Get Social About Your Home and Trade Show Appearances

If you’re company attends home and trade shows on a regular basis, there are ways to get the most out of each appearance.

By promoting your trade show attendance on social media and other marketing formats, you can spread the word about your company’s home and trade show activities.

Here are a few ways to do just that:

Take Advantage of Social Media for the Pre-Show

Home and patio shows as well as trade shows usually only take place over a long weekend. This adds a certain level of immediacy to your marketing endeavors during the event.

Fortunately, with a little help from social media, you can market your appearance before the show even begins.

By spreading the word about your trade show appearance on sites like Facebook and Twitter, you’ll create a following well ahead of the actual event. You can post everything from the trade show dates to pictures from past appearances to any deals you may have during the tradeshow through your social channels.

Create a Social Conversation

Once the show begins, you can also use social media to create a buzz about your company’s trade show booth.

For starters, you can encourage visitors to follow your company via social media. At the end of each day, you can connect with your new followers and thank them for stopping by your booth.

Likewise, you can also create a hashtag for your trade show appearance and encourage visitors to re-tweet your hashtag. This will create a conversation around your company’s trade show appearance and help generate more traffic during the event.

Offer Mobile Surveys

As the following article looks at, most companies use home and trade shows to bring in customers, but they never really get opinions on what those customers thought about their brand. You can avoid making this mistake by taking advantage of mobile surveys.

Creating a subscription list and sending mobile surveys to event visitors will give your company the opportunity to truly discover what’s on everyone’s mind.

Whether you ask simple questions like what visitors thought about your products or you get more in depth, sending surveys in the moment will help you improve your trade show practices.

Use Short Codes

Along with social media marketing and surveying, you can also feature an SMS short code at your trade show booth.

Short codes make it easy for visitors and attendees passing by your booth to opt-in to your company’s marketing campaigns. If possible, you can also feature your short codes in other areas throughout the venue.

Hold a Social Contest

Just about everyone likes a prize, especially when they’re able to walk away with their prize the day they win. You can encourage visitors to follow your company on social media by holding a social contest at your next trade show, though make it worth their time and effort.

For example, you can give away prizes to a handful of visitors who friend your company during the tradeshow by drawing their names from your friendship request list.

Likewise, you can hand out freebies to the first few visitors who share a picture of your booth on their Instagram or Facebook account.

When you’re ready to increase your company’s presence at home and trade shows, take advantage of the social and mobile pointers above.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1VL86bQ via transformational marketing
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