If you’ve been on social media, watched anything on Netflix or saw the Brit Awards you may have heard of the Fyre Festival. This hotly anticipated music festival promised celebrities, personal chefs and amazing accommodation all on an idyllic island in the Bahamas. While the tickets cost up to an eye watering £75,000 the event completely sold out, all thanks to the power of social media, some clever marketing skills and of course influencers.

The festival was targeted at millennials looking to escape their everyday life. These days social media has allowed individuals to share experiences and thoughts with the rest of the world, while it has left others chasing a version of reality that isn’t necessarily achievable. Those behind the festival used this and created the perfect social media campaign.

Fyre Festival drafted in the help of super models Bella Hadid who has 22.9 million followers, Hailey Baldwin with 17.9 million followers and Kendal Jenner who has a staggering 104 million followers on Instagram. Simultaneously celebs from around the world posted an image of an orange title promoting the festival, along with video content that showed a music festival paradise. However, as attendees arrived, they soon realised everything wasn’t what it seemed. With many unhappy customers, staff and musicians the owner of Fyre, Billy McFarland, soon found himself facing law suits as well as a prison sentence.

Now we’re not staying you should buy an island, host a questionable music festival and hire a model or two in order to create some cracking marketing content, but the festival really shows the power of social media and how it can provide the perfect publicity for your business. It has also shows that it’s important to not to believe everything you see and why it’s vital to be honest with your target audience.

Engaging with influencers can be a great way of raising your businesses profile. But influencers don’t necessarily need to come equipped with millions of followers to have an impact, simply being able to provide comment on a trending topic can help increase engagement over social media. Interestingly, of all the social media posts created to promote the festival it was in fact an image of the disappointing food from a Twitter user with less than a thousand followers that became the most famous post of the event.

Creating visually appealing content can work wonders for your business over social media whether it be capturing your employees hard at work, products being assembled or footage from an event. Remember to keep it short, simple and interesting. Give it a go!