Make your event more social with Twitter

Cupcake Queen Wendy Nemitz of Ingenuity Marketing Group

Last week I was immersed in the Association for Accounting Marketing’s (AAM) national conference here in DC. The event offered three days of inspiring speakers, thought provoking presentations and networking with the sharpest minds in accounting marketing, and, significantly, constant tweets about the event.

During the conference I used Twitter to find out what was going on in sessions I missed, connect with new friends, make plans, provide commentary, joke around, share observations and, most importantly, connect.

In essence, twitter amplified my conference experience.

Here are some easy ways to use twitter to get the most out of any event.

1. Follow the hashtag
Hashtags allow you to follow conversations on Twitter in real time. A hastag uses the hash symbol followed by a topic or event name. Find out what the event hashtag is and follow the conversations. You’ll get updates on the event, see who’s attending, the sessions they’re excited about and plan meetups or tweetups.

And, if you’re really enthusiastic, you can post your tweets about the event to your site or blog. Tweetboard lets you add a widget of your tweets in threaded discussions that can be commented on by visitors.

2. Tweet at the event
The amazing thing about tweeting at an event is that you’ll feel like a rockstar. People retweet your tweets, send you messages, talk about you in their tweets. I have to admit I was a power tweeter at the AAM conference, and people I’d never met before were asking me about my tweets. How cool is that?! But this five seconds of fame is minor compared to the value your tweets provide. By tweeting, you’re able to share the key points of a session people may have missed, alert them to a spontaneous get together, or, in the case of AAM, let them know that the escalators are not grounded. Thanks @nadenlean!

Tweeting also contributes to the overall archive of the event. Want to make sure you didn’t miss any important tweets? Use Twapper Keeper. It allows you to create an instant pdf of all the tweets that used the conference hastag.

3. Make that connection
Sometimes the end of conferences feel like the last day of summer camp. You had a great time, but you wonder if you’ll ever see any of these people again. Grow the relationships you made by staying in touch with people online after the conference. Follow them on Twitter. You can use BlastFollow to create a list of anyone who used the conference hastag. Connect on LinkedIn. And, if the connection was as much social as it was business, friend them on Facebook.

How do you build connections at events? Are there any other tools to recommend?