Event Planning: 5 Tips on How to Get the Most out of Twitter

If you’re in charge of an event, whether it’s a presentation, seminar, webinar, virtual meeting, trade show or sales meeting, if you want to shake it up a little, try using Twitter as an interactive part of the program.

What a great way to engage people, see what people are thinking and you can even field questions. Here are some tips on how to use Twitter successfully for events:

  1. Create a hashtag – These will identify your specific activity. That way anyone posting or following the hashtag will see what everyone else is commenting.
  2. Promote the hashtag – Depending on how large the event is, there are various ways to let people know how to follow the event. If you’re putting on an association meeting or a global conference, you may be able to get someone to sponsor the promotions and signage.
  3. Inform the presenters that live tweeting will be going on. Most folks that do this have a screen on stage so the audience can participate.
  4. If there are multiple presenters, make sure that the audience knows their Twitter handles.
  5. Make sure wifi is available – you can’t tweet if you can’t get on the net. I know I’ve been in ballrooms listening to speakers where there is no access. This is not good.

Those are some of my suggestions. Care to share yours?

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5 Ways to Improve Your Trade Show’s ROI

Most of you attend trade shows, and if you’re on the manufacturing end of things, you have booths. Trade shows are not an inexpensive proposition and you really want to get the most out of them. To that end, I’ve asked a friend of mine, Vince Tricomi from PFI Displays, to give us some hints on how to improve your ROI without spending any money.

Here are the suggestions:

With the start of trade show season, many companies find themselves examining how they can  revitalize their trade show exhibit ROI without depleting their marketing budget.

1.  Do Your Pre-Show Homework:
▪ Analyze last year’s “A-Level” leads, and get a list of this year’s attendees.
▪ Have your sales team start calling weeks before the show to schedule in-booth appointments.
▪ Consider other types of outreach, from social media to direct mail.

2.  Strut Your Stuff:
▪ Volunteer as an expert for the educational seminars at your trade show. You won’t be “selling” your company, but you will be building your credibility with the audience.

3.  Improve Your “Boothmanship:”
▪ Consider the body language of you and your staff.
▪ Avoid matching outfits that make attendees feel like they’re walking into a used car lot.
▪ Ban the use of cell phones in your booth space (that’s right, BAN them!)
▪ Practice an “elevator pitch” and make sure everyone working the trade show knows, understands and can communicate your company’s USP.

4.  Social Media is Your Friend:
▪ Use it to extend the show by building interest before, during and after.
▪ Special promotions during the show are a great way to drive additional foot traffic to your exhibit.
▪ Typically, show organizers have a hashtag for the show. See who’s using the hashtag and interact to let the audience know you’re there.

5.  Post-Show MEASUREMENT:
▪ This is the most important AND most overlooked way to radically increase your exhibit ROI. If you don’t know what works and what doesn’t, how can you evolve your trade show program?
▪ Within two weeks of the show’s end, gather all the company’s stake holders and discuss best and worst practices and what to target for next year.

We’ll talk in the future about setting measurable goals for each of your trade shows. Suffice to say, there are many more trade show metrics for success than just the quantity of badges scanned at your reception counter.

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