Advertising for your online career fair may seem daunting, but it’s almost identical to normal event advertising. You will make fliers, send emails, and create social media posts like you did in the past; but this time you will need to get people to pre-register for the event which is the key difference
To get people to register for an event first, get organised! Define whom you wish to attend your event. Maybe anyone can attend but you’d like mostly students from a certain program at your school to attend. You need to them figure out things that would matter to this group. Does this group tend to be the group that has the slowest rate of finding a job in their field?
Are one of the companies that are coming looking for students that did your program especially? Tell them that. Show them how they are helping you. Tell them the benefits of attending this virtual career fair and leverage the fact they can do it from anywhere, any device, with a minimum of 3G cellular service or WiFi!
Now that you know the purpose of your event, we need to create content. I mean all forms of content. We now live in a digital age and simply making a flyer to post on campus is not going to cut it anymore. What about all of your online students? Your students on leave or that are studying abroad this semester? The students that live far away or in another state? They can attend this online event! Flyers in school and utilizing school publications like the newspaper, blog, and their social media accounts will be an obvious. But, did you know your school may have influencers? This could be captains and presidents of a sport team, student groups, and student politics. They could also be professors or people on the administration teams! Reach out to them. Make easy to post images for their social media accounts. There are lots of free applications and services online to do this. Here is a link to some of the applications that are free:
This is also a great way to make sure all the content you create for this event has continuity, and maybe now all future content for your university or business can be made here too. I personally like Canva, it is easy to use and stores your work as you go. You can even choose your colors and upload your logos for use and easy placement.
EASY VIRTUAL FAIR
Now that you know whom you want to come and you have your content, you need to get it out there! The obvious spots are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Is there a blog you can post to? Is there a school newspaper? Is there a student lounge or cafeteria with a bulletin board? Does each individual school have an area with a bulletin board? Can you send an email blast to the entire student body? Is there an alumni page you can post to?
Try and get attention any way you can think with online and physical posts. And don’t forget about those influencers I talked about earlier. Maybe you can incentivize them to post or maybe they will just post for you. Use them! The key here is to continually post and be consistent leading up to the event. Also remember to utilize the school’s main social media pages, I cannot stress this enough. Pre-registration, again, is key. Maybe it would be wise to consider in this stage the possibility of paid ads on social media to make sure your targets somehow see this information.
Once you get people to the pre-registration screen, this is the moment to get the most information out of them. Get creative! Offer incentives to sign up early! Let them know if they complete their profile now, when they may possibly enter the fair they can navigate and apply to jobs with ease. Also let them know they can’t apply to jobs without a complete profile. This is now where you have email capture as well and can send them reminders (you can also create email banners and other email content on the suggested site above, Canva.)
Now send reminders and get them excited for the event. Tell them who will be there and if you are doing prizes or an electronic SWAG bag with discount codes or something like that! Make your event fun and remember incentives help get more people in! Show them the webinars, topics, anything really that will be at the event! Also, get them to upload their CV so they can apply to jobs seamlessly.
Finally, present the call to action. Get them to pre-register and ultimately come to the event. Get their friends to come! Offer extra entries in your raffle or bonus discount codes. Leverage your network and your network’s network. You need to give them the catalyst for actually doing this. Remember, incentives (especially for students) work. The incentives do not need to be the things I mentioned, you can get creative here as well. Remember this is an online event and if you do raffels you will need address in email capture and you might have to limit it to addresses in your country or remember the electronic discount codes you send may only work in a certain region as well.
Don’t worry if you think this will discourage people from coming to your event, this will help get the right people to come to your event.