The Importance of Twitter Presence in Conferences

Why is it so important to consider your Twitter fans when you organize a conference?

OK, so lately I’ve been to many conferences. As an Internet industry person, I have a different appreciation for conferences, and perceive them as serious ones or not by the way they handle their Twitter users.

What do I mean by that?

As a conference organizer, you went through all the trouble to host a kick-ass conference — and I’m not referring to the amount of money spent on the venue, the caterer, the graphic designer, etc. Rather, I’m referring to the work you put into creating the serious hype you hope to achieve around your conference. 

To do so, you probably developed a mini-site, invited, confirmed and charged a whole lot of people, and probably even started a group on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Despite all of these attempts, the mistake I see happening again and again is that some conference organizers fail to pump up their Twitter presence and, as a result, they lose a lot of the hype they worked to achieve. 

There isn’t a more powerful platform for networking than Twitter. In fact, the one thing that distinguishes a serious conference from a more “primitive” one is the way in which it uses Twitter to pump up its social media presence. 

Conference organizers should follow these steps to ensure a successful event:

1. Establish a conference # and make sure you publish it on your site. 
As soon as a conference or event is announced, a primary Twitter hashtag — the # symbol, followed by a key word or phrase that users add to their Tweets to to help them identify an event, meme, etc. — should be established.
 
2. Use the conference # in your Twitter account.
Announce sessions, give praises to the presenters,  ask your participants questions and attend to their replies. This makes you an active on-the-scene persona and gives your participants the feeling someone is there for them

3. Add a live Twitter stream to your site.
Place this stream on your home page preferably, so that way you incite users to jump into the conversation.

4. Appoint a specific person to manage your account and update the # again and again before, during and after the conference. 
Engaging directly with your participants is a great way to make them remember you and push them to follow your account. This allows you to keep in touch with them long after the conference is over.

Next week, I’ll post funny Twitter experiences I had in conferences, and discuss the importance of sending a designated “Tweeter” to conferences to keep the conversation rolling and going to places you would have never imagined.