Leverage major events and hot topics to your advantage on social media.
By Kristin Pitzer
On August 17, 2019, fans crowded into the South Point Arena and watched, along with a broad online audience, as Cade McCutcheon and Craig Schmersal slid to a tie for the first-ever Run for a Million championship under the bright Las Vegas lights. It was the culmination of a season’s worth of buildup for followers of The Last Cowboy, a reality show that showcased reining at the top level.These entities—the TV show and the Million Dollar Invitational, with their huge global presence—brought reining to more non-equestrians and non-reiners than any event before them. The resulting social media buzz from both the TV show and the event sparked an unprecedented wave of interest in the sport—a wave that professionals, even those who weren’t involved with either event, could—and should—take advantage of. From the Run for a Million and beyond, major horse events that have everyone talking are great ways for you to boost your own training businesses through social media and digital presence.
In this series of posts, we’ll discuss how to leverage these types of events, even if you’re not in the main spotlight. Topics include:
Part 2: Bettering Your Content
Becoming Insta-Famous
The Run for a Million and The Last Cowboy had a huge presence on Facebook, but there are many other social media platforms that allow users to interact in different ways.
Much like Facebook, Instagram users can tag other Instagram accounts and engage clients through stories, but the biggest boon is being able to link posts to popular topics through the use of hashtags. Create posts and tag event pages or hashtag keywords related to those events to draw those audiences to your own page.
“Hashtags are very important on Instagram, and it’s a great way for smaller entities like trainers to gain a following, even if Instagram is thin in some ways because it is not good at generating website traffic,” Gauger said. “A hashtag like ‘#horses’ is much less valuable than a very specific hashtag that people are actually looking through. A specific place, a specific trail, a specific type of horse, and a specific horse event [are certain types of hashtags people actually use].”
Hashtags work a little differently on Facebook and can usually be left out, unless they add something to the post. For Instagram, Gauger recommended using no more than 20 hashtags and placing them in a comment instead of in the post.
“Successful Instagrammers often know the two to three hashtags needed to help the post,” Gauger said.
Read the rest of this article at the links above.
