3 Creative Alternatives To A Facebook Event Post

Do you use Facebook Event posts to promote your online performance?

Do you get disappointed when not many people click ‘going’ and even less actually show up for your recital?

I first started to use social media to promote digital concerts in March 2020. You may be familiar with my blunt strategy:

• Set up a FB Event. 
• Post and share it over and over again. 

Determined and repetitive, I thought it was the answer. That was what everyone else was doing! My results were dismal. Hardly any engagement or increase in attendance. 

Let’s be frank, you don’t care about other people’s Facebook events. I don’t get excited by Facebook events. When you click ‘Going’ you make the weakest commitment to an event. If you’re someone who clicks ‘Interested’, you are finding a polite way to show support without saying no.

This is how your audience experiences FB Event posts as well. Their behaviour with your content is going to be the same as your behaviour with other people’s content. 

How can you increase engagement with your content?

As with all breakthroughs, you need some space and playful curiosity. Could I use emoji’s to do a ‘guess the composer’s name’ post? I played around and created one. Have a look below. Can you guess which composer? I then shared this with my audience. It caught like wildfire

What was different about this?

My Facebook Event posts focus on me, not on my audience. My audience didn’t get anything from it, apart from more intrusive notifications.

Whereas, joining in with the emoji post gave my audience an active part. They could share their guesses. Create their own composer emoji’s in the comments. It was INTERACTIVE and ENTERTAINING. It was outward-facing.

Is This What Your Audience Wants?

You are currently experiencing a tsunami of digital content. If you are finding it exhausting to sift through it all, that’s ok, everyone is. You are constantly reacting at high speed. Remember, your audience is also experiencing the same tsunami.

The way to cut through is to offer them something that you are passionate about and is also of value to them.

Your audience wants to be: entertained. They want to interact. They want to learn. Think of the content you engage with. You choose what is of value to you. Whether it’s entertaining, interactive, or an opportunity to learn.

That’s why in my Digital Recitalist email I include:

• A Main Topic/Idea = Timely, interesting, helpful, relevant

• From Our Community = Extra value, help, interest, and relevance.

• Sunday Quote = Inspiration

• Time Waster = Entertaining

You could use Mark Shaefer’s R.I.T.E.S. to check all your future content by:

• Relevant to your audience

• Interesting to your audience

• Timely to your audience

• Entertaining to your audience

• Superior content for your audience

If your content ticks at least three of these, then you are onto a winner! 

My emoji post was entertaining, interesting, relevant for classical music lovers. You could argue that it was timely for lockdown boredom. My FB Event posts might have been relevant. At a push, timely. But it wasn’t interesting and definitely not entertaining.

3 Alternatives To A FB Event Post To Promote Your Performance?

R.I.T.E.S. CONTENT:

Create content that fascinates you, which is also R.I.T.E.S. for your audience. Now you can start to build a relationship based on mutual passion, interests, and values. It’s a great way to create a foundation. Like all good friendships! 

MOMENTS TO LEARN:

Give moments for your audience to learn something new. Whether that is curating existing material that your audience could learn from. Or providing the opportunity to learn from you. This could be via a live-stream, Video, Blog, or Podcast. A great example of this is the cellist Johannes Moser. He asks his online audience to send in recordings of a piece and he replies with tips and advice. You can watch them here!

The connection he makes with his audience is deep and now they HAVE A REASON to watch his performances. His audience can continue to connect and learn from him. Johannes is sharing his passion and his audience is gaining incredible value. 

BE PART OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS:

Allow your audience into your creative process. Our own creative decisions dominate the majority of our classical practise. People love to feel involved. To feel like they belong. To feel like they’re heard. You could ask your audience to choose a piece for you to learn. They could learn a piece alongside you. They could help you choose titles, names, etc. 

Cellist Alban Gerhardt is brilliant at asking his audience for their input and ideas. They have given him a list of video topics for him to create. He also put up a poll asking his audience to choose which piece he should learn next. This is all via his Patreon page.

SUMMARY

Facebook Event posts are boring for your audience. You want to share your passion and be Relevant, Interesting, Timely, Entertaining and Superior for your audience. That’s what I’m developing with the Digital Recitalist weekly email. You can create moments for your audience to be part of the creative process. Or you can build a sense of community through learning opportunities. Once your audience has a connection with you, they’ll be more likely to click ‘Going’ to your event. And mean it!