From expansive festivals to intimate nightclubs, we’ve been working with our clients to produce content on-site for a few years. (5 min read)
Here are a few things to consider before, during and after:
- Live-streaming remains a good platform for organic reach
- Immerse yourself into events to gather authentic content
- User-generated content can generate tons of organic reach
- Brand partnerships are an important and effective resource
- Event headliners can be used to your advantage
1. Live-streaming
We love creating live-streams for our clients here at E1MA.
Over 67% of consumers have tuned into a live stream.
Increased ownership of smartphones combined with faster internet has allowed live-streaming to become a mainstream distribution channel for event content.
We can observe this through the introduction of Instagram’s IGTV and the rise of Twitch.
Last year we shot and produced Eelke Kleijn’s 2-hour set at Noisily Festival, in order to stream ‘as-live’ later. We used the asset to count down to the festivals subsequent year lineup announcement, and set up a media partner to reach new audiences with.
Another client we produce live-streams for is Marvin Humes, as part of his highly successful ‘Marvin’s Room’ club night series.
Live streaming takes planning, testing and a whole lot of anxiety to ensure it all goes to plan. The preparation is essential. Making sure all the equipment is set up correctly, that the equipment works, the lighting is right on screen, the music is feeding through properly, that the internet connection is stable…. Test, test, test again, and if you can, one more time for good measure.
Once the stream is on, it’s all eyes glued onto it to make sure it goes smoothly- everything being set up perfectly is essential. Once it’s on, it is good to have someone else on hand to collect some content to use for socials around the stream – stories, tweets all leading back into the stream.
When the stream has finished, it’s time to get as much reach as possible. Not everyone tunes in when it’s live, so it is important to ensure it’s shared everywhere else possible, and allocate some advertising budget to make sure it still reaches your audience.
-Joey, General Manager @ E1MA
One excellent feature of live-streams is that the video produced can be recycled into different pieces of content.
You can re-upload the live-stream down the line to promote the next event:
For a mobile-first approach, transform your stream into a portrait video that is primed for IGTV:
Or simply taking the best parts of the stream and breaking in down into bite-sized chunks:
2. Immersing yourself into events
There’s enough articles arguing how brands need to ‘humanize’ in order to better connect with their customers – this includes the manner in which you collect content at events.
It’s important to view your event from the attendees’ perspectives. We pushed for this in our “how to promote your events” guide, and for good reason.
Firstly, it means your content will receive higher engagement.
Studies have found that ‘less polished’ videos perform better on Instagram Stories.
You should also remember that Facebook’s algorithm favours ‘authentic’ content rather than meticulously planned videos.
But this doesn’t mean you can’t ‘plan’ and create authentic videos.
The E1MA team are on-site for the entire duration of Noisily Festival to gather content (and manage the community).
One video series we planned in advance was ‘Humans of Noisily’:
“Keeping content consistently fresh & dynamic can be a real challenge for brands year on year. Which is why for this year’s Noisily Festival we wanted to come up with something new to keep socials looking engaging throughout the year. Humans of Noisily was a project that involved conducting a few short interviews at the festival with the Noisily ravers themselves.
We then played around with editing these snippets together to form supercuts of all the best interview answers about specific brand values that Noisily holds dear. The result was brand new, engaging Noisily content ready for posting done in a format that no-one had seen before!”
-George, Digital Account Manager @ E1MA
3. User-Generated Content
Sometimes the best content from events is created by the fans themselves.
(If you’re not familiar with ‘UGC’ you can check out our short blog post here)
Fan-made content works well for many of the same reasons. It’s raw, unpolished and authentic – which social media algorithms love.
“Since 2017, Facebook’s algorithm has prioritised posts from ‘real people’ over brands. User-generated content is perfect as it bridges the gap between the two. You can build brand awareness without being punished for being a business page.
Everyone has access to amazing cameras on their phones – it’s like having an extra 1000 content creators at your event! We encourage attendees to use brand hashtags, like #WeAreFSTVL so you can find all the best photos and videos quickly.
“Think of all the funniest videos you’ve seen. Were they carefully curated by a large corporation, or a random moment caught by a bystander?”
-Ben, Junior Digital Marketer @ E1MA
If even one video from your event goes viral, it could result in massive amounts of organic reach.
4. Managing Brand Partnerships
If you have partnered with brands for your event you need to take them into account when collecting content.
Large-scale events often partner with multiple brands.
“Music festivals and events present a fantastic avenue for brands to reach their target audience. Thousands of festival-goers in one place, people are in the frame of mind to try new things. Creating a brand experience can have a lasting impact on consumers and affect their buying habits for years to come. The right brand aligned with the right event is a potentially powerful partnership.
A huge secondary opportunity for brands being present at festivals is content. Video of people interacting with a brand gives currency to that brand when it’s presented later online, and it can be distributed through the events’ channels, giving further reach and engagement.
In tandem with our work for our clients on site, we can also deliver a database of content that shows fans interacting with brands, which helps in later conversations.“
Nick – Managing Director @ E1MA
5. Event Headliners
When collecting content from events, you want plenty of footage of the acts themselves – after all, it’s why people came to your event in the first place!
A healthy relationship between you and their team is essential as they will often bring their own photographer and videographer.
It is crucial that you gain access to the artist’s social media channels for advertising if they are playing at your next event.
Whenever possible when marketing events for venues, we always try to secure advertiser access to artist pages. artist pages tend to bring a sense of validity to adverts and markets events in a more personal manner than the often faceless, sales-y approach of using the venue page.
Gaining advertiser access to these pages also allows us to access the core audience of the artist, through which we can create lookalike audiences to further push events to a more focused local audience”.
– Joel, Senior Account Manager @ E1MA
By using footage of the artist and promoting it from the artist’s page, it almost doesn’t feel like an ad – which is exactly why it works.
The ideal scenario would be to have footage of the artist playing at one of your previous events. But if you have recently launched (like Phase Croydon) then this isn’t always possible.
In this case, get creative and use footage from other events like so:
Interested in more tips on events marketing?
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
