Make Your Next Event Hashtag Friendly

Great events spur great conversations, but are you doing everything you can as an event organizer to help ensure that those conversations are easily discoverable online?  Liveblogging via Twitter and other social media channels is commonplace, and serves to increase awareness around your brand and your event online.  You want to be sure that you set your event up to succeed, draw attention and engagement, and builds awareness for next year’s registration. Hashtags drive event discussions, help participants find new conversations, and also add an opportunity for you, the organizer, to track and analyze conversation trends and your event’s depth of penetration online. This is especially true now that every major social media platform supports hashtags: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr, to name a few, all support the use of hashtags. That means your conversations will spread faster and further, but you have to plug in to play. To learn more, continue reading this article from Social Media Today for more great tips on how to make your next event #hashtag friendly.

Hashtag Tips for Your Next Event

How to Create Your Hashtag Relevant: Make sure the hashtag is related to your event and will be easy to remember as well as spell. If the event is using a mobile app or platform like Bizzabo, it can be helpful to have the hashtag stream directly in the app so users can join right in. Unique: It’s important to pick a hashtag that’s not currently being used or can have many different audiences. Choosing the hashtag #tech for a conference called Tech Startup Conference 2013 can (and will) result in 20+ irrelevant tweets per minute. Instead, using a hashtag such as #TSC13 will allow the event tweet stream to be highly targeted with a very low possibility of getting off topic tweets or users. Short and sweet: Concise hashtags are not only easier to remember, but give event attendees more character space when sharing on Twitter (though there’s no limit on Facebook). If your event has a longer name like “Social Media Marketing World 2013”, turn it into #SMMW13 Thoughtful: Not every event name or topic will sound good as a hashtag (case in point: the Susan Boyle album party- #susanalbumparty). It’s also a good practice to make sure that the hashtag doesn’t coincidentally form a word in another language, which could result in two very different streams colliding. How to Promote Your Hashtag Promote Away: Your hashtag won’t mean anything if nobody uses it! Promote the hashtag by having it everywhere- your event website, marketing materials, advertisements, dedicated emails, the event’s mobile app, social networks, newsletters and every other channel used to reach attendees. Listen: The hashtag will not only be a way to get attendees to engage with the event, but to get attendees to engage with each other. You’ll be able to track the conversations and not only get good feedback, but possibly even address some of the top topics and issues discussed online in the conferences’ content itself. Get Creative: Hashtags are still a new tool, so don’t be afraid to experiment! You can offer discounts, create contests, or broadcast curated streams. Use these tips to develop hashtags for your next conference event to get traction on social media and increase sharing, participation and attendance for your next event!

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