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3 Signs Your Upcoming Conference Isn’t Making The Most of Twitter

For those of us using Twitter in our day-to-day, it’s often frustrating to stumble upon a conference or other event that clearly isn’t taking advantage of all that social networks have to offer. Here are some warning signs that the event you’re about to attend isn’t yet clued into the power of interaction before, during and after the event.

1. The event hashtag has been established by an attendee.
The event communication needs to be managed by the staff. The planners need to decide how they want their members to communicate (realizing that Twitter is not the only option) and make this very public information. If attendees are left to create their own channels, this is not a good sign! That being said, there is some value to jumping in on a conversation already created as an event planner and helping to encourage conversation. The double bad sign? When an attendee has created a way for folks to communicate and no one from the planning staff has even noticed!

2. The event Twitter stream is filled with self promotion.
If you are going to list “Follow Us on Twitter” as a part of your marketing, you should ensure that there is good content for your attendees on that list. Link to speakers, sponsors, and planners. Share related articles. Do something to connect the attendees. Do something more than just marketing the event over and over. Give people a way to connect!

3. Attendee lists are impossible to find as are Twitter handles of the speakers, sponsors and promoters.
While some events keep this information private, there are ways to integrate attendee-specific information on your event website. The savvy conference attendee is doing their homework before the event – trying to connect with other people who will be there in advance. By not listing contact information, or at least a list of names, you are making their job much more difficult.

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Liz

Liz King is a technology-integrated event planner and award winning blogger. As the owner of Liz King Events, she runs an innovative firm that creates dynamic branding events integrating the use of social media. Planning events from soup to nuts, she works with her team to create and sustain your event brand and enhance attendee engagement. Liz is also a co-founder of the Event Technology Showcase PlannerTech. As the owner of Liz King Events, she has been featured as a speaker at the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, National Association of Colleges and Employers, ExpoWest/Supply Expo and several other events as an expert on the topic of social media and events. She has also been featured in Connect Meetings Intelligence and Convene Magazine, among others.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Event Professionals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://www.pulsestaging.com/news Midori Connolly

    Good stuff Liz!

    I can see #1 a bit differently…
    Sometimes allowing a community to develop organically is a powerful way to foster engagement and community co-creation.
    And sometimes attendees are more social media savvy than the planning organization. Like if a planner was a novice SM participant, they could potentially deem the conference hashtag to be #destinationsarethebest2010 as they wouldn’t understand the challenges of limited real estate in a tweet. (Okay, that was my lame attempt at being funny!).

    But wholeheartedly agree that the greatest error is not enabling and supporting the community by not making this information well known, or, worse, not engaging. An event organizer or underwriter is suffering the most when they don’t capitalize on at least the listening aspect of SM.

    Like #3 – Great point…would love to hear specific tools you suggest to integrate attendee information?

    Midori Connolly, Chief AVGirl
    @greenA_V

    • http://www.lizkingevents.com Liz

      Midori – Thanks for your comment! I totally agree that it’s fine for communities to develop organically, but I do think there needs to be some involvement from planning staff. As I know you know, social media outlets are a great way to share information and build hype around an event. As for point #3, I’ve seen everything from eventbrite to full website integration. Lately, I’ve even used Google Docs so that people can choose to add themselves.

  • http://www.designinspiration.co.uk Ash Mashhadi (@inspirationguy)

    I enjoyed this post, Liz. I went to an event recently where the hashtag was invented by attendees and because of that, the conference itself failed to really capitalise on the potential a well-adopted hashtag can generate. This was largely because the organiser was Twitter novice.

    Another sign an upcoming event may not be making the most of twitter is when the conference’s twitter stream has only one voice – yours. Encourage as many people as possible to join in the buzz to create a sense of the diversity of interest the event is generating.

  • http://twitter.com/KariRippetoe Kari Rippetoe

    What a great post, Liz! I especially agree with point #2 – Twitter should not be used as a broadcast medium. You may as well NOT be on Twitter at all!

    I would also say that organizers who are burying their social media outpost info where someone has to dig through the website to find it are not making the most of their social media presence. It needs to be up front, clear, and promoted on any and all conference material and promotions, both online and offline.

  • http://twitter.com/lizkingevents/status/89385809857355776/ Liz King (@lizkingevents) (@lizkingevents)

    3 Signs Your Upcoming Conference Isn’t Making the Most of Twitter http://ht.ly/5sWX4 #eventprofs

  • http://twitter.com/heidithorne/status/89432699273613312/ Heidi Thorne (@heidithorne)

    Got that right! RT @lizkingevents: 3 Signs Your Upcoming Conference Isn’t Making Most of Twitter http://ht.ly/5sWX4 #eventprofs

  • http://twitter.com/lizkingevents/status/216689104501477376/ (@lizkingevents) (@lizkingevents)

    {Blog Archive} #eventprofs: 3 Signs Your Upcoming Conference Isn’t Making The Most of Twitter http://t.co/FirVYGZI