Twitter is an amazing platform with a worldwide reach and the power to really affect people’s lives. It can also be a really great promotional tool, and event organizers are using it as a way to attract new attendees, connect with sponsors, and improve brand recognition.
In this article, we’ll share some tips on how you can use Twitter to promote your events and increase attendee engagement. But first, let’s take a look at why you should consider using Twitter as part of your event promotion strategy.
Twitter Marketing for Events
Twitter marketing helps you promote your event business by giving you opportunities to generate interest in your events and boost attendee engagement. The social media platform lets you view user’s profiles and timelines and gives you tools like direct messages (DMs) and mentions (@TwitterHandle) to start conversations with attendees and sponsors.
Tweets are public which means that anyone can view your posts – even if they aren’t following you. This helps you get your message across to people who would be interested in upcoming events you’re organizing. Creating a tweet is simple and easy which allows you to get event details out to your followers and to anyone who might have an interest in the type of events you offer.
It’s also a great source of gathering real-time feedback from event attendees, speakers, and sponsors.
Twitter also helps you gauge the ROI of your marketing strategy. You can use Twitter usage stats to track the effectiveness of your marketing content by monitoring Tweet activity. This gives you access to real-time data like impressions, total engagements, likes, and retweets. You can use this information to improve your marketing efforts and increase your event’s visibility.
6 Tips for Boosting Event Awareness Using Twitter
Your social media strategy will be different for each platform you decide to promote your event on. For instance, your Twitter promotions and interactions aren’t going to be the same the ones you do for Pinterest.
Here are some tips to help you execute a winning Twitter marketing strategy:
Tip #1: Create a Single Twitter Page
If you organize the same event say, twice a year, you should keep the same Twitter page instead of creating separate profiles. This helps you increase your event’s brand recognition.
Best practices indicate that you should update your Twitter header and profile image to mirror your upcoming event. For example, if you host one event in the spring and the other in the fall, you could go with a spring/fall theme for your header graphic.
We also recommend that you use a generic page title and URL instead of creating one that’s unique to a specific year. For example, instead of Digital Marketing Summit 2019, you’d want to go with Digital Marketing Summit.
Canva is a graphic design tool that you can use to create high-quality visual content for your Twitter profile. It offers several image editing features and pre-designed templates that you can use to create Twitter posts and headers.
Tip #2: Engage Attendees Before, During and After Your Event
Twitter doesn’t just help you improve in-event engagement, it also allows you to establish a communication channel with your attendees, speakers, and sponsors before and after the event.
Here are some ways you can improve attendee engagement before, during, and after your events:
Before the Event
Twitter can help you gain additional followers, drive event registrations, attract new attendees and offer them sneak peeks into upcoming events. It’s also a great way to offer prospective attendees promo codes and encourage them to register for your event.
Here’s a quick list of tweeting opportunities you can leverage to promote your event:
- Event registration opens.
- Last date for early-bird registration.
- Countdown to the day of your event.
- Reminders of venue and time of the event.
- Mention sponsors and donors: “Shout out to [Sponsor Name] for sponsoring our [Event Name] @[Sponsor Twitter Handle] #[Event Hashtag]”
- Mention speakers: “Thoroughly enjoyed [Speaker Name]’s talk! @ [Speaker’s Twitter Handle] #[Event Hashtag]”
- Mention registrants and people who share your posts.
- Tweets including testimonial quotes about your event speakers. (You can find these on the speaker’s personal website, LinkedIn or Twitter profile).
- Tweet blog posts for your event using direct quotes from interviews or podcasts with the speaker (mention speaker’s name).
During the Event
Twitter can help you gather feedback from attendees that are present in your event venue. Twitter polls and live tweeting, using event-related hashtags, can be used to interact and engage with attendees in real-time. You can also use event hashtags to keep non-attendees informed.
Pro Tip: To find hashtags to use for your event, try doing a google search like this “popular hashtags for craft beers” for example (substitute “craft beers” for a topic relevant to your event type).
After the Event
As a post-event engagement strategy, you can use Twitter to share content, gather feedback from attendees, and gauge attendee satisfaction. By doing so, you’re able to build a feedback loop that gives attendees a platform to reach out to you and share their thoughts.
Tip #3: Use Lists to Connect With Staff, Attendees, and Speakers
While your Twitter timeline shows posts from your followers, a Twitter list enables you to view the tweets from only the accounts that have been added to that list. You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others.
A carefully assembled Twitter list makes it easier for you to find, track, and communicate with the right people. You can assign people or businesses to your list that can help you promote your events.
Here are few ways Twitter lists can be useful to your event marketing strategy:
- Event staff directory. You can find all your team members and add them to a list.
- “Notice me” list. This list will contain the names of people whom you want to have followed you and ultimately work with you. These could be speakers, sponsors, or VIPs.
- List of past attendees (Private list). This is a list of past attendees and customers that you’d like to follow in order to stay up to date with their recent activities and social media posts.
- Competitors list (Private list). Finding the profiles of your competitors and adding them to a list will not only help you monitor their content marketing strategy but also give you useful insights into change in trends and attendee expectations.
- Thought leaders list. This list will include the people in your niche who share great ideas, articles, and opinions on industry news.
FollowerWonk is a Twitter analytics tool that lets you search users based on parameters like location, name, job title, and keywords mentioned in a user’s Twitter bio. This information can be used to support your marketing strategy, attract new event attendees, and get in touch with other influencers in your niche.
Tip #4: Create an Event Hashtag
You can make it easy for event registrants to connect with each other and stay updated about your event by using hashtags such as #MyGreatEvent, for example. It also helps people start conversations and improves customer engagement.
- Choose a hashtag that isn’t already in use by others.
- Go for one that’s short, memorable, and resonates with your event’s brand.
After you’ve chosen your event hashtag, make sure that you display it prominently on all event-related content including tweets, registration page, email newsletters, blog posts, ads, flyers, and brochures. This helps people stay updated with your event’s developments.
Tip #5: Encourage Registrants to Share a Tweet After Ticket Purchases
Once a customer registers for your event, you can get them to share the news with their followers. A great way to do this is by using a lazy tweet – a pre-crafted Twitter post containing a message, the event hashtag, and event mention. This will help you boost your social reach for your event.
Your lazy tweet may look something like this:
“I just registered for the @EventName! #EventHashtag”
Tip #6: Share Content Related to Your Event
While most social sites use algorithms to curate content on your profile page, Twitter’s timeline displays every post from your followers in reverse chronological order. This means there’s a good chance that your followers might not even see your post.
For this reason, you should tweet the same post multiple times. According to a study conducted by Wiselytics which looked at the performance of tweets repetition, on average the second or third tweet performs better than the first one. And in some cases, 5th repetition sometimes performs 2x better than a 1st tweet.
Best practices indicate that you should change the headline and image for your tweet before reposting it. This ensures that your timeline looks more authentic and entertaining. You can also use the Twitter activity feature to track the success of your tweets by looking at impressions, total engagements, likes, and retweets.
Buffer is a social media management tool that can help you schedule and post tweets. It lets you add content to queue, schedule tweets, and automatically publish them according to your posting schedule.
Conclusion
Twitter is one of the best social media platforms for promoting your event and generating attendee engagement before, during, and after the event. In addition to this, it offers neat features like lists that you can use to do a competitor analysis and stay up to date with prospective sponsors and speakers.
What are some of the ways you use social media platforms to promote your event and engage attendees? Let us know by commenting below.
Leave a Reply