But one of the most important things is letting people know about it and making sure they come. One of the many great benefits Twitter offers is that it’s perfect for promoting events and encouraging your exhibitors and attendees to spread the word for you – but how?
Marketing your event using Twitter
If you’re running your own event, there are a few things that you can do to make sure that you receive maximum exposure.
Pre Event Twitter Tips
- For big annual or regular monthly events, you will be best to create a Twitter account just for the event. This way you will be able to build a target audience specifically for the event.
- For one off events for your company – it will be best to run it from your own business Twitter account.
- Create a hashtag – if you have an account with the event name – you won’t need to do this, however, if you’re running a one-off event for your company – like a product launch you need to create a hashtag.
- Why do I need a hashtag? By having a hashtag it's easier to measure the marketing, reach and viral affect that Twitter has had. By encouraging people to use the hashtag it makes it easier for them to enter the conversation about that event, rather than it going on in separate conversations.
- What makes a great hashtag? It must be unique, short, memorable and descriptive. For example if I was creating a hashtag for the Chamber’s Worcestershire Business Expo it could be #WorcesterExpo #WorcBiz2012 or for a product launch make sure you include the name of the product and the version #GoldMine23 or #drawscribe2012.
- Publicise the hashtag and explain to your exhibitors how to use it. When people sign up make sure they include the hashtag in all tweets, you could even award a prize for the exhibitors who uses it most successfully (most click through to sign up).
- Follow all your exhibitors and help to promote their business and stand by retweeting them.
- Following attendees - If it will benefit them and give them exposure, thank new businesses who subscribe to attend. However, if this means they’ll just get bombarded by exhibitors perhaps ask them first. For example, if a large company sent someone to attend you can tweet them a thank you using their corporate account. This will show you care that they’re coming but also demonstrate what a high profile event you’re running.
- Promote the hashtag to attendees when they sign up – automatic tweet using the hashtag.
- Run a Twitter competition with prize winners announced at the event.
- Engage – don’t forget to search for your event, use broad search terms and make sure you thank, retweet and mention anyone who’s actively tweeting about you.
- Set up alerts, you can set up alerts using applications like http://www.socialoomph.com this will allow you to receive notifications direct to your inbox about who’s talking about your event. Not everyone will know about your hashtags or how to use them so make sure you set up alerts that are broad enough but not too broad otherwise you’ll be inundated with irrelevant tweets.
- Timing - Remember promoting the event and making sure lots of people attend is paramount, you need to promoting events at least 6 weeks in advance. Make sure you include links to your website, make sure the date is cemented into people’s minds.
- Measurement. If you’ve got someone spending an hour a day, tweeting, monitoring and responding you need to make sure that their time is making a difference. What is your goal, if it’s getting people to sign up you want number of click through’s to that web page and number of people who fill in the form.
How to use Twitter during your event
Although you’ll probably have a million other things to think about on the day, remember to make the most of the big event itself.
- One way to do this is to offer a prize for the best photo from the event that’s tweeted – again make sure it contains the relevant hashtag, like #WorcExpoPhoto or #WexpoPhoto
- Again, make sure that someone is given the job of monitoring Twitter on the day. If there was a problem with the weather, traffic or parking. What better way to keep your audience informed than via Twitter.
- Take control – what you want to do is make sure you’re the authority and lead the conversation with Tweets, don’t allow your event to get high-jacked by a particularly large exhibitor or controlled by the local press, journalists or PR agencies.
Post Event Twitter Tips
- Remember to thank everyone for making it such a great success.
- Follow up. Make sure you take photo’s of all of your exhibitors, you can @mention them and make a quirky comment on what happened on the day.
- Engage, ask people how they think it went.
- Monitor. Continue to search for people talking about the event. If there were any complaints, you should be the first to know and the first to respond – this way you could turn a negative into a positive very quickly.
Twitter & your marketing campaign
The other thing to remember is that Twitter shouldn't be used in isolation, it is an integral part to your marketing campaign, so make sure all web updates, blogs, PR, sign up pages etc are all well sign posted. twitter is the perfect tool for maximising all of your current, traditional marketing techniques.
These are the main considerations when using Twitter to promote your events, if you need any professional advice around promoting your particular event, Coldicott Freelance Training offer help with marketing campaigns and regular monthly social media management sessions, please give us a call 01905 23902 or 0770 410 5954.
