Social media has become an integral part of our lives. It has also evolved into a necessity for non-profit marketing. Social media can be a powerful tool for helping you run an engaging, well-received conference, so it’s important to weave it throughout your programming and events.
Here are five tips for successfully incorporating social media into your next annual meeting:
- Identify Your Audience's Social Media Preferences
Determine the most effective social media channels to reach event attendees based on your organization’s members. Are members big on Facebook? Then plan to develop a content strategy that’s more discussion-based or visual-based. Or are they an X (Twitter) crowd? Plan to host live-tweeting sessions. Once your social media outlets are confirmed, identify your biggest advocates on those networks.
- Publicize Event Social Media Early and Often
Start thinking about the social media experience for your conference as soon as you start planning for next year. Use hashtags to distinguish your meeting on social networks and to make posts easily searchable. Decide on a hashtag early on, and make sure everyone involved in planning is aware of it.
Hashtags are a great way to monitor conversations about your event, engage with attendees, and quickly give prospective attendees a sense of what to expect at your meeting. Include hashtags on all promotional materials and emails so they stick in attendees’ minds. Use them in social media messaging leading up to the event and send out a few emails prior to remind attendees to use them when posting on-site.
- Determine On-Site Social Media Responsibilities Before the Event
Before you arrive on-site, determine who will be handling what regarding social media. Is one team member better with Twitter? Assign them to live-tweet sessions. Is someone a better photographer? Have them handle photo-sharing channels like Instagram or Facebook. Is one team member a jack-of-all-trades? Have them use Instagram's integration feature that allows simultaneous posting to other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
There are countless ways to delegate social media responsibilities, and it depends upon how many platforms your organization has, how active you want to be on them, and how comfortable your staff is using social media. Regardless of the approach, it’s critical to have someone monitoring all platforms and responding to comments and questions throughout the event.
- Set Up a Conference Social Media Dashboard
When on-site, it can be useful to set up a dashboard that displays all social media channels and posts on a single screen. One way to do this is to sign up with Hootsuite, a social media management application that helps you monitor social activity from your event attendees.
- Promote Social Media Throughout the Event and Encourage Participation
Publicize the social media channels you’re using in event handouts, on signs around the conference venue, and during opening sessions. Ask presenters to include relevant hashtags and their Twitter handles at the bottom of presentation slides.
Be ready to interact with your audience. When people comment on your posts, be sure to like their comments, and when they share your posts, thank them. Ask questions like ‘Which sessions are you most looking forward to?’ or share polls to encourage participation. A simple and cost-effective way to drive even more social media engagement is to run a contest. Draw the winners from those who tweet using the conference hashtag.
Don’t miss out on this extremely cost-effective tool for helping to maximize attendees’ experience and make your conference a memorable success!
