Ideas for creating content for your social media channels for Festivals and Events. Susan McNaughton Social Media helps Festivals and Events in Scotland to set up their social media profiles, plan their strategy, connect with their audience, and create a community of sharing around Festivals and Events.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FESTIVALS
Creating Content for your Festival or Event

2. CONTENT PLANNING TOOLS
 From previous sessions:
 Social Media Canvas
 Content Planning Calendar
 Set up timescales for your events and plan
accordingly
 May decide to focus in 2 months prior to event
 May need all year round strategy
 Partly determined by your resources
 Marketing your event may be responsibility of one
person/group
 Social media for event is wider responsibility

3. MESSAGES ACROSS ALL YOUR
COMMUNICATION NEEDS
 Don’t re-invent messages – think of what you want
to say and the best mediums to use to say it
 Who else can help you spread the message?
 Breaking down news, to spread out spreading the
news!
 Phrasing news for you to spread and for others to
pass on
 Where does social media fit into your wider
communication, PR and marketing plan?
 How can your partnerships help you spread the
word?

4. STRATEGY PLANNING CANVAS
Overview Audience Voice Terms Channels
Discovery Expansion Content Other People

5. CONTENT PLANNING CALENDAR
 You have a sample Excel spreadsheet with dates in
a column & columns for significant events and
media to be used
 If this doesn’t work for you, then create your own
methods – but make sure everyone can share as
this will be a group effort – think about Dropbox or
Google Drive for sharing

6. USE MIND MAPS OR DRAWINGS TO PLAN

7. FILLING THE CALENDAR
 Significant events in the year – seasons, festivals
 Dates for your event
 Milestones for your event
 Significant other events in your area
 Events of interest to your specialist group
 E.g. Radio or TV programmes your audience might be
interested in
 Similar events in other parts of the country

8. SOME EXAMPLES – 23 MARCH 2013
 Wedding fair – look for dates of “big weddings” and
write some content about that
 Musical event – check the calendars of your artistes
and see where they are before/after your event
 Business fair – significant dates for signing up for
the event
 Baby tights – different tights for different seasons
 Health workshops – significant types of allergy in
different seasons
 Art exhibitions – interviews with artists, discussions
of other events they’re attending

9. WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT?
 Different media will require different approaches
 Written articles
 Photography
 Videos
 Sound clips
 Content already created by others – re-use by making
comment and adding your voice

10. WE’RE A NEW EVENT!
 We have no history – where do we get content?
 Use royalty free stock images to create an impression
 http://sixrevisions.com/resources/15-best-places-for-designers-
to-get-free-stock-photos-online/
 Take close up images of some of the products you’ll
have on sale – just enough to create an impression
 Search for video/photographs taken by others at
previous similar events
 Ask participants if you can use their photos

11. WHAT GOES WHERE?
 Website core place with (say) one update per week or
month
 Facebook page – publish your latest web content and
add some content to get people interacting – have
discussions, share photographs
 Twitter – can be more frequent updates, more sharing of
content from others
 YouTube – can collect videos from others in Playlists
until you have content of your own
 Photo galleries – set up albums within Facebook, web
pages within your site, groups on Flickr
 Pinterest - make collections of photographs others have
shared to show your vision of your event

12. LIKELY KEY ELEMENTS FOR YOUR
FESTIVAL
Website content at
core
Content on Website
linked to from
Twitter, encouraging
visits to site
Printed material
directs people to
Website, Facebook,
Twitter Content on Website linked to from
Facebook, encouraging visits to
site
YouTube hosts
Video content which can be
Linked to from site or other Photographs: Flickr,
media Pinterest, Instagram

13. GET BUSY, GET SOCIAL
•Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/SusanMcNaughton
•Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Susan.McNaughton.Social.Media
•Web: http://www.susanmcnaughton.com
•LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/SusanMcNaughton