How to use social media to launch a brand new event

Back in March, we helped launch the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping (FABUK), a brand-new festival for UK accountants and bookkeepers. Our task? To build a social media community, encourage them to book tickets and convince them to attend. Our lead time? Less than three months.

Across Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and X, we optimised an upbeat, bright TOV that promised FABUK was a brand new style of event for the industry. We kept up a consistent cadence of posting, with equal weight in ‘giving’ to followers (added value) and ‘taking’ (asking them to register for the event), while also engaging the community, ensuring they felt heard and involved in the build-up. Visually, we employed beautifully designed branding across visual posts for consistency.

Our content and copy were an effective mix of information-sharing, partner and speaker promotions, FOMO and most importantly…fun! It spoke to the pain points of accountants and bookkeepers and also included the benefits of attending (plus, it looked LOVELY).

Our results were nothing short of astounding for a brand-new festival with no previous footprint (if we do say so ourselves!). 

All channels went from ground zero in January to bustling hubs by mid-March. Plus, hundreds of videos, images and stories tagged us during the show -  using #FAB24 - which was brilliant and proved that the attendees had really bought into the concept of the event and felt seen by social. 

RESULTS

> LinkedIn followers: 2,294 (115% MOM increase)

> 63,249 impressions of organic content on LinkedIn (322% MOM increase)

> Doubled the Instagram following MOM from Jan - March

> Content reach on Facebook increased 78.82%

> Grew following on X by +66.25%

FEEDBACK

What the attendees said:

• “Love the way you guys treat a serious profession with a touch of humanity and humour.”

• “This event looks so different from normal (dare I say it, boring) accounting exhibitions. Really looking forward to it.”

• “This looks set to be the event of the year!

• “Thank you so much for your hard work and energy towards this campaign.”

What the FABUK team said:

• “It's soooo satisfying to read all the good news and see these results post-event.”

• “Reading this report is honestly just fantastic!”

• “This is bang on.”
  

Bring on next year! 

Like the look of these results? We can do the same for your event launch - just email charlie@bigtop-pr.co.uk.