Years ago, to promote my Charity Dinner I would drive around with posters pinning them to notice boards and leaving them in receptions of local companies. The poster was either unprofessional because it was printed at home or expensive if we had one done professionally.

Today things are so much easier! Social media including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are by far the cheapest and quickest ways to get the message out about your event. There are a few things that will save you time before you get started:

Create an Overview

Do this in Word/Notepad and include all your key facts such as headline, date, start and finish time, venue address, postcode, cost and a description of your event and get together a couple of pictures or images. You will also need your contact details and any social media or website URL’s.

That way you can check your spelling and copy and paste into different places with minimal effort.

Create a Landing Page

If you already have a website, create a page for your event (or recurring event such as a workshop that you put on regularly). Or add it to your news or blog. If you don’t have a website set up a Facebook page.

Create a Facebook Page & Event

If you don’t already have Facebook page then it is always a good idea to create one for community, personal or charity events. If you have a Facebook account just click on the little downward arrow at far right of the top blue navigation bar and click on ‘Create’. Otherwise navigate to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create and follow the instructions. It’s quite instinctive, don’t forget to make full use of the bio and all the account information.

You can only create an event if you are an admin on a Facebook page or group. Simply go to Event or More/Create Event from the pull down list under your header picture depending on what type of page you have set up. Then follow the prompts. Make sure you include an image for full impact and all the relevant information.

Create a Poster

It’s always a good idea to have a poster that is saved as a JPEG to use on social media or your website. If you have a marketing/design person or company get them do a design and to save the poster as a JPEG so you can use it. Remember you don’t want too much information on it, just the basics including contact information in clear text and nice images.

If you want to create one yourself try a graphic design software platform like www.canva.com which is great for beginners. You can select the type and size of image that you want to create, use free templates, add text and upload your own images. Download it as a JPG (JPEG is the most common format of image found on the internet, but you can also use PNG). Then you are all set to print it, share it, email it or post it on social media.

Once you have everything ready it is then a question of a bit of research to find out where is the best place to advertise and promote your events. See my next blog on for a quick guide to FREE web based What’s On Guides, Facebook sites, Twitter or other online channels that might help you!

Can you think of anything else you need to do before heading for social media? If so please comment. If you found this useful please share. Many thanks

Kim