Whether you’re attending a business event or organizing one, diffusing it on social media can help your brand image and help you gain new followers and customers.
If your financial and business plan has been drafted (if not, you can download our free business plan templates), you’ll already know who your target audience is, so focus on giving these people the information they need.
Here are a few tips for your live coverage to go smoothly.
Why is Live Coverage Useful For My Business?
- To position yourself as an expert in your field
- To meet new people for business purposes
- To educate your followers about your industry or specific questions related to it
- To offer free and quality content to your followers and clients
- To give your followers the opportunity to know what’s happening at an event without actually being there
- To gain new followers and customers by using the event hashtag to spread your content to a wider audience
- If it’s your event, live-tweeting or instagramming it can raise awareness about your business and make people want to participates
What Kind of Content Should I Create?
Event location: When you arrive to the event, allow your followers to be part of the event by introducing them to the location. An overview of the conference room or the spot where your workshop is going to take place can drive interest, for example.
People: If some of the participants or speakers are well-known personalities in your industry, post pictures of their speech or intervention, or prepare a question to ask them and film their answer : it’s exclusive content, and it will certainly gain interest in your event. Likewise, if you come across a future partner or engage in a conversation with the founder of a thrilling new start-up, spread the word and mention their social media account in your post : who knows, maybe they will reciprocate the gesture.
Quotes: When you assist conferences or speeches, or even when you’re the speaker, post short quotations from the intervention. It’s typically the kind of content that interests those who couldn’t be present, and spreads fast on social media!
Resources: Professional and business events are usually good places to find useful information about your field of expertise. If you find an article mentioned during a conference, a guide edited by one of the exhibitors or even a website recommended during a conversation, and wrote it down because it could be useful to you, don’t you think it could benefit your followers, too? The answer is usually yes, so don’t hesitate to share your resources with them!
How To Prepare and Handle your Live Coverage
Before the event
Event #hashtag: it’s one of the most important things to know. If your company is the one throwing the event, create a hashtag for it. Make sure that it is short, memorable and easy to type on a smartphone keypad. Once you chose it, don’t forget to include it in all your communication concerning the event : mailings, schedules, social media posts, on- and off-site news… Your goal is for this hashtag to be used by most if not all of the participants at your event.
Decide who will be in charge of posting: if several people from your company attend the event, decide in advance who will be in charge of posting. You can create a Whatsapp group so everyone can share pictures, videos and other content for the designated people to post.
Participants’ social accounts: follow speakers, exhibitors, sponsors and others influencers attending to your event and create a document gathering all their official social media accounts, so that you can mention them quickly when needed. If some of them don’t have accounts, mention it on the document: this way, you won’t lose time looking for it because you think you forgot to write it down.
Announce that you’ll be covering the event: during the live coverage of the event, you’re likely to be posting a lot more than usual. It’s important to warn your followers: those interested can prepare to follow the updates and those who aren’t can mute your posts so they don’t get flooded by things they don’t find useful.
Prepare your device: If possible, choose using a laptop over a smartphone: you’ll work significantly faster. Always be careful that you have a full battery and take a charger and / or a fully-charged portable battery with you.
Prepare your internet connection: no Internet, no posting! Anticipate and ask for the wifi password in advance. If, by some mischance there is none, you can use the 4G from your smartphone either directly by using it or creating a hotspot.
During the event
If you’re well prepared, all that is left to do is participate in the event and pay attention to what’s going on around you and could pique followers’ curiosity. Be careful and don’t forget to add the event #hashtag in all your publications, and mention the name of the company or person you’re writing about if necessary.
Also don’t forget:
- To regularly add some media like videos, photos or links in your posts.
- To join the conversation: watch out for posts using the event #hashtag and relay them if they seem useful. If people ask questions, try to answer them as much as possible!
- To proofread each of your posts before hitting publish: spelling, event #hashtag, links…
- That if you publish a link, shorten it.
FInally, here are 3 questions you can ask yourself to determine if the content you want to publish is really useful:
- Is it too obvious?
- Is it going to give people a better understanding of the subject?
- What is your goal with these publications?
After the event
If you gain new followers or if some participants liked or shared your posts, don’t hesitate to follow them, say thank you or ask for their opinion on your content.
If possible, post links to the Slideshares, Youtube videos, etc.
Check the numbers: which posts created the most interactions? Which links were clicked on? It will be useful for your next events. If possible, write a blog post with the highlights: mix some of the content created by you and some by the participants.