How to use Twitter During an Event to Drive Attendee Engagement

Front end event marketing should be an integrated marketing process. Meaning, you should use Paid Promotional Services, PR and of course all social media accounts, with emphasis on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And, make sure you leverage the accounts of your presenters as well – ask them to promote your event and select a hashtag that is event specific.

During the Event whether its’ an online event, tradeshow or a standard event, a strong Twitter presence will help you to engage your attendees – make sure you have a dedicated individual who is monitoring comments (Tweets) about your Event. Though your event planning app gives you great access to socialising your event.

And, make sure you publicize a HashTag that is identified solely with your Event. This will enable you to monitor what is being said about your event in real time and you can also respond back to and/or ReTweet the Tweets to drive more engagement.

How to Leverage Twitter during the Event

  1. You will need to use some kind of social media platform to monitor what is being said and respond to these Tweets during the Event. HootSuite can be a great tool for monitoring the “conversation” during an event. It’s a low cost high value platform to utilize for all of your outbound social media marketing and/or content sharing.
  2. Make sure you respond back to questions and comments about your event. If something is interesting you should ReTweet it out immediately and may want to do this more than once during the event for emphasis. Your event app can be one point where you can ask people to share there tweets and analyse the tweets and shares ou had,
  3. Require and/or ask your staff who is attending the event to engage with your attendees by posting and sharing images of attendees before and after the event and ReTweeting their Tweets as well. This drives engagement with attendees during an event.
  4. Think about using a service like Visible Events during your Event – this provides real time tracking of your events for your attendees and can really drive engagement by motivating your attendees to jump into the virtual conversation during the event.
  5. Share the speaker’s presentation at the beginning of their session using your conference app – enabling attendees to follow the presentation and not have to worry about taking notes during the session. Make sure you have the presenter’s permission to do this prior to the event and upload their presentation before the event to Slideshare – this will also drive engagement with the speaker’s presentation after the event.
  6. Think about running Promoted Tweets during your event (there is an associated advertising costs of course). These can be a great way to expand the visibility of your event – make sure you use the event specific hashtag you have selected previously. And, make sure you have keywords integrated with the Tweets you are sending out.
  7. Recruit your vendors and attendees as part of your overall twitter marketing activities and ask them to mention our account and event specific hashtag. Ensure that you can add your vendors using the best event app features and alligned with your social media feed.

Think of Twitter as a broadcast channel held in the hands of many of your attendees. This is not an exaggeration, as 30% of status updates for Twitter are now done via smartphones. And, it’s critical to make sure you utilized a hashtag to identify your event and then use this for all Tweets about your event – ensuring attendees can follow the “virtual conversation.” The event app cost is best justified if you are able to utilise its full potential with sharing and analytics.