Attendance is key to having a successful tenant appreciation, food truck, or special event. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing how communication makes magic. This week we’ll show how using digital signage and social media may be your greatest untapped resources.

Life is Busy

Let’s face it - everyone has a full schedule. Juggling work, life and families means most people have packed calendars. Proper advance notice for events you’re asking tenants to attend (even fun things) is the best way to make sure people can show up. “If I’d only known about x before I committed to y” is a common excuse for non-participation.

Repetition is Necessary

Many organizations are discovering that it takes daily reminders for 2 weeks for someone to commit to attending an event. Research says it takes adults 27 times of doing something to form a habit. What does that tell you about how often you need to promote your events? Even recurring events like weekly food truck rotations need frequent reminders.

Use Multiple Channels

Promotion is not about just using a single avenue of communication. You need to promote in multiple ways and places. Certainly, send out emails and SMS messages, include in your newsletters, and on your tenant portal. But you should be doing more than that. Putting up flyers on property is great for that static notice; use front doors, lobbies, elevators or restrooms.

Many properties have digital signage, too. Tap into that resource. Since 2015, the proliferation of flat screen digital signage has grown 10x. The real power of a good digital signage system is video. Rather than running flat content with a graphic or pdf, consider creating short videos to promote your event. An easier alternative might be to use a platform like Canva.com to create slides with animation, exported as an MP4 to create movement. The visuals of zooming images or moving images are more likely to grab attention.

Power in Social

Many properties use their social media channels to engage with prospective tenants as a sales tool, but you should also be using social to promote your events to tenants. Most adults actively use social media, so you need to engage tenants there, too. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all still popular business channels. If your tenant demographic skews to a younger crowd, also use TikTok and SnapChat.

The moment you know about an event, create a Facebook Event page. Put as much info about the event as you can right away and add to it over time. Leading up to the event, post at least daily. If you have sponsors, partner companies or a charity partner, provide them with graphics and instructions to share, repost and engage with your posts. This helps you and them get awareness, so this type of collaboration is beneficial to everyone.

Bonus Tip

At your event, have a sign or poster with a “preferred hashtag” to encourage sharing. Have your marketing team follow those tags, like and pick their favorite post to share. Here’s an example: