How to Use Event Hashtags to Engage Attendees

photo by gregbeazley.com

In the meetings and events industry communicating with attendees can be frustrating. A meeting planner often needs to communicate program changes, room changes etc. So it’s vital that a communications process is in place. Event hashtags have become a quick and easy way to keep all of the meeting’s delegates informed.

So What Exactly Are Event Hashtags?

Simply put, hashtags are words or phrases with the “#” sign in at the beginning (i.e. #eventhashtags). There can be no blank spaces in a hashtag so if it’s important to have two words there needs to be a character to connect them. Hashtags first showed up in 2007 on Twitter as a way to identify groups. Today they’ve have become a way to communicate with like-minded colleagues without necessarily following the particular accounts. For example, I am in the meetings and events industry and often I’m searching for industry information online. So I will do a search on twitter for #eventprofs and will receive a stream of tweets from anyone who put #eventprofs in a post. It’s a great way to keep informed as well as find like-minded people that I should be connecting with. In addition to Twitter, hashtags are now used on other social media platforms such as Google + and Facebook.

You may also be interested in:

• Do You Follow Eventprofs on Twitter? If Not You Are Missing out

How to Use Event Hashtags

For a meeting or conference, event hashtags are a great way to communicate information. The meeting planner needs to do a little bit of research at the beginning to select a correct hashtag. It’s not recommended to just pick a name and start using it without doing a little bit of homework ahead of time. A great resource is hashtags.org. One can review the most popular hashtags, top hashtags etc. and decide on an appropriate word/phrase that can be used as a hashtag. When creating one specifically for a meeting or event, it’s important to be sure that it is not already in use.  After all with an event hashtag you only want people attending the meeting or event to follow it.

Step 1) Research potential hashtags names

Step 2) Once an appropriate hashtag is selected, incorporate it into all of the registration and marketing materials

Step 3) Let the delegates know to search the hashtag periodically throughout the day to receive important updates about their meeting or event.

Step 4) Whenever communicating or promoting the event, it’s crucial to use the hashtag. If the meeting or event will have a logo or graphics, incorporate the hashtag into it.

Additional Resources on Promoting Events:

• Promoting an Event Requires Creativity

• 3 Ways to Promote an Event for Free

• Using Twitter to Promote Your Event

Using event hashtags is a quick and easy way to communicate information to specific groups. It’s vital that a potential hashtag is researched and selected to ensure it’s being targeted to the correct group.