Social Media at Events – #hashtag

I wrote about measuring return via analytics on social media earlier this week. You can read my blog here. As I am slightly obsessed with social media and the role it plays in events, last night I read this great article from Bizbash. The post talks about the new strategies, tips and tricks currently in the industry. I hope you find it as interesting as me.

The part most interesting to me is the use of hashtags at events. If you have been living under a rock, a hashtag is a word or in some cases a phrase to which a # is placed at the beginning. The main reason for the # is that it enables social media indexing and thus enables anyone using that hashtag able to find content, all over the globe using the same hashtag… sounds complicated but it’s really not! I can’t believe so many #eventprofs get it wrong though. People are still using #megalonghashtagsthatarehardtoread that mean nothing and many just don’t understand exactly what they are used for. It drives me nuts.

The Hashtag is used to promote an event. It helps categorize tweets so that anyone searching for it, can find every tweet that pertains to that hashtag. If you have a global event and everyone uses the same hashtag, all of the tweets can be visible wherever they are sent from!

You should use one main hashtag, per event. There should be research prior to devising the hashtag to make sure no one else is using it for their event. It is also best to alleviate the use of a date or year as once the event year has passed, you’ll need a new one if you run the same event the following year!

There are soooo many ways to make hashtags enhance your event. Below are my top 5.

Let your guests know what your hashtag is pre-event and start building the momentum. An example would be looking forward to seeing everyone at our event tonight #eventnetworking
If you are running a presentation or, having slides, encourage your speakers to put your event hashtag on them – make them visible
Use your hashtag to run promotions or incentives. For example asking people to use the event hashtag to win a bottle of wine at the event or bar after the seminar
For conferences, use your plasma screen to display rolling tweets of people talking pictures of themselves at the conference, using the event hashtag
Encourage your attendees to have a conversation with your hashtag – once a good debate or conversation gets going you could get MAJOR trending which only serves to promote your event further!