How to use Twitter for events: A simple guide

You can’t have an event without a Twitter presence. Nothing makes a crowd feel more connected and active than when they can communicate with each other around a common activity. Twitter helps bring random people together at an event through the use of a dedicated hashtag. A successful Twitter campaign can help increase exposure and will leave people talking long after the event is over. With so many events taking place every year, we wanted to create a guide for creating a successful Twitter campaign to make your next event stand out.Create an account – After all, you can’t create an effective Twitter campaign without a focal point. Create an account and customize it as much as possible. Refer to our SEO and Twitter post to understand how to maximize your Twitter profile.

Establish a hashtag – It’s important to establish a hashtag early. The sooner a hashtag is created, the easier it will be for people talking about the event to start associating themselves with it. We recommend a short four or five character hashtag. The world’s largest comic book convention, San Diego ComiCon, attracts around 400,000 people over a weekend. To keep everyone informed about events and unite the attendees, they use the hashtag #SDCC.

Tweet early and often – Nothing gets people more excited about an event then announcing activities, celebrities attending and special giveaways. It’s good to start tweeting at least 2-3 months before your event. This will allow you to build an audience, tweet teaser announcements and get the hashtag in circulation.

Offline matters – Odds are the first exposure a person will have to an event will be through a printed flyer or newspaper ad. Just like you would put your event’s URL in the advertisement, you should add your Twitter hashtag as well. 

Add it to your website – This may seem obvious, but so often events forget to link their Twitter account from their website and even more often never mention the hashtag associated with the event. People are looking for this information, and it can be just as important as directions and ticket prices. After people get the directions and buy the tickets, they want to find out who else will be attending. Having the hashtag on the website will enable attendees to communicate more easily with each other and stay informed.

Live stream from event – Let people know what they missed and give them a reason to attend next year by giving up to the minute Tweets about what’s happening. 

Post tweet – After the event is over, keep the good feelings alive by continuing to tweet. Keep your audience informed about changes, new guests and other news associated with your event throughout the year. The more active you are on your Twitter account, the easier it will be to activate people the next time your event rolls around.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.