Encouraging social media interaction at events

Last time we delved into promoting your event through social media. In this post, we’ll be looking at how you can use social media during your event. The immediacy of social media can be a godsend for providing up-to-the-minute updates and changes to your events. By the same token, it’s a great way of letting people know what’s going on. Here are our tips for fully utilising social media inside your event and to let the rest of the world know what they’re missing.

• Provide free Wi-Fi and clearly communicate the password. That way attendees can keep informed and connect, discuss and interact at your event without the possibility of high data costs.

• Encourage people to use your tag or hashtag (#) to share their thoughts and experiences at the event and photos/videos they’ve taken. Tagging will make relevant posts searchable and easier to find. It might also help create a community, as people can more easily tap into discussions and threads surrounding the event.

• Make it visible: Get your event hashtag or handle printed on your flyers or even on T-shirts for event staff. Consider having a big screen displaying your Twitter feed. That way, everyone who might have got involved will get involved – who doesn’t want to see themselves on-screen?

• Use social media to remind attendees what’s on and when (and show people who didn’t come what they’re missing out on). Broadcast any interesting updates, company news, contract signings or ‘firsts’ that might occur at the event- these will be of interest to non-attendees too.

• Encourage questions: Not everyone can get face time with your speakers and VIPs so encourage people to submit questions on social media. It’s a great way of stimulating debate and of letting other people know information that you wouldn’t otherwise publish. Make sure to respond to questions quickly, on Twitter you have mere minutes, otherwise questions will be lost in a vast pool of posts. Timely replies will make your followers feel involved and valued.

• Using social media after the event can extend the life of your event. Provide resources from the event– presentations and speeches that can be accessed easily. Videos and photos from the event are important as they have the potential to be shared around more than text content.

• Take into consideration the prevalence of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). When executing an event, consider how important these devices are in the attendees’ experience, and tailor resources and content so that they are easily digestible in these formats.

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