Do Not Just Tweet Your Booth Number

You know it’s getting close to the big annual conference in your industry when every supplier starts Tweeting their booth number.

My team, colleagues, and friends are gearing up for #IFA2016 from the International Franchise Association and we’re seeing it all over the place.

These companies don’t share anything all year then suddenly think, “Hey it’s nearly convention time. Now what was that Twitter password…?”

They’ll log into Twitter to let the world know they’ll be at booth #123. Oh and they’re giving away an iPad, because everyone will flock to the booth for that. And then they’ll go silent for another 11½ months.

Alternative content

A few weeks ago, my Social Geek Radio co-host Deb Evans and I discussed some other things to share on social that might give some more value to your fellow conference-goers. Here are a few from our podcast:

• Share details on a speaker you’re looking forward to hearing.

• Post about a topic that’s on the agenda and get an engaging conversation going ahead of time. (This is what I like to do most)

• Ask who else is en route and suggest meeting for coffee and chat. (This is what I need to do more of myself!)

• If you’re familiar with the location, share items about the history, food, entertainment, transportation, or anything else out-of-towners might find interesting. (Deb is great at this)

Promoting your booth

Can you slide in a mention or two of your promotion? Absolutely! But I always suggest your social content be at least 80% about OTHERS and at most 20% about YOU. So after 4 or 5 updates on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook about the conference or other people participating, go ahead and share something about your promotion, contest, giveaway, or trade show activity. As long as this isn’t the only thing you’re pushing out, it’s cool.

I’ll be Tweeting a couple of booth numbers later this week for the IFA Conventionmyself, to let anyone interested in the Social Geek Radio podcast know where they can join us live. In fact, I’ll post it now! We’ll be at the Manalto booth (#461) on Sunday 2/21 and at the 1851 Franchise booth (#134) on Monday 2/22. Now that that’s done, it’s back to more posts about Others. See you at the show!