Every meeting professional knows the best way to build community, increase communication and allow contribution from audiences is Twitter!
It’s that simple.
Twitter increases audience engagement because it is about community. Imagine a whole lot of fabulously dressed people in fabulous shoes, cocktails in hand (well maybe not this time of year as everyone has ‘new year resolutions’)… chatting at a party. Twitter is just like that. A place where everyone can come together, share thoughts and opinions, spread good news, comment on world events, and be a little bit cheeky… yes and they can do if from their car, desk, hotel or your event!
If you really want to engage audiences more for your events remember these strategies so you can leverage it to make your next event an even more tw-abulous success!
Publish your Hashtag early and everywhere… yes everywhere! On all websites, collateral, email blasts, SlideShare, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Anywhere there is communication needs the hashtag. This simple tool allows people to engage with you and share the information with others i.e. #pcma12 for Convening Leaders hashtag was hot weeks before the actual event!
Gina Schreck in her book Gettin’ Geeky with Twitter says ‘marketing is no longer the greatest skill needed within a company; conversing is’. She is so right! Twitter is conversation and your audience demands to be part of it. If you don’t provide a forum for your audience to converse with you … they will find another way. Get your audiences involved early.
Prepare Speakers – when you are using experts for your events make it part of their responsibility to create conversation, respond to the hashtag and share their content with audience members even before they present! Audiences love to meet their speakers, you can make it part of your speakers contracts.
Present Questions – post questions to increase conversation and then re-tweet people’s responses. Just make sure if you are going to have a ‘conversation’ with someone… you answer them! Don’t just tweet out a whole lot of ‘stuff’ and not be there to chat back.
Provide a viewpoint – it can be fun to share your thoughts and ask others to agree… or explain why they disagree with you. Many conversations on twitter have become part of the live event… you can generate fun before anyone enters the building!
Present as part of your virtual event – many events are now hybrid and Twitter is the perfect communication tool to engage your virtual community so they feel like they are there live – Jeff Hurt @jeffhurt & Velvet Chainsaw did a brilliant job demonstrating this at PCMA in October 2011. He spoke to his live audience and also to the virtual one – it made it more fun to attend virtually!
Present Industry information – share best practice, trends, make predictions, provide real thought leadership on the topic of your event so your attendees can also share this with others.
Productively Pre-Tweet – you can pre-schedule tweets using Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and you can ask your speakers to pre-load tweets that can be tweeting out while they talk (I love to do this) and you can have someone in the team pre-load tweets to occur through your whole event – very productive and fun too!
Play – share fun facts with your attendees; what to wear (or what not to wear), where to eat, fun images, be conversational and have fun with it!
So how are you going to use Twitter to engage your audiences for future events? Share your thoughts on Neen’s blog
