Tradeshow Tuesday: Twitter on the Tradeshow Floor, Part 1

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free, microblogging social media service where registered users can send short statements, images and videos to other people and companies in their network of followers and to people who have similar interests. Interestingly, Twitter was originally created as a business communications tool.

Twitter let’s you share things like messages, images, videos, links, poll questions, responses to other tweets and your location. So, Twitter gives you a space to share a message and see what others are saying, and it gives you a space to share information in a variety of ways.  

Here is an example of a tweet:

Why should you use Twitter?

Twitter can be a powerful communications and marketing tool at trade shows. Twitter gives you a big audience with whom you can communicate quickly and instantly about what you have going on at your booth, and it gives you an audience with whom you can share what you are seeing at the show. It also gives you access to tweets coming in from other exhibitors, attendees and media professionals covering the event. For exhibitors, it’s all about increasing the visibility of your product or brand. For attendees, it’s all about giving yourself the most current access to show information. A tweet might be the very thing that persuades someone to visit a booth or check out a demonstration.

When I was at amerimold last year, I sent out dozens of tweets while I was cruising the show floor. My goal was to notify MoldMaking Technology’s networks and amerimold’s attendees about what was happening on the show floor. Twitter is a great way to maximize the visibility of your booth at busy shows like NPE, amerimold and IMTS.

Twitter is a great way for exhibitors to maximize the visibility of their booths at a show and for attendees to stay in the loop about things happening at the event.

You don’t have to have a massive Twitter following or Twitter presence in order to leverage Twitter for maximum benefit at a show. You simply have to have an active account. The use of Twitter tools like mentions and hashtags (which I will go over in Part 2 of this series) that are show-specific will bring your outreach into the same community of tweets that the rest of the show exhibitors and attendees are writing and reading. The use of show-specific hashtags (think #IMTS, #amerimold and #NPE2018) and mentions (@IMTSchicago, @amerimold and @NPE2018) in tweets will put those tweets in a place where everyone interested in the show who is using Twitter can see them, and searching for material on twitter using those hashtags will provide a focused search result that gives you all the tweets you need to see to get up to speed on show news and events.

You don’t have to have a massive Twitter following or Twitter presence in order to leverage Twitter for maximum benefit at a show.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK: How to Use Twitter

Have I convinced you to give it a go? Are you wondering now what the difference is between a mention and a hashtag? Stay tuned. Next week, I cover the basics, so you have what you need to tweet like a champ.

Already on Twitter? Follow MoldMaking Technology and the editorial team. 

• MoldMaking Technology Magazine: @MMTMag
• Editorial Director Christina Fuges: @MMT_ChristinaF
• Senior Editor Cyndi Kustush: @MMT_CyndiK
• Managing Editor Karen Cornelissen (me): @MMT_KarenC