Social media can be a great tool for reaching and engaging your audience. When it comes to event planning and social media, there are a variety of ways that you can market and generate more interest before the event. But the benefits of this popular social outlet do not stop there. Live event social media can be a great tool for engaging those who are attending your event as well as those who could not make it.

Below, we’ll discuss 3 ways that you can use social media to boost engagement at live events:

1. Hold a social media contest with fun prizes.

Contests are a great way to get people actively engaging with your company. Whether you are exhibiting at a trade show or holding a company-wide event for employees, your organization can use social media as a platform for contests. Attendees can use their own social media accounts to enter the contest while engaging with your brand.

For example, you might ask trade show guests to like your Facebook page or post about your company on their page for a chance to win an Amazon gift card. This not only gets the individual engaging with your company, but increases exposure when it shows up in their feed for others to see. For internal company events, you might ask employees to post a silly photo booth picture using a company hashtag and award the most creative photo with a special prize.

2. Use live social display feeds to show user-generated content.

Another way to engage your audience is by using live event social media feeds. You can create a unique hashtag and ask attendees to use the hashtag while talking about your company. Then you can use a third-party live feed program to compile photos and statuses with that hashtag from a variety of social media channels and display the feed on a projector.

These programs typically allow you to monitor the feed and give you a little delay time to delete any inappropriate or irrelevant posts. The projector feed is a great way to get people talking about your company and engaging with your social media accounts.

3. Filter Q & A sessions through your favorite social media channel.

Social media can be an excellent tool at speaking events for making Q & A sessions more efficient and effective. Rather than running around the room passing a mic around, speakers can take audience questions through a platform like Twitter. All audience members need to do is tweet their questions at the speaker, and he or she can address these questions during Q & A.

To make the process simple, mention at the beginning of the presentation that questions will be taken through Twitter. That way, the audience can send their questions as soon as they think of them. Then, the speaker or a moderator can filter through the questions at the end of the presentation. You may even want to display the live feed on a projector so that others can see if their question has been asked.