It looks like time’s up for conference proceedings. This post will help you to leverage social media to send post event materials like a true social media ninja.
I was reading through our amazing Event Planning and Management LinkedIn Group, when I stumbled upon this interesting question:
What are some alternative ways to send delegates post event material? I tried the company FTP site but delegates firewall’s won’t allow access
Whatever type of event you run, at some stage your attendees will ask for a souvenir.
For academic conferences it’s proceedings, for a workshop it could be slides, for weddings it’s photos, for concerts it’s videos. Well, you get the picture.
We want some tangible proof of our beautiful (but intangible) experience.
It’s not only the souvenir mentality. Events are short. They come and go. We need more time to digest information.
In the age of social, sharing media has become a terrific opportunity to make attendees happy while promoting your event to remote audiences. And it’s never been easier.
What Materials Should You Send?
Here is a list of the items I would send after the event:
– Slides
– Videos
– Audios
– Recaps
– Pictures
There is definitely more, but these are the most frequently asked items.
Here are few ways to share post event materials and get some marketing going to help you sell out the following year.
Blog it!
Your blog is the ideal home to share your event content. Why? For a number of reasons:
– It’s your home base, you own it. It’s not dependent on Zuckerberg decisions as in Facebook Pages.
– It’s the best tool for search. It will drive potential attendees searching for related topics thanks to its SEO friendliness.
– It’s social. It’s easy to share.
Pro Tip: Set up your event blog with WordPress, it’s the best blogging solution.
Slide Share it!
Sharing slides is one of the most recurring requests you’ll get from attendees. Yet I can think of only one or two events I’ve attended in the past few years that cared enough to send slides to the attendees.
Sending slides via email it’s kind of 1999. We don’t need that anymore.
Just set up a SlideShare tag for your event and communicate that to your speakers. Make sure they upload their presentation to Slideshare and tag it appropriately.
You can see that in action for Web2.0 Expo.
Pro Tip: Start a Channel, somewhat expensive but you can generate leads and really expose your terrific event to herds of interested peeps.
Tube It!
There is no substitute for having a Youtube Channel for your event. It’s your decision whether to share bits and pieces, full features or related contents. You can share just teasers of the talks or have interviews off stage with speakers.
Either way having a channel gives you the edge and exposes your content to potential attendees. Remember, Youtube is the world’s second largest search engine.
Pro Tip: Create a branded channel. Maintaing a coherent image across channels really helps. If video is important for your marketing, go for it.
Stream it!
One of the biggest benefits of live streaming is that most of the services record your sessions. Therefore sharing after the event has become ridiculously easy.
My favourite service is Livestream, mainly for its Facebook integration. A good alternative is Ustream.
Pro Tip: Use Livestream Cube. Plug this small device to any camera, set up your user and password and you’re off. You can stream live with your super cool camera.
AudioBoo it!
AudioBoo is an amazing service that allows you to record audio (cross platform: Nokia, iPhone and Android) and share it socially. The quality of the recording is great, uploading and sharing could be performed by a 5 yrs old.
Pro Tip: Create your Event Radio with exclusive interviews or talks from prominent speakers.
Storify it
When it gets to pictures, videos, slides and putting everything together, this is usually when headaches start.
A trend over the past few years was to create stand alone communities for events. I don’t believe in stand-alone event communities any more. Too many social networks and places to check. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+. That’s more than enough. We surely need lightweight tools to collate everything together. But that’s it, don’t ask me to fill in yet another profile.
Storify makes it for me. This is an example for TweetCamp 2011, an event I attended a couple of weeks ago.
I’d suggest to share your storfied event on your Facebook Page, LinkedIn Group or official Twitter account.
Pro Tip: Do not include everything in the stream. Carefully select the meaningful conversations, blog posts, tweets, videos and pics.
Any other cool way of sharing content I am not aware of or I shamefully forgot? Let me know, dear reader, in the comments section.
