Use Twitter to Promote Your Business at a Trade Show

Twitter, with more than 100 million users worldwide, may be a fun, quick way to communicate thoughts and whereabouts to your friends, but its most amazing value for businesses is as a public relations communication tool, one that is especially effective when used at trade shows.

With 140-character announcements, sometimes with attachments included, Twitter is most effective when it is communicating current news. If your business has a booth or a table at a conference, using Twitter in an organized manner can provide your customer base with news about your firm’s participation. This creates an opportunity to engage your customers and ultimately increase leads. Moreover, it can also enhance goodwill with expo organizers, promoting their event alongside yours. Here’s how you can incorporate Twitter as part of an expo presence.

Plan Twitter Usage Before the Trade Show

Before the trade show, tweet white papers, videos, and presentations, as attachments, that will be teasers for your trade show appearance or even a reminder of your offerings. A few weeks before the trade show is a great time to send tweets promoting your appearance. You can offer teaser photos of a new product appearing at the trade show or announce an executive who will be a keynote speaker.

If you are planning special giveaways, you can announce it on Twitter (as well as your company website, blogs, Facebook fan pages, and any other media opportunities) before the trade show. Giveaways can also be linked to Twitter usage, for example, you can tweet “Our table will give away a free pair of earbuds when you mention this tweet,” and end with a hashtag that you have created for the event. Hashtag keywords, which begin with a # sign, allow Twitter users to search for specific tweets on a given subject or a term shared among a community.

For trade shows, most hosts announce an official hashtag for attendees who want to follow expo-related tweets. You should use the expo hashtag with each tweet to expose attendees to company-related announcements and materials. You can also retweet messages with a different hashtag to spread the message exposure beyond the expo.

Tweet Trade Show Events and Attendee Reactions

Once at the show, you should make continual announcements of company-related expo happenings. If possible, someone on your team should be a tweet jockey, the person who is responsible for the tweets. Having a tweet jockey will ensure that the rest of the team can give undivided attention to booth visitors and their questions. The tweet jockey can tweet giveaway announcements as well as any associated events at the show.

The tweet jockey can also tweet nuggets of information from conference presentations. If someone from your company is presenting, it’s a great way to give them a shout out. Photos and video are other good ways to communicate the benefits of visiting your booth. Tweet jockeys can use small flip cameras to interview customers for their impressions and send them via Twitter, which could encourage more visits to your booth.

Encourage Followers and Leads After the Show

After the show, Twitter follow-up acknowledgements to your booth visitors as well as attendees who became new followers. Of course, email can still be used for longer and more formal expressions of thanks. Review analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Omniture to see if exposure at the show added to your website traffic and increased customer interest.

Incorporating Twitter as an announcement tool during a trade show will encourage more opportunity for additional leads or online sales. The end result is an enhanced trade show experience for you and your customers.