The most important thing you need to do is pick a hashtag for your event and promote it. Without a hashtag, there isn't much you can do. It is essential that all attendees know the hashtag and use it. Typically, it is short and memorable, aka #IDC2013 or #SXSW. If your event is an annual event, you need to decide whether to attach the year to your hashtag or not.
Once you've picked the hashtag, you should activate an archive on Tweet Archivist for that hashtag immediately. With an active archive, you can rest assured that you won't miss a tweet with that hashtag in it.
There are lots of things you can do to promote the hashtag and start getting value out of it before the event:
- During registration At the conference registration process, provide a mechanism to allow the attendee to tweet that she is going to the conference, automatically inserting the hashtag for them.
- In communication with attendees In emails sent to attendees before the show starts, encourage them to tweet about the conference using the hashtag.
- On the conference website On the conference website's session pages, encourage attendees to tweet what sessions they are excited about.
- Have speakers use the hashtag Your speakers are your ambassadors. Let your speakers know about the hashtag.