Marketing Your Events Via Social Media

Is your company holding or sponsoring a major event — something as wild as a chili cook-off or school bus races, perhaps? If so, you’ll want to get the word out, and you should make sure you get the maximum exposure via social media. The Social Media Examiner offers 12 tips to help you with this. Check out the entire article to see all 12, but here is some advice pertaining to Twitter:

#1: Market Your Event Through Twitter
There are many ways in which you can use Twitter to raise awareness. Many conferences and events have their own hashtags, such as #smss10 or #metweetup. There’s no magic to creating one—just start using a hashtag in all your related tweets and encourage other people to do the same when talking about your event.

To encourage people to tweet out your hashtag and spread the word, sweeten the deal with a free pass, door prize or other giveaway for one lucky hashtag-er.

If your event is large enough, give it its own Twitter account such as @Blogworld or @socialmediaFTW, which serves as a customer service “hotline” and adds credibility to the event.

Mix up your event tweets by varying the message.

Constantly tweeting that your event is coming will annoy some of your followers, so mix it up: use tweets to announce new sponsors, speakers, an open bar, or to ask questions that might help shape the event.

Finally, ask for people to share your event with the simple phrase, “Please RT!” You’ll be amazed at the results. Just don’t overdo it; you don’t want to look desperate, do you?

Be sure to check out Cindy King’s post How to Use Twitter Events to Grow Your Network for more ideas.