Your guide to event tweeting

Live tweeting at conferences, trade shows, grand openings and other events is becoming more popular and it is a great way to increase awareness and maximize exposure for your event – before, during and after.

Before the Event
Before you start planning your strategy, you must figure out the purpose for the event tweeting. Is it operational or do you plan to use it to maximize exposure? Do you want to relay a message or is this a way for people attending a conference to connect? Once you have established your goals, then you can start planning.

The first thing you want to do is create a specific hashtag for the event. If it is an annual event, you may want to avoid using dates so the hashtag can be used again next year. For example, Tourism Vancouver Island uses #TVIAGM for their annual tourism conference and all tweets from the past conferences come up in one stream. The hashtag should be short and easy to remember. Search the hashtag to ensure it is not being used by another organization. Use the hashtag in all your tweets related to your event at the end of your tweets so they appear in the stream when you search that hashtag. Using a hashtag allows you to see all of the tweets related to the event, and connect with other people that are at the same event.

Let attendees know that you will be live tweeting and share the hashtag in emails, on social channels, invites, signage and on your website. If people are registering for your event, leave a field for them to fill out their Twitter handle.

Have a designated person to manage the Twitter account and live tweeting. You will be busy chatting to people and ensuring the event goes smoothly – you won’t have time to be on your phone tweeting and if you are, it may look unprofessional. Your attention should be on your guests and the event.

During the Event
During the event, tweet out photos of attendees, speakers and other key profiles. Quote useful information or an interesting fact a speaker said. Your tweets should revolve around the audience you are trying to reach. Tag people that are in the photos (ask for their permission first) or ask people to tag themselves on the Facebook album. Create a live feed for the hashtag and have it visible to people on your website or a projector by the stage. This will encourage people to use the hashtag so they can see themselves on the live feed, which is more exposure for them.

Twitter is also a great opportunity from an operational stand point. You can answer questions people may have during the event or announce what’s happening throughout the day. When I attended Social Media Camp, a three day conference with approximately 500 people, this proved to be an effective way to let people know where the mobile re-charge stations were, or when/where a workshop was about to begin.

Live tweeting and posting attracts attention to your direct audience as well as people that aren’t at your event. It may attract more people to stop by or sign up the following year. It can also create a lot of excitement and discussion around the event. For example, the 2014 Oscars resulted in 19.1 million tweets from 5pm to am the day after they aired, which is probably one of the largest live tweeting events from people all over the world watching it at home.

After the Event
Acknowledge and thank people that participated in the conversation using the hashtag. One benefit of event tweeting is after the event, you can measure the level of engagement. Social media management tools such as Hootsuite or SproutSocial can help you with the reporting and find out information such as:

How many new followers resulted from this event?
How many tweets resulted from this event hashtag?
What was the reach of your tweets?
How much traffic did it drive to your website?

Social Sticks now offers event tweeting as a service. It is a low cost way to maximize the exposure of your event and keep the conversation going online with people, whether they are at your event or not. Your attention should be on your event and your guests. For more information about event tweeting, email socialsticks@gmail.com.

3 reasons to increase your Twitter followers

The ability to follow more people
Have you ever tried to follow someone but Twitter wouldn’t allow it? Twitter has limited the amount of people you can follow to prevent spammers from following every single account. Each account can follow up to 2,000 people, however, once you are following 2,000 people, the number of additional followers will depend on how many people are following you. There is no limit on how many people that can follow you, but you do need to continue to grow your follower base so you can follow new people without any limitations. There is no public formula on the amount of followers vs. people you follow, and every account will vary. This is a good time to do some house cleaning on your Twitter account and stop following inactive accounts. You can follow up to 1,000 new followers per day (that is a lot of time spent on Twitter for one day). I have been on Twitter for over three years and I am still not following 1,000 people!

The ability to increase awareness and grow your audience
If you are on Twitter to promote yourself or your business, then you will want to follow people that fall into your target audience. To increase awareness, follow people and start conversations with them to catch their attention. Tweeting useful information, news and tips in your industry will give people a reason to follow you. You can expand your reach by using #hashtags or if other people retweet one of your tweets – which is likely to happen if you are tweeting out helpful content! Growing your audience on Twitter and tweeting on a regular basis will increase awareness for your business and also direct traffic to your website if you include links to your website.

Making new connects on Twitter
Twitter is a great place to make new connections, especially with others in your industry. A number of times I have met people at business events and they have recognized me from Twitter that lead to great business relationships and friendships. I follow people that have the same interests as me, people that I am interested in and people I can learn from. Follow people you want to meet (please don’t follow Justin Bieber in hopes that you will meet him), but if there is a company that you would like to work with, start by following them on Twitter and striking up a conversation. You never know what it could lead to.

There are a lot of reasons to increase your followers, but quality precedes quantity. You want followers who are interested in what you have to say, and if your tweets are interesting and relevant then your followers should start to go. Good luck!