If you’re like 91 percent of the meeting/event planners I just spoke to, you offer NO incentive for your attendees to share on social media.

So … you’re just expecting them to find your event irresistibly share-worthy? That’s lame.

Hopefully, you know enough to have a hashtag and monitor conversations about your event. If you don’t have a hashtag, you won’t know how to find the smack-talkers. You won’t be able to fix what people are hating (or brag about what they love) in real time. That’s why it’s important. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to make one up either. Just check here and see if anyone’s using the one you want to. Are they? If not, it’s yours.

I trust you have been plastering this hashtag EVERYWHERE so it’s OBVIOUS what people should be tagging their posts, pictures and tweets with. No? Go fix that. Add it to your website, emails, all promo materials, sponsor/exhibitor/attendee info, show guides and speaker slides. I’ll wait.

OK, ready? Good. Now you have a keyword under which you can aggregate all the social media chatter. On-site, designate a time and place to have a social media concierge (it can be staff or something professional like SocialPoint). This is why:

1. They offer personalized customer service for attendees who may be social newbies.
2. They can help set people up with accounts who never had them before.
3. They make it easy and fun to share content about your event.
4. They can let people know about the cool things you’ve planned for them to experience.
5. They can give them incentives for sharing.

That last bit is really important. The incentives you offer don’t have to be big or have monetary value: It can be recognition online or at the event, or a fun title they win. Or they can be tied to little knickknacks or grand-sweepstake door prizes. It depends on what you want to reinforce. Let them know how to share and where to find you with a know-before-you-go like this one.

Do you want people to share relevant, useful info? Then award prizes for the best educational tweets from the sessions. Do you want them to share visually interesting content? Tie awards to Instagram pictures that get the most likes. Do you want to create a viral campaign pre-event? Offer something big in exchange for YouTube video entries, Facebook or Twitter posts. All of which you can find and curate because they’re tagged with that awesome hashtag of yours.

Then come back here and tell me all about it. I want to hear how things went.