Would you like to leverage social media to keep your attendees engaged, to advertise your conference for the following year, and make it easier for your attendees to network outside of your conference? Perhaps you’ve already tried to use social media but haven’t seen much attendee engagement. We have a number of tips to share with you, but our best advice is that this isn’t easy or turn key. Simply having a social media account or a hashtag is not enough. This will take some real effort.

Here are a few tips we’ve put together to help boost your event’s social media presence.

  • Create and promote the hashtag prior to the conference. This allows attendees to share the fact that they are going to the conference. One way to promote the hashtag is on your event’s website, within the registration process, or on any transaction emails. You can also choose to build up the hashtag by promoting a tweet, boosting a Facebook post, or buying an Instagram ad (depending on which social network your audience is on). You can also add it to your name badges.
  • Incentivize posting. By retweeting through the main conference Twitter account, as just one example, you offer your attendees exposure for using the conference hashtag. You can also set up a Twitter wall to show curated tweets on a screen at the event. Further, you can include tweets in announcements or during presentations.
  • Assign someone to manage social media during the event. Perhaps you’ll be too busy to keep up with engaging your audience. Assign someone, or even a team, to manage social media actively during the entire conference. Even at night!
  • Share live updates throughout the day. Schedule tweets or posts in advance to announce sessions, breaks, any information attendees would need, etc.
  • Consider Live Video. Live video isn’t easy and isn’t for everyone. However, each social media platform offers their own live video tools. If it is right for you, consider streaming the entire event, a specific session, or updates throughout the day.
  • Have fun! Don’t make it all business. Show smiling faces in images, use an emoji from time-to-time, be social!

We hope these tips help you and your event’s attendees.