In our last post, we talked about getting ready to promote your event on social media. Now let’s get into the specific social channels at your disposal.

Of all the social media channels, Twitter is one of the most misunderstood. But once you get your head around the format, you’ll see that it’s a great way to engage with others, share content, access valuable resources and connect with other users that are either in your target market or work in your industry. And for many people, it’s precisely the brevity and simplicity of Twitter that they like the most.

Twitter is about sending, or tweeting, messages of a maximum of 140 characters that can include links. Interaction on Twitter involves following other users and mentioning them in some way, such as sharing (known as retweeting) their content or sending a personal message or response to them. A mention on Twitter involves using @ + the Twitter handle of a user. So for example, if you wanted to mention us you would use @eply

Twitter is a great tool for spreading awareness and educating people about your event. It can also help you network and build relationships with your attendees and sponsors or connect with Twitter users that you’d like to see become involved with your event in some way.

There are 500 million active users on Twitter and their user base continues to grow. In general they tend to be younger, in the 18 – 29 age range (this age bracket makes up 30% of all users) and are usually urban dwellers. They also tend to be well educated (with at least some college) and have pretty lucrative jobs. (We got these stats from buffer and media bistro).

So now that you know a little more about the Twitterverse, let’s get into how you can use it to promote your next event.

Use Twitter to help you connect with and build relationships with all the individuals and businesses that are playing a role in your event or potentially could be, like your speakers, sponsors, participants from previous events, members, customers etc. The first step is finding them on Twitter (either via a link from their website or using the search bar in Twitter which you can see in the top right hand corner when logged into your account – see image below) and then following them.

Once you have followed someone on Twitter, you will have their tweets show up in your “Tweets” stream. It’s now time to get interacting with them. Perhaps you can retweet one of their tweets. Respond to a question they ask. Make a comment on a tweet they have sent.

You can also take the initiative and mention them directly. If it’s a speaker for example, you can mention them and the nature of their participation in your event. If it’s a sponsor, you can thank them for their support. You don’t want to be too salesy, or pushy in your tweets. Of course, your ulterior motive is shining the spotlight on your event, but all your activity should not revolve around that or be too aggressive in promotion. Imagine that the person is right in front of you – how would you talk to them? Be friendly and conversational.

You can do the same with the individuals and businesses that will actually be attending your event. As registrations come through, look for them on Twitter. Or even better, ask attendees on your registration form to enter their Twitter handle. Depending on the size of your event and how feasible this is logistically, you could even send out a welcome tweet telling the attendee that you look forward to seeing them and that you’re glad to have them on board. As appropriate, you can also interact with them as we suggested above.

You might be thinking to yourself, how can I keep track of all the attendees and participants? This sounds like an awfully large amount of work. This is one area where Twitter really shines – the ability to organize the tweeps (aka Twitter users) you follow into lists.

You can keep the list public, so that others can see it and see who you’ve added to it- tweeps love being added to lists as it helps them get some more exposure. Or keep the list private for your own personal view only if you’re monitoring Twitter users in such a way that you’d like to keep to yourself, such as a list with competitors, or a list with your event attendees if you don’t want this to be public knowledge.

By organizing your attendees, your speakers, your sponsors and other important groups or individuals to your event into lists, you can much more easily manage your networking and interaction. When you login to your account, it’s simply a matter of going to your list stream and looking for opportunities to participate. And you’ll know exactly who you are interacting with and why they are relevant to you.

Create a hashtag for your event. So for example, we were recently at the incentiveworks event in Toronto and the hashtag for that event was #iwshow.

Use this hashtag in all your event-centered tweets. Other Twitter users can use this hashtag too when they are tweeting about your event. When someone clicks on a hashtag, they can see all the Twitter activity around it. Go ahead and click on the hashtag above to see what we’re talking about.

Use general hashtags too to draw interest to the topic of your event – this could help to attract Twitter users that are interested in the particular theme. You can also use location based hashtags, such as city name, to attract a local audience.

The general rule of thumb is one or two hashtags per tweet. Everything in moderation, as they say.

Obviously you will be tweeting about the event itself and sharing the details. However, only filling your Twitter feed with promotional “register now for my event” isn’t the best way to go. You don’t want people to stop following you because all you do is promote. You should mix things up and find other messaging to keep your feed interesting and varied.

For example you could tweet…

You can also theme your tweets with educational and interesting resources around the topic of your event. Think about anything that an attendee or your target market would find interesting and relevant and tweet about that.

In the next post in our series on social media and event promotion, we will dig a little deeper into successful Twitter use, covering some best practices for making the most of your Twitter activity. In the meantime, since we’re on the subject, why not connect with us on Twitter? Say hi or let us know how we can help – we’d love to hear from you!

Promote Your Event With Twitter

Promote Your Event With Twitter

Twitter in a nutshell

Who’s on Twitter?

Get connecting

Engage with your attendees

Use lists

Hashtags

What to tweet

Reply

Search

Categories

Recent Posts