Social media has become an absolutely essential means of marketing and promoting your company at a trade show. One of the best ways to increase the visibility of your company’s social media posts is to utilize hashtags as a way of connecting your social media presence to wider trends and events (like a trade show that you are exhibiting at).
For the uninitiated, a hashtag is a small word or phrase (without spaces) which is preceded by a ‘#’ symbol. This allows you to send signals about the content of your social media posts and to link them to other events, trends or ideas that are popular on social media. For example if you were exhibiting at the recent CES expo and wanted to tweet something about your trade show exhibit (or perhaps a picture), you could send the message out and append the hashtag: #CES2013 to it. Doing this would let those who are following you know more about the post, but it also allows those who are following the aforementioned CES hashtag to see your tweet, even if they are not a follower of your account.
The end result of an intelligent use of hashtags is that you will get your social media presence known to a wider portion of social media users. This is obviously one of the primary goals of social media marketing and promoting your company’s presence at a trade show.
Hashtags rose in popularity primarily on Twitter, but they can now be used on other social media websites like Facebook and Pinterest. When you are using hashtags to promote your company and to increase the visibility of your posts on social media websites, you should follow a few general rules.
First, it’s important to remember that you need to identify which hashtags to use. If you are exhibiting at a trade show or other sizable event, there will likely be a hashtag created for that event. Look for it on promotional materials for the show or event, or on the event’s website. If you can’t find it, contact the marketing representatives for the event. Using this hashtag will allow you to connect your trade show exhibit presence with that of the overall event and increase your visibility. Use this hashtag when sending social media posts about your trade show booth.
You might also consider creating your own hashtag in order to separate yourself from the rest of the exhibitors and to promote a particular aspect of your trade show exhibit. If you can think of something clever and creative you might even be able to get it to go ‘viral’ and see a boost of exposure that is priceless!
Using hashtags helps to boost your social media presence and makes for a more successful marketing strategy for promoting your exhibit at a trade show.