Any astute trade show organizer knows that pre-trade show promotion is a crucial part of getting the most out of your appearance at major expos. Companies typically use press releases and social media in order to promote an upcoming exhibition at a trade show. Social media, however, is evolving. Services like Instagram, Vine and Pinterest are starting to grow at exponential rates and research shows that these more visual forms of social media are shared more often than their text-based brethren. What does this mean for your company? It’s quite simple. If you want to generate the most buzz about your upcoming trade show presence, you need to take advantage of the social web.
Social media has long been an important part of any serious company’s marketing strategy. But, like anything that involves technology (and, in particular, the internet) there have always been trends that reduce the popularity of one social media outlet while boosting another. Newer services like Vine and Pinterest are experiencing exponential growth and should be taken seriously by marketers who are looking to help promote any business.
These more visually-based social media websites are especially popular with the younger generation. That means that if your target audience is teens or young adults, it is definitely worth your while to learn how to maximize the potential of the visual web in order to market your company to them. Websites that you should definitely take a look at include Vine, Pinterest and Instagram (which has also added ‘vine’-type short video functionality). Pinterest is perhaps the most popular simply by the numbers, but Vine and Instagram also offer unique and innovative ways to market your company to a younger audience.
All this doesn’t mean that you should not continue to use Facebook and Twitter for social media marketing in order to promote your trade show presence, it just means that there are a few more tools to add to your arsenal. These more visual-centric social media websites are particularly effective for getting your images and branding seen by more people and for reaching younger generations who are much more likely to be using these kinds of social media websites.