Social media is a great way to reach a large audience to promote your venue and events. Here’s how to promote your venue with a social media video.
Studies show that almost 70% of Americans use social media to connect with each other, but there’s more to social media marketing than simply sending out a few tweets about your business. Successful social media promotion requires an intentional, targeted strategy.
With a social media video, you’ll be able to show your followers your venue in action, but you need to plan ahead to avoid problems. Let’s dig in.
Why social media?
First, social media is an important way to both connect with, and learn about your patrons.
By interacting with your customers on social media, you can get more information about what their other interests are. For instance, you can see what kinds of music and artists they’re interested in, or what other venues they’ve visited.
All of this information will help you to better target your advertising and promotion efforts.
For instance, let’s say you share a post about an upcoming concert at your venue. Existing customers will see this comment, and perhaps they’ll react to it, or share it with their own followers.
The more your social media network grows, the less attention it will need from you. Instead, your customers will drive the conversation with one another.
Another important point is to encourage patrons to distribute and create content for you. This is a great way to grow your outreach exponentially.
When you share content to your social media accounts, it gives your customers the opportunity to interact with you.
By interacting with your content, your customers will expose it to a wider network of other social media users with similar interests. This, in turn, can drive potential new customers to your venue.
Why a social media video?
Now that we’ve explained the benefits of a social media strategy, let’s talk about a content strategy. Why is a social media video such a good option?
Understanding social media’s purpose
One of the biggest marketing mistakes that businesses make is trying to use social media as a platform for sharing advertisements.
Users don’t go to social media to find sales pitches. They go there to make connections, and to find and share great content. In order to use social media effectively, your business needs to go there with the same purpose in mind.
Rather than simply posting about upcoming events and ticket sales, your music venue should be posting content that helps build a brand.
For instance, you can include content that educates your customers about upcoming performers, or that elaborates on the type of artists you seek to support. This kind of content will both interest your users, and help them learn more about you.
Sharing content your customers will love
In order to communicate with your customers on social media, you have to use content that is not only informative, but also engaging. There’s a lot of content available on social media, so it’s crucial to share material that will grab your customers’ attention.
This is what makes a social media video such a great option.
With a social media video, you can share clips about upcoming artists, or footage from previous concerts. This will help potential customers to see your venue in action, and get excited about going there.
Additionally, users are more likely to share videos than other forms of content. It takes less time and effort to watch a video than it does to read an article. Sharing social media can greatly expand your potential audience.
How to legally stream or record your event?
Restaurants, bars, theaters, concert halls, indoor and outdoor arenas, parks are considered public places. If you are running a private club behind closed doors, your venue is probably considered a private place.
If the event takes place in a public place it can be recorded, right?
It is not that simple. Being in a public place doesn’t automatically mean that you can use the recording for promotional purposes. Recording someone without their consent for commercial purposes requires permission. The goal is to give the attendees the choice not to participate on the event or to leave if they choose to do so.
The way to avoid legal complications is to let people know that they might get on a promotional film.
This can be done in a few easy ways, such as displaying notification for customers when buying tickets for event, or a sign outside the venue. The key here is to make sure patrons are notified when they enter the area that they might be on a promotional video.
Can you record copyrighted material?
To make your life easier, be sure on the video recording you are not using copyrighted visual or audio material.
Because of that, the timing of your recording is very important. The safest way is to schedule ahead to avoid the recording of copyrighted material. Talk with the performers to learn when they present their own material.
It is also a good idea to get written permissions from the performers regarding the video recording.
What kind of content should be included?
Ultimately, the most important aspect of your social media video is its content. No matter how effectively you distribute the video, it will not engage your customers if it doesn’t draw on great content.
There are several approaches you can take to producing an effective video.

A recap of a past event
One approach to creating a video is to showcase content from a previous event.
Sharing a video highlighting awesome moments from a previous concert can be a great way to give customers a way to show off their experience to their followers. It can also bring back good memories of a fun night, and motivate them to choose your venue again.
Additionally, when a video like this can show potential customers what they missed. This can convince them that they need to be at the next show.
A promo for an upcoming event
In addition to highlighting great moments from the past, your social media videos should also look to the future.
A video showcasing a future event will get your customers excited to attend.
Additionally, you can incorporate a video like this with other marketing efforts. For instance, you can run a promotion that enters people who share your video into a drawing to win free tickets. This is a great way to get your users to promote content for you.
Don’t forget where the fun happens
Many promotional videos focus on the stage events or behind the scenes. Nothing is wrong with that, but the success of the event and your venue presents itself in the patron area.
For a social media video many times it is more appropriate to focus on your patrons. Your customers have an excellent time, so make sure your video is telling their story and not to become a promotion video for bands, musical styles, or sound and light engineering technology.
Likewise, the video should mention your venue’s name, location, and website at least once. You don’t want people to get excited about your video, but then forget who produced it!
Where should you share a social media video?
Now that we’ve gone over the value of a social media video, let’s discuss the most effective ways to release such a video to your current and future customers.
Choosing the right host
If you are using a live stream recording feature, like Facebook Live, or simply showing a short clip, like with Snapchat Stories.
These features are optimized for sharing on these particular platforms. While they can be effective to use, they should not be the only form of social media video you share.
Rather than posting a video directly to your social media account, it’s a good idea to host the video on a separate site, and share it to your account. We recommend hosting the video on both Vimeo and YouTube, as both sites have different benefits.
We recommend taking this approach for a few reasons. For one, you host on a separate video site, it is easier to share your video on multiple social media accounts. Additionally, hosting your video on both Vimeo and YouTube will increase its visibility.

Choosing the right social platform
Of course you need to share your video on social media platforms as well. Not all social media platforms are created equal. It’s important to be mindful of which content will work well on which platforms, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
For instance, Facebook is great for making an event page to inform customers about a particular event at your venue. You can post your video to this page, and make periodic updates.
By contrast, Twitter and Instagram don’t give you the option to create an event. They do allow you to share content more often without being “spammy.”
So, while perhaps you would only share a social media once in a day or your Facebook page, you could share it three or four times on Twitter and Instagram.
It’s a good idea to share your video on as many different sites as possible. Just make sure to do so in a way that makes sense for each particular site.
Promoting your video
Making the video and having it posted on video sites is just the beginning. You have to present it for your social media audience. There are some key tricks you’ll always want to consider in your video promotion campaign.
Hashtags
If you create a video to promote a particular event, you should always include the event hashtag. Remember to include this in the video itself, and in any post sharing the video.
This will make your hashtag more visible by sharing it whenever someone shares the video.
Quotes
Is there an important takeout or a a good tag line in your video you want to share with your social media audience? You can take the line and post it as standalone text on Facebook or if you have a high quality video, just use a still image from that and overlay the text on it.
Create a GIF version of it
It is a mystery why bad quality, jumpy GIF animations capture the attention of the readers. You can take advantage of this and include the GIF animation in your marketing emails, newsletters, or simply to add a fun, somewhat retro flair to your marketing campaign.
Cut out pieces from your video
Just like for Hollywood productions, you can create your own teaser for social media channels. Instagram for example has video length limitations. Use your teaser to lure Instagram visitors to your website to see the rest of your video! To make the invitation more irresistible, pair it with a promotional offer.
Transcript Blog Post
Obviously it would be a waste not to reuse your video script as a new blog entry or new article. ‘nough said.

Do you want to use a social media video effectively to promote your venue?
Social media is a great tool for promoting your music venue, and a social media video is a great way to showcase content that highlights your venue’s best features.
Sharing this kind of content will engage your customers by letting them see your venue in action. Additionally, using video format will encourage your customers to share this content with their own followers. This will only grow your impact.
If you’re ready to start using social media to grow your business, contact us. We’ll get started putting together a unique marketing strategy that works for your unique needs.