Twitter for Events: Advice from 2 Hosts & 13 Post Ideas
If you’re new to this series, we’ve spent the last few months discussing sales and marketing best practices with some of our favourite customers. One of the platforms that all of them highlighted as a way to boost awareness about their events was social media. Specifically, they highlighted the power of using Twitter for events.
Some Praise for Twitter for Events By Organisers
“I’ve had really good experiences with Twitter. It’s a good tool for me. I reach quite a lot of people by using it.” – Marc Thiele from beyond tellerrand.
“The main one we use is Twitter. We try to tweet daily and communicate as much as we can.” – Sylvain Bernard from AMLD.
“I prefer Twitter. It’s fun to retweet stuff from people that are speaking at my events.” – Charis Rooda from WebConf.Asia
“We’re quite fortunate that during the ticket releases there’s a huge amount of social media interaction going on. Mainly on Twitter. We usually trend in the UK.” – Kelvin Newman from BrightonSEO.
“I wanted to find a way for people to connect to each other on their own, in their own time, in their own lives. I thought about the different ways to do that. Then, Twitter seemed like the best tool.” – Saron Yitbarek from Codeland.
If you’ve ever used Twitter, you’ll know from experience that it has its pros and cons, and we got that feedback too. We thought it might be useful to share the lived experience of organisers and their candid feedback about the impact using Twitter for events had on their bottom lines, and sanity.
What Kind of Information is Useful to Share on Twitter for Events?
David Pich from JSCamp
One contributor we had the pleasure of speaking with was David Pich. With personal and professional Twitter profiles that each boast over 5,000 followers, he’s a keen user, and certainly knows a thing or two about what you should put out there to connect with your followers.
“I use Twitter to share useful information about the conference: to make it different from other conferences.”
“The tweets that are not focused primarily on selling are the most successful.”
“Before the conference, I start threads asking what the expectations are of the community. What are the trends that will be hot in 2019? What are the things you think people will need to know? Please share it. There were a lot of people interacting there. A lot of users then check who you are and check your website.”
What’s the Downside of Using Twitter for Events?
Jina Anne from Clarity
Unfortunately, if you’re familiar with Twitter, you’ll know that there are a few downsides to the platform (to put it lightly). While almost every contributor we spoke with attested to how powerful Twitter can be for starting conversations, staying in touch with previous attendees, sharing information, and simply having fun, there are some aspects of the system that are – for lack of a better word – broken that may impact your choices when it comes to spending money on the platform.
Jina Anne, founder of Clarity, self-confessed adorer of design systems and downright excellent Organsier shared her side of the story here:
“Almost all my sales are just through tweeting. I try to do it so it sounds human. Most of the time I’ll even tweet it from my personal account and then retweet from my Clarity account just ‘cause I like having that human voice.”
“On Twitter some people will be talking about how they’re inspired to go back to the office and work on their design system. Not to sound braggy, but I’ve literally seen people say it was the best conference they’ve ever been to and when I see that it just makes me cry happy tears!”
“I think because I have this niche focus you get people that are essentially fanatics.”
“I’ve had people reach out where they run a company that promotes events. And they say we’ll broadcast about your event in exchange for ten tickets. I thought about it but I don’t need that. I usually sell out or get close to it. I don’t really need to give you what is essentially $5,000 or more in tickets for you to put this on your platform.
“I did buy a Twitter ad once, and then immediately regretted it because some people are really hostile when you do that. People reporting it for harassment or weird content or something. It’s not even worth it, so I don’t do that anymore. I have friends who have said that they report every sponsored tweet. I’ve never done it. I hide ads on Facebook and mark ‘not relevant’. Twitter doesn’t have a ‘not relevant’ option. So people mark it as ‘offensive’.
“I tweeted something from the Clarity account and people told me, ‘Hey, for some reason this tweet is being hidden from Twitter as potentially offensive’ and it wasn’t. It was normal content. That’s when I realised if enough people are marking that one tweet as offensive, that had the link to Clarity then any other Tweet that has a link to Clarity, Twitter is assuming might be offensive.
“That was really alarming for me. People wanting to mark something as annoying could negatively impact someone’s small, independent business because then Twitter won’t show that content to people.”
“It wasn’t doing that for everyone. It was just people that had settings on to hide potentially offensive tweets. I didn’t even know it was happening because I don’t have that it enabled. A simple tweet saying, “If you’re into design systems, this is the event for you” and like, totally innocuous.”
What Posts Work on Twitter for Events? (With 13 Types You Can Try)
As well as the testimonials we’ve shared above, we wanted to showcase some of the tactics our contributors have used on Twitter for events. Below, you can find some of their best performing tweets. We’ve broken them down by post type to give you some inspiration for the types of tweets you could use for the promotion of your own events:
1) Tweet about ticket scarcity
beyond tellerrand
(12 retweets, 10 likes)
2) Tweet About Trending Topics in the News
Digiday Events
(8 retweets, 7 likes)
3) Tweet About Your CFP
EmpireJS
(27 retweets, 25 likes)
THAT Conference
(22 retweets, 6 likes)
4) Tweet About Your Early Bird Tickets
React Finland
(34 retweets, 50 likes)
5) Tweet a (Good) Meme
Brighton SEO
(162 retweets, 552 likes)
6) Tweet About a National or International Day of Celebration
JSCamp
(51 retweets, 57 likes)
7) Start a Conversation on Twitter
Ministry of Testing
(56 retweets, 136 likes)
8) Tweet About Other People’s Events
CodeLand
(6 retweets, 7 likes)
9) Tweet a Word of Thanks
AMLD
(25 retweets, 101 likes)
10) Tweet About Your Schedule
Webconf.asia
(10 retweets, 10 likes)
11) Tweet Photos from Your Conference
Brighton Ruby
(31 retweets, 37 likest)
12) Tweet Your Words of Wisdom
Devrelate.io
(19 retweets, 41 likes)
13) Tweet Your Industry Insights
Clarity Conf
(14 retweets, 26 likes)
With that, we hope you’ve found some inspiration for your social content calendar to help showcase the wonderful events you have planned for the coming year and beyond. If you’re interested in keeping up-to-date with this series about sales and marketing for conferences, feel free to subscribe for email updates from Tito below.