S.C. State Fair Live Social Media

12 Days of rides, AG + Fun featured on Instagram | 2023

Social strategy + live social media implementation

Since 2019, Flock and Rally has served as the communications, marketing and advertising agency for S.C.’s largest multi-day event. In 2023, the scope was increased to create a social media playbook and implement a live social media plan for the event. The purpose of this live social media campaign was to showcase the 12 days of exhibits, competitions, food, rides, entertainment and people of the S.C. State Fair.

The campaign earned multiple awards, including a 2024 “Best in Show” Silver Wing Award from the S.C. Public Relations Society of America.

The goals of this project were to continue using the established voice and identity that the S.C. State Fair employs across multiple social channels; create an easy-to-follow guidebook to effectively plan and implement content that engages with the community; increase overall awareness and engagement through smart, compelling content that resonates with each identified target audience. The objectives were to plan and implement a consistent posting cadence covering all content threads with the goal of increasing total posts by 25% over the previous year; invite users to share experiences through the strategic use of hashtags and photo tagging with the goal of 60 pieces of user-generated content (UGC) inconsistent ways throughout the S.C. State Fair; boost and target content to the identified audiences, ensuring each post reaches its intended audience with a CTA and incites excitement through engaging imagery and language with a goal of a 10% increase in link clicks over the previous year. The strategies used during the S.C. State Fair were dedicating each day of the fair to one of our predetermined content threads; actively sharing campaign hashtags to encourage UGC from target audiences.

We created Instagram-specific tactics before and during the event: curated feed posts dedicated to the offerings and audiences of the S.C. State Fair; in-the-moment Instagram story posts regarding daily schedules, weather forecasts, series of featured content about new food items, rides, roving acts, games, performances and exhibits; UGC feed posts; and Instagram Reels. The attention to detail and technical quality were evident in the social media content posted during the S.C. State Fair and the nod to event-based social media trends. While onsite, we implemented in-the-moment content that matched our pre-planned content, creating a robust campaign. Instead of just capturing content of the rides and attractions, we captured photos and videos of the S.C. State Fair experience through the perspective of the fairgoer.

We met and exceeded our live social media campaign objectives. The measurement methods used included: total Instagram stories posted, total instagram posts, total impressions, profile views, total engagement, total posts, website clicks and total mentions. Results included: 452 Instagram stories and 33 Instagram posts, which is a 1,055% increase from the previous year; 719k impressions, which is a 28% increase from the previous year; 19.2k profile views, which is a 38% increase from the previous year; 12.9k engagement, which is a 32% increase from the previous year; 1.86k website clicks, which is a 34% increase from the previous year.