When it comes to promoting your event, Facebook has the potential to be your most effective tool. But it’s not as simple as creating an event on Facebook and sitting back to watch your tickets sell out. With more than 47 million Facebook Events created just last year, you have to work to promote your event on Facebook in a way that makes yours stand out.

To find out how, we sat down with Virginia Maloney, the Product Marketing Manager of Facebook Events. Here are her top tips to promote an event on Facebook. 

1. Promote events on your Facebook Page

The first thing you should do is optimize your Page to showcase your events. First, make sure your “Events” tab is one of the first tabs on your Page’s Timeline on desktop. This makes it easy for people to find your calendar and see a full list of your events. You can change the order using the “Manage Tabs” option in the “More” dropdown menu. (If the “Event” tab isn’t visible, you’ll need to create an upcoming event before managing the tab order.)

On desktop, you can also reorder the sections in the left-hand column so that “Events” appears at the top. (You can manage the order by clicking the pencil icon that appears when you hover over the unit.)

Be sure to check “Publish New Events to Timeline” within your “Event” tab, so people can find out when you create a new event.

promote your event on facebook

2. Share your Facebook event

Need a simple but impactful way to promote your event on Facebook? Try sharing your event on your Page to reach your followers. To share your event, click the dropdown under “Invite” and then click “Share to Page.”

It’s also worth seeing if your ticketing or registration partner allows you to become a Facebook Official Event. If so, your event could qualify for better search and News Feed recommendations for even more visibility.  

3. Highlight your event calendar

To promote all your events on Facebook at once, you can showcase a calendar of your upcoming activities. The link to your event calendar is your Facebook page URL with “/events” at the end: “www.facebook.com/[YourPageName]/events.”

To share your calendar, publish a post with a link to your event calendar. You can do this by going to your “Events” tab, then clicking “Share Events.” This post will automatically include a preview of your latest events. You can also send this link out on other channels, like a mailing list or fan club.

4. Extend promotion by adding your event to other Facebook Pages

There are often many people involved in organizing and promoting an event. Rather than creating duplicate Facebook events, you can add your event to calendars on other organization’s or individual’s official Pages. To do this, click the “More” dropdown on your event next to “Invite.” Then, select “Add to Page.”

This is a great strategy if you have well-known artists or sponsors involved with your event. Once your event is added to their calendars, their audiences can also discover it. That way, promoting your event on Facebook can be a group effort.

5. Take advantage of Facebook advertising

Facebook Event Ads are event creators’ secret weapon. One of the reasons the ads work so well, besides the fact that everyone is on Facebook all the time, is the way you’re able to target your campaigns very granularly.

You can segment who receives your ad by location, age, gender, likes and interests, connections, relationships, language, education, workplace, and more. One of the more advanced features Facebook offers is the ability to create a unique audience segment for your ad campaigns using your customer contacts (email addresses), website traffic, or mobile app. These are known as Custom Audiences.

Need More Info? Learn how to create and implement your Facebook ad strategy in our step-by-step guide.

6. Make sure you know the latest Facebook Events updates

Facebook Events changes every day, and so do the best practices to promote an event on Facebook. For the best strategies to use Facebook to get your event in front of as many people as possible in 2019 and sell more tickets, check out 4 Facebook Events Updates Event Creators Need to Know in 2019.