Design Resources

How to Incorporate Twitter Into Your Event

Establish an event hashtag.

Before you start promoting your conference or event, create a hashtag. It should be easy to remember, short and relevant, for example #XYZevent or #2011Confab. Attendees will search for this hashtag to receive only your conference news and promotions via Twitter. Include the hashtag on everything; Save-the-date cards, Evite, Facebook, signage, t-shirts, business cards and centerpieces.

Shorten Your URL for Easy Recognition

To shorten web addresses, and stay within the 140 character limit, use bit.ly. It’s a free service that shortens your URL so you can share on Twitter, Gmail, Email, or Facebook.

Customize your Twitter Background

In addition to the generic Twitter background, Twitter currently offers 12 stock backgrounds along with pleasing preset colors for the elements on the page. You can also modify the colors of the overall background, text, links, sidebar background and the sidebar border. Or, let Balmar create a custom background for you!

Does Your Business Card Reflect Your Social Side?

Including your social media links showcases your progressive approach to engaging your audience and also gives your contacts more choices in how they communicate with you. Balmar provides an online ordering system to make this a snap!

Search Your Audience Locally

Twitter Search is a great tool to find valuable niche info about your attendees. Use the advanced search at Twitter.com/advanced, enter your keyword and under PLACES identify the name of the town and what radius you want to search within. Twellow and Twitcatch are Twitter applications that give you the ability to type in a city or zip code into the search tool and target your ideal following. These are great tools for businesses that want to distribute their product or service locally or to target people in certain industries.

Follow What People Are Saying About Your Competitors

You also may want to follow not only what your competitors are saying on Twitter, but also how people respond to them. All you need to do is to simply search for: from:competitor OR to:competitor. For example, if your competitor is H&M (@handm), you can search for from:handm OR to:handm

How to Drive Traffic from Twitter Using @Anywhere

@Anywhere is a new set of widgets (or plugins) from Twitter that allows you to add Twitter Features to your Blog or Website. @Anywhere is great because it lets your users do the most common activities relating to Twitter (tweeting, following) without leaving your site. You can also use @Anywhere to drive traffic to your site.

And the Winner Is…!

Ever get tired of having to pick a winner for a Twitter contest that you just hosted? Well now there’s a tool that does it for you! Twitrand is a very simple twitter tool that picks random Twitter users out of specifics that you provide. If you had your contestants tweet a phrase, hashtag or just had a contest that included all your followers, just enter the phrase into the search box and let it do the work.

Organize a Tweetup

Utilize your Twitter network as a way to drum up support, help and ideas. The number of PR and marketing people on Twitter now is astounding. Use their collective wisdom and networks to create buzz and support for your event.

Ten People Whom All Twitter Beginners Should be Following

The individuals on this list have not been statistically quantified as the most influential, however, they all have large followings and the messages that they tweet are typically filled with value.