Using Twitter to Promote Events

Twitter is an extremely effective tool for promoting and managing events. If you hold any kind of events, be it seminars, webinars, exhibitions or training workshops, you can use Twitter to help ensure it is a success.

Some Twitter statistics (from April 2010)

• Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users
• New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day
• 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month
• Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day
• Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day

So how can you use Twitter to promote your event?

• Depending on the type of event you are holding, choose to either use your main corporate Twitter account, or create a new account – purely focused on just this event (which might be the best choice if you have an event which is reoccuring)
• Create a Twitter hashtag unique to each event and use this in each tweet
• Encourage delegates to update their own Twitter feeds with tweets about the event using this hashtag
  • This hashtag measn that anybody at your event, or interested in your event can instantaneously see what you, your delegates and other interested parties are doing and saying
• Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one delegates
• Use Twitter as a way to inform event participants of the latest event updates/changes
• Include tweets containing links to new information, advice, tools and resources on your website
• Use Twitter to instantly communicate important messages and ‘calls to action’ to their delegate/customer base
• Delegates can subscribe to your Twitter feed or your hashtag search result via mobile or RSS for instant notification

Twitter’s social nature, combined with the ability to create instant updates and announcements makes it a perfect took to keep delegates up to date with the latest event news. Used wisely it can have a real impact on the success of your events.

For help creating and managing a Twitter account, get in touch with us here at SMEketing. Call 023 8083 7271 or email info@SMEketing.com and one of our social media SMEketers will be in touch!

1 Comment June 29, 2010

Small Business Events on a Shoestring

We’ve just had an incredibly busy two weeks here at SMEketing. One of our clients required us to organise their AGM (Annual General Meeting). They’re only a small business – with 30 or so employees, and needed a team building activity in the afternoon that wouldn’t cost the world.

They tasked us here at SMEketing to come up with some creative, fun ideas. And that’s exactly what we did! The final choice was an orienteering event at a local country park. The company was split into four teams, and were sent off in different routes. Once they arrived at their target, they called base camp (a SMEketer) for a general knowledge question, and another question of which the answer was the number of the post they needed to head to next. Ten posts later (and four miles!) there was a final race back to base camp. Winners were awarded prizes, and there was a trophy for the best dressed (I forgot to mention that they were all dressed as woodland animals!).

It was a great day, and although the teams were all very competitive, everyone had fun! And luckily the sunshine held out for us too.

So here are our tips on organising a small business event on a tight budget:

• Ensure you manage your time effectively
• Make a thorough plan, and constantly update and review it
• Shop around for the best value – you can often find items much cheaper online, and even online the price can vary massively!
• Make sure you maintain great communication between all those involved
• Keep an eye on the budget at all times
• Find cheap ways of catering for your delegates/staff. We negotiated with a local pizza place to provide pizza’s for all, and supplemented this with salad and side dishes bought that morning from a supermarket
• Keep any themes simple. We had a woodland animal theme – supported with basic fancy dress props for staff
• Create a list of any lessons learnt that can be used for next time
• On the day, make sure everyone knows exactly what they are doing and where they need to be

Planning events can be stressful and very time consuming. But ensuring that you plan effectively and monitor your budget, you can still hold fantastic events on a shoestring budget.

For more information on this event, or any other event that you’d like SMEketing to manage, please read our Event Management page or just send us a quick email: info@SMEketing.com.

Leave a Comment September 7, 2009