Hashtags play a crucial role in developing interest in your business, your products and your events by making it easier for people to find, follow and contribute. The hashtag is used to draw attention, organize and promote. The right hashtag can help you grow your online presence, increase engagement from your attendees and ultimately attract new customers – and who doesn’t want that?
As business owners and event planners we often agonize over finding just the right hashtag for our event. And quite honestly, too much of the time we overcomplicate it. The best hashtags are simple, relevant and easy to remember. If we want our event attendees to use them in their social media posts, there are three things we need to remember when creating the perfect hashtag for our events.
1. KEEP IT SHORT
People want something easy to remember and almost obvious. The longer the hashtag, the more possibility of mistakes or spelling errors - particularly when your attendees are having a good time. You want to encourage the use, but also make it quick and easy.
2. RELATE IT TO YOUR BUSINESS
Do you already use a unique hashtag for your business? Perhaps an acronym or abbreviation of your name or what you do. Many businesses have already created one they use regularly on social media and their followers are already used to seeing it. One of our events is for the Vancouver International Wine Festival . That makes for a long hashtag, but early on we shortened it to VIWF in our email and other written communication. That made it natural to use for all kinds of things including social media year-round.
3. ADD A UNIQUE, EVENT-SPECIFIC IDENTIFIER
We may want to have a specific hashtag for our events. Not only to encourage attendees to use, but also to help us down the road when we are planning a repeat. It’s a lot easier to search for # VIWFGala to find images from the fantastic fundraising wine dinner and auction! You can even add the year for an event that happens annually.
So again, to keep it simple, just add the name of your event to the end – gala, soiree, workshop, retreat, conference, launch, etc.
And there you have it. Keep it short, related to your business and add an identifier for a specific event or purpose. And you will have tons of additional testimonials and social proof of how amazing your event was to draw in new customers both now and when you’re ready to repeat your event!
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