Leveraging the social media following of key event sponsor Baralaba Hotel, I set about reaching Baralaba Hotel Facebook followers to reach our desired audience quickly by ensuring facebook posts were shared by Baralaba Hotel. In addition to this I developed a strategy to use the Baralaba Bash Facebook and newly launched Instagram accounts to quickly buid a native following there.

The strategy involved following key sponsors and artists, around the country and the world, who in-kind followed us back but provided us access to their followings by sharing our content form time to time.

This was augmented by influencer collabs with attending artists, to engage parasocial connections for followers. In addition I planned and included content relating to food ventors and entertainment available at the event as well as content dedicated to intrastate and interstate visitors to show them what was available to do before or after the Bash given there was a large contingent of longer stay visitors this included sharing content by Tourism and events queensland and local tourism organisations. This was delivered through planned and timed release of posts.

As this was the first year we were running an instagram account I also embedded the instagram feed to draw attention to it on the webstie and through planned posts on facebook to inform users.

Finally the event campaign was to have a dance competition to build the following on Instagram. The competition involved users sending in videos of themselves doing a dance to a song of their choice with the video with the most likes winning a family pass and VIP accommodation for the event.

Results:
Results were that we saw a 280% increase in followers, record crowds in attendance from across Queensland, NSW and Victoria. With the website recording an event record 2,500% increase in sales year on year.