation by acting impulsively or defensively. If something goes wrong, step away from the screen and come up with a plan of action before you post.

There’s no need to be humble. Share all of the press you get. Use the publication’s handle so they get some love.

Does the venue have more going on than the performance, such as drink or food specials, VIP rooms, pool tables/video games? Share it.

Pro tip: Need free guidance or social media love? Ask our expert promotion team. Email promo[at]brownpapertickets[dot]com.