Event Promotion

Having attempted to promote the 2022 Advent Craft Fair in the village I have a number of observations.

The biggest conclusion is that there is little point in trying to compete with Facebook. The only way you could possibly do this if your community did not have a Facebook presence. If fact if there is someone in your community that makes a post on Facebook there is no way that you can create a website page that will appear above it in searches.

This is further complicated by the way that Facebook uses Link Shim technology if you post a link to your website. This technology will actually harm your attempts as the Facebook user will be presented with a dialog that warns that your website could be Malicious or Spammy.

When promoting an event and you expect Internet users to find it by making a search all the old posts relating to similar events should be deleted or removed from the search engine index.

Below is an example of a quiz night that has been run for a number of years. The Facebook posts are from previous years and there is no current listing (although I know that it exists but it has yet to be indexed).

Competing with Facebook

In retrospect although I said that there was little point, there are other reasons why Facebook is not a good way of promoting a current event.

Facebook is a chrological forum of posts and unless you delete old events that are similar to a current event these posts will be returned by a search and potentially confuse. To promote a current event you want that event and only that event to be returned by the search. If you have decided not to repeat an event that you held in a previous year you should post to that effect.

When Facebook works against your efforts

When there are a significant number of people in the area you are trying to promote an event that are actively using Facebook to promote the same event you are likely to get nowhere.

When a Facebook user clicks on a link to your efforts they will see a message in an attempt to dissuade the user to click through to your page or website.

Adding a shim

In the Links section of this page there is a "shimmed" link to "The Friends of Belchamp Walter Church" Facebook page.