Social Media
6 Rules for Successful Event Promotion on Twitter

6 Rules for Successful Event Promotion on Twitter

April 25, 2017
5 min read

Successful event promoting isn’t just about informing – it’s about engaging. Get people excited, curious, and feeling like they can’t miss out on your event. Or, they’ll definitely be out of the industry loop.

Then, the real gold at the end of the rainbow. Keep the buzz going afterwards as attendees discuss what they learned on social media, share photos, craft their own blog posts and essentially help you promote your next big one.

Some say Twitter is beginning to fade in its ability to deliver as a brand marketing platform, especially as this true blue social media network has to compete with its more visually appealing millennial magnets like Instagram and Snapchat. Instagram moved ahead of Twitter long ago in terms of active monthly users and has remained in the lead, second only to Facebook when it comes to clout. For event promotion, however, Twitter is still a must-use engagement launchpad.

Why Twitter?

Marketing ROI Formula Download Twitter is the optimal social media marketing tool for events because it’s where people turn to for news announcements, updates, and to find out what’s happening. As CEO Jack Dorsey touts, Twitter is the easiest way to see what’s going on in the world in real time.

And guess what? Your event is news. It’s what is going on, ideally the most worthwhile place to be for those within your industry! As your event date nears, it’s where your attendees can easily find out key information and check out any last minute updates. Twitter is also popular with college-educated, tech-savvy millennials. You’ll likely want a few dozen (or hundred) from this demographic to attend.

Of course, use Facebook because it’s Facebook, LinkedIn to give your event the professional appeal it deserves if you are promoting a B2B event, and Instagram to add depth and visual interest to your promotional campaign. But, make Twitter your foundation for drumming up support and getting people to your event.

How to Use Twitter for Your Event Like a Pro

Well this is great, using Twitter is going to help you create more interest and get what every event promoter wants – a sold-out event, attendees packed like sardines in a tin.

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Just tweeting event news however, isn’t going to make this happen. As with any form of marketing, you need to do it strategically – and very creatively. After all, there are about 350,000 tweets sent every minute. You’ve got to make yours stand out early on so they can gain the snowball effect that you are looking for.

Follow these tips, techniques, and best practices, and you can make the most out of your Twitter promotion.

Dedicated Event Account

Should you create a unique account for your event? Yes – and do it early on. You can promote your event through your brand’s Twitter account as well, but as long as your event is expected to draw a sizable crowd or if it is a recurring event, then a dedicated account is a smart move.

This is because other brand tweets will drown out news about your event if you don’t keep them separate. Also, too many tweets are more likely to get ignored and may even lead to an unfollow. In fact, many users may prefer to follow your event’s Twitter account so they can stay on top of relevant news but have little interest in following your brand or business. Give followers the freedom to just get the information they want with a dedicated account for your conference or other type of event.

The Perfect Event Hashtag

You need to craft a powerful event hashtag. Your #event will be the beacon that people will use across the social media universe to find information about your event. While Twitter users created the fine art of hashtagging, hashtags are supported on all major social platforms from Tumblr to Google+.

How to create a great one? Make it stand out, short and sweet, and definitely include the name of your event within the characters. You want someone to look at your hashtag and quickly identify what it signifies.

You also want to make it easy to remember. For those who don’t actually follow your event’s Twitter account, as long as they know what the hashtag is, they can use it to find out any relevant info.

Here’s an excellent example.

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#dfspowerwomen is the hashtag for the international non-profit, Dress for Success, which is used to promote their events. The organization works towards empowering women to achieve economic independence. The hashtag aligns seamlessly with the brand, is memorable, and even specifically draws the attention of those who would be interested in attending or supporting their cause of empowering women.

Don’t forget to register your event hashtag so you can collect all those amazing photos, tweets, posts and videos that are related to your event. You’ll also be able to see the most active and the most popular social media contributors to your event.

Plan Your Strategy Out

It’s helpful to be consistent, to post during Twitter prime time (noon to 1pm each day), and to vary your tweets. In order to do this and not spend time every day on social media, you’ll want to plan out your tweets. How many will you post each day? How will you space and vary them?

Once you figure out your plan, use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule your tweets.

Make Your Pre-Event Engagement Compelling

As you tweet about your event, there are a few tricks you can use to help create build-up and make your event more interesting.

  • Use images and video to drive interest and make it personable. Images of the actual people who are a part of the event team will help to attract interest. Lindsey Schnabel from Groove also points out that your visuals will help you express your messaging within Twitter’s 140 character limit.
  • Include branded event artwork.
  • Use a countdown when you are less than two weeks away.
  • Tools like Storify can help you to make your tweets more engaging with a storytelling social posting approach.
  • Incentivize with a Twitter-only contest.
  • Make it a conversation by responding to comments and questions and retweeting related tweets, such as those posted by speakers or organizers on their personal accounts.

Tweet the Day Of

It’s 2017, which means everyone attending your conference and pretty much the rest of the world has a smartphone either glued to the palm of their hand or within a two foot radius of their person. Keep the engagement going during the event to encourage social sharing by attendees and to maintain a strong presence for your event online for those who aren’t attending.

Here’s an example of great day-of engagement for Pharma Forum:

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If you have the budget, you can include a social media wall from a provider like TweetBeam or TweetWall at your event. This is a powerful tactic for encouraging attendee tweets and promoting the use of your hashtag. It also makes the whole event more engaging as it allows everyone there to, at a glance, see what’s going on, what’s being said, and what they might be missing if they don’t head over to booth C in five minutes!

Post-Event Tweets

After your event has passed, it’s a good idea to tweet about the event, posting photos, video, and noteworthy happenings. The idea is to share the success of your event with those who went but more importantly, for those who didn’t attend. You can also use your post-event tweets to share recordings of presentations, speakers, or anything else of importance, providing value for potential future attendees. This acts to build the reputation of your event for the next date.

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This is a great example from BlockChain Week, a major conference on tech innovations in the financial industry. With pictures of the events and a link to presentation recordings, this post will work wonders for maintaining the after event echo effect that you want to encourage quality interest for as long as possible.

Which, of course will help to promote your next big event. The longer you can keep the conversation going, the better. It will only make your next Twitter event campaign that much more enticing to your followers. #nextoneDontMissIt

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

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