Organising an event? Plant a Twitter garden

I spent a very enjoyable two days in Cardiff this week at Voice10, the annual conference of the Social Enterprise Coalition. I've been to the event before but what was different this year was the involvement of Twitter. As many of you will know I'm a self-confessed twaddict so I was always going to be tweeting madly throughout the conference but I wasn't the only one. At one point the event hashtag, #Voice10, was the highest trending topic in the UK as the socially entrepreneurial Twitterati typed away on their iPhones, BlackBerries and laptops.

But what made the Twitter element stronger was the fact that the conference organisers embraced it. At pretty much any event nowadays there's going to be least one person present who uses the social network so you might as well include them in proceedings. Hashtags of course are common place but what the Social Enterprise Coalition did differently was create a Twitter garden. Genius! Amid the plastic flowers (recycled plastic I'm sure) was a screen displaying relevant tweets.

I organised the obligatory tweet-up and the garden was the perfect place to hold it. Around 12 people showed up which as regular conference tweet-up attendees will know is a pretty good number given the many other attractions that are usually available to attract people's attention.

[Disclaimer: We were posing with the phones and did actually talk to each other!]

So where am I going with this? Well, if you're organising an event make the Twitterati your friends. Give them a place to meet, promote your hashtag and encourage them to get involved. Do that and they'll promote the hell out of your gathering; not just during it but afterwards on their blogs. The old days of sending out press releases post-conference are over. Use the Twitterati as your very own on-the-scene reporters.

So next time you organise an event why not plant your own Twitter garden and watch your new found social media friendships flourish.