If we’re being honest - an event hashtag is one of those things that you know you have to have for your event, but you don’t really know how to use it. Often, nonprofits and event planners alike will create a hashtag and then assume that, because you have one, it will immediately be used and shared. Unfortunately, they take a little bit more work than that.

Here are three really easy things to think about to increase the social presence of your event:

• Choose a simple hashtag: Your event hashtag should be intuitive. The simpler your hashtag the more likely it is that your guests will actually use it. It’s totally fine (and encouraged!) to get creative with it, but you don’t want to stray so far from the name of either your organization or your event name that it’s hard to remember.

• Make sure your event is "instagrammable": Create experiences at your event that people want to Instagram. Something as simple as a step-and-repeat that guests want to take pictures in front of is an easy way to start. Then, include the hashtag on your programs, napkins, tickets and anywhere that you want people to be taking those pictures. Experiential events are the new trend, even for nonprofits, so the more your guests "feel" your mission, the more they'll also talk about it on social media. For some really great ideas to make your event more Instagram-friendly, check out this article from BizBash.

• It's 2017 and time you have a social wall: There’s nothing your guests love more than feeling important, and when they see their tweet or Instagram on a screen, that's how they'll feel. Showing real-time social media at your event is a sure-fire way to get your guests to use the hashtag. The more they use the hashtag, the more they’ll see themselves on a screen. The best part about it? People who aren’t at your event will scroll through their social and get serious FOMO when they see that all of their friends are at one event. There are a lot of social walls out there and with the pervasiveness of social media, it's high-time you got one for your event. Swell Slides, our social media wall and projection app is a great, low-cost option for guest engagement. (And bonus, if you use it with Swell Fundraising, Swell Slides will also show leaderboards to determine who at your event is the most social!) 

See? Simple. Don't be afraid of social media, embrace it because - to be honest - your guest engagement depends on it.