It is widely known that social media is an excellent platform for marketing activities, providing great opportunities to inform about the event and encourage participation in it. However, while a platform such as Facebook allows you to place wider information, you may wonder how you can use Twitter (and its character limit) for the promotion of your event. In today’s post, we will tell you how to encourage potential participants to take part in your event, by using a maximum of 280 characters.
Potential of microblogging
People love to tweet. About everything. About matters of great global significance – see President Trump Twitter (@POTUS) with over 45 million followers; about the matters concerning show business and celebrities – see Rihanna (@rihanna) with almost 85 million observers; about matters concerning faith or philosophy in general – see Twitter profiles of personalities such as the Pope or the Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama).
But we also love to tweet sharing the ideas, opinions, best practices concerning our everyday living. We tweet to exchange our opinions on topics of interest to us. So why don’t you use this particular social media to promote your event (conference, workshop, training course, etc.)?
So the question is how to make an event appear in the world of Tweeter?
How to tweet before the event
Before you start posting on Tweeter, you have to create a hashtag appropriate for your event. What is a hashtag? Itis an expression or a single word with the # symbol that will draw attention and promote your event
Your hashtag should meet the following criteria:
- let it be easy to remember, so don’t create it too complex
- it must refer to your event
- make it unique.
It is worth creating a hashtag early enough so that it has time to target your audience and become a tool for promoting your event.
After you prepare your perfect hashtag, you can start marketing activities. Inform about preparations for the event, present the speakers (also, encourage them to use your hashtag on their profile), announce the topics of the sessions, inform about the venue of your event and other interesting facts related to the event. Remember that whenever you present any promotional content in any other marketing channel/social media you can “compress” them and present on Tweeter (don’t forget to add your hashtag). And most importantly – don’t forget to present on your Twitter early birds event landing page and event registration links!
Tweeting during an event
Tweeter can be an excellent communication channel with event participants. You can use it as an early notification system that allows you to quickly respond to potential and real problems. Remember to present your event hashtag in a visible place: on conference materials, banners, IDs for participants, etc. It will make easier for people to find, follow, and contribute to a conversation.
During the event “live tweeting” is very important: you can post current information, photos from interesting moments, announcements of upcoming lectures or breaks.
Tweet after the event
The event doesn’t end with the last participant leaving the conference room. It keeps continuing: in the opinions of people present on it, in your’s team assessments after the event, in summary posts that you will put on social media to keep the participants still engaged (and build relationships with them). Tweeter also can be helpful in those matters.
Choose interesting photos from the most attractive moments of the event and publish them with a short description. You can boast of what has been successful. However, remember that this is also the moment when negative comments about the event may appear:try to answer every such tweet and propose a solution.
After the event, you can also use Tweeter to collect feedback on further expectations or proposals for changes or improvements.
***
Social media play a huge role in event marketing, they can also be a valuable source of knowledge about the expectations of participants. Tweeter with its short form of communication is as effective as other platforms, so #justdoit and tweet.