Social media is reshaping events and becoming increasingly influential on audience participation. Why not supercharge your events with hashtags to engage your audience? Hashtags are now a staple of many events and creating unique experiences for guests. Event hashtags centralize social media activity and discussions around your event. This leads to increased brand and event awareness for your guests and your target segment.
In utilizing hashtags at your event, not only are you empowering your guests to tell the story for you, but also making it easier to pull the conversation together and allow your guests to interact with ease. This means that your guests are transforming real-time content from social media channels directly to your event.
Why use a hashtag at your event:
Increases the online exposure of your brand or event with free social media advertisements.
Excites other Instagram and/or Twitter users and encourages them to join in your event conversation, or find out more about it.
lets your audience easily connect to each other, generate engagement between audiences.
Lets you monitor feedback and engagement through social media posts .
Creating a great event hashtag:
Short – you want your hashtags to be short and sweet. The shorter it is the easier it is for people to remember and use it.
Relevant and descriptive – hashtags particularly associated with your event and content makes it easier to search and find your hashtag.
Easy to understand – guests will know what your hashtag is going to feature at first glance.
Memorable – as event planners, you always strive to provide the most memorable events. So should your hashtags!
The hashtag journey:
Before: As you post relevant content leading to your event, be sure to use the hashtag for your events across all your social media channels. This can lead to increased attendance or Guest interaction.
During: Make sure your hashtag is visible at your event and incentivizes your guests to use it with gifts and prizes. The guests generated content for your event, the more it reaches guests that did not attend.
After: Keep the conversation going, and keep your guests vying to attend your next event.
Top Tips
Put your hashtag where guests take pictures
Place them where guests can’t miss them
Create subliminal reminders
Put them where guests are likely to linger
Offer rewards for using them
Pro-Tip: Present incoming posts on a social media dashboard and share with your audience in real time
With the increasing trend of hashtags being used at events, it is equally as important to use the right tools that help track, deliver and present insights on specific hashtags. Contact us to learn more about how to use guest engagement tools to manage hashtags at your events.