I’ve blogged many times on the ways you can use Twitter to fill your virtual event here and here. Plus, I shared a video by CeCe Solomon-Lee on the very same topic. Dennis Shiao, a colleague of CeCe, also weighed in on the topic and while I loved all his points, one stood out that caused me concerned.

Dennis wrote about the frequency of using your event’s hashtag in your tweets and warned that you shouldn’t use them excessively. In particular, he wrote:

Be careful not to over-promote to the related hashtags, as constant promotion of your virtual event will surely turn off the followers of that hash tag – you’ll even receive backlash from them.

On the one hand, I see his point. However, there’s a way to use your event’s hashtag on Twitter that will help you avoid this backlash and allow you to tweet out updates from your virtual event.

Tweeting Before Your Virtual Event

If you’re tweeting before your virtual event to bring awareness about it, tweet about the challenges and successes of managing your virtual event. People love drama and they’ll watch your tweets with interest.

If that’s too risque for you, share links to articles or interviews that you, your exhibitors, speakers or sponsors have been involved in.

Tweeting During Your Virtual Event

The key is to tweet your reaction to what speakers are saying and not the content. This is a huge distinction. When people tweet what they heard the speaker say, that’s no fun. It means your attendees are giving away the content that they paid for. Plus, your speakers are not too pleased since a topic they probably get paid to do is now being shared publicly with thousands of people on Twitter.

Instead, encourage attendees to tweet their reaction to what they’re hearing. Not only does this force attendees to take a stand on the speaker’s viewpoint, but if the reaction is strong enough, this prompts other people to re-tweet the attendee’s tweet. Plus if you’re facilitating the session, it gives you material to use to add more fire to the presentation.

Tweeting After Your Virtual Event

Here’s where many virtual event hosts fall short. After the virtual event is over, they close their laptop and head to the spa to relax for a few days. However, this is not the time to shut down and relax. Instead, comb the Internet and tweet out blog posts and Twitter tweets that contain reactions from attendees.

Whether tweeting before, during or after your virtual event, add your virtual event hashtag to each tweet. If you follow my tips, you won’t get a backlash from your followers on Twitter as they’ll see your tweets as adding value to their lives and business.