How to Drive Photo Sharing at Your Events

Everyone knows how much I love charts! Well, MarketingSherpa has done it again. It published a chart just last week about the types of events that elicit the most branded photo social sharing.

There is clear industry data on the value of sharing photos associated with a brand or mission. What I found very interesting is that fundraising events ranked quite high in the sharing category when compared to other types of events.

Here are the highlights of this article and data:

The Data:

• For 15 months, between Jan. 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015, Tagkast (a social, event marketing platform) collected data about customer sharing of branded photos from 2,398 live events with its clients.
• The events occurred worldwide and ranged in size from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of attendees.
• The types of B2B and B2C events included concerts, home and garden tours, fundraisers, bar events, sporting events, festivals, auto shows and conferences.
• The majority of events were between four and 10 hours in duration.
• At each of the events, consumers had the opportunity to take branded photos on a tablet and then share those branded photos to either email or social media.

The Findings:

• Two types of data elements were reviewed: the average social share rate based on event category, and the range of social share rates. As you will see below, the range can be quite significant, so both of the data elements have a story to tell.
• In rank order by average social share rate, here are the percentages by event category. (Here is a printable version of this data.)
  - Concert and music events: 53 percent
  - Fundraiser: 51 percent
  - Bar event: 50 percent
  - Recreational activity: 50 percent
  - Cultural event and festival: 45 percent
  - Sporting event: 45 percent
  - Auto show: 34 percent
  - Conference and expo: 22 percent
  - Home and garden event/tour: 22 percent

Where it gets interesting is when you look at the range. I’m specifically focused on the nonprofit fundraising events.

• Bar events appear to have a similar average as nonprofits, but the range of sharing for this category has a low of 23 percent sharing to a high of 80 percent sharing.
• The fundraiser category has a sharing range of what appears to be 30 to 70 percent.
• The other categories have ranges that are both wide and short.

With a range this big in some of the categories, what Tagkast has shown us is that not even all fundraising events drive the same sharing outcome. In other words, some of the fundraising events had a 70 percent photo sharing rate and others had only 30 percent—hence the average of 51 percent. To say it a different way, some things were done differently at events that increased the amount of photo sharing on social media.