Why Social Media Made Liberty Farm Festival Successful

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I’m sorry about skipping out on yet another #SocialMediaSaturday post, but I was tied up with press duties for Liberty Farm Festival–which will be the subject of my make-up post today.

Every Saturday, I’ll be bringing you a weekly #SocialMediaSaturday post. I wrote about Instagram Stories in my first post for the series. Last week, I profiled the five best social media marketing blogs conservative and libertarians should be bookmarking to up their social media marketing strategy game.

Many of you saw me posted about Liberty Farm Festival in Paris, Virginia, the last two months. I served as the Director of Media Outreach for the event–the first time I single-handedly dealt with press on my own. Since 2010, I’ve worked directly and indirectly with media, radio, reporting, column writing, and pitching people to TV and radio. Never before did I undertake such a big title and role, but I’m glad I did. I was responsible for press releases, media pitching/placement, social media, issuing press credentials, and booking interviews for host Martha Boneta:

Not only did the addition of mystery guest and VP candidate Mike Pence add to our event’s profile, social media played an integral role in getting the event out there. With close to 800-1,200 tickets sold and competing events nearby, our event exceeded our expectations.

All of this couldnt have been done without the LFF team–especially with our efforts on social media. How did social media propel Liberty Farm Festival to success? I’ll explain below:

Strategic, successful event promotion made possible due to existing brand in place

Liberty Farm Festival was mostly a success due to the woman behind the operation: Liberty Farm owner, Virginia farmer, and private property rights activist Martha Boneta. Martha has created a brand for farm freedom over the last few years. She even has a bill in her name in Virginias General Assembly called the Boneta Bill–signed into law last year. Even with limited resources on hand, her name recognition and her big following helped our promotional efforts online. Without her brand in place, we wouldn’t have generated attention pre-, during, and post-Liberty Farm Festival.

Impressive social media engagement from LFF speakers 

It’s very hard to grow social media accounts for an event in a matter of a few weeks, but seeing the engagement we got from speakers proves how valuable having Facebook and Twitter accounts are. It’s easier to grow accounts for more permanent things rather than events–especially for a first-time event. Nevertheless, I saw our accounts get huge engagement on both Facebook and Twitter thanks to our speakers.

Below is a collection of tweets/posts from our featured speakers:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marrying traditional media with new media caught the eye of reporters

Thanks to attention drummed up before our event, the press picked up on our event. Combining traditional media with new media, we were able to see articles published and disseminated across different online platforms channelsespecially on Twitter.

Below is another series of Twitter highlighting press coverage:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, we had countless tweets, Facebook posts, and over 30 mentions in local, state, and national press. Woohoo! Grateful to have participated and played a small but important role in this event. Congratulations to Martha and the rest of our team!

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Need help with media relations? Im available for hire. [Serious inquiries only.]

As always, I recommend you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay in the loop with my musings. Let me know if you found this post to be helpful or not in the comments section below!