#Fearless4Friday: Four Social Musts for Conferences and Tradeshows

PR professionals recognize that tradeshows and conferences are a staple in most clients’ overall PR and marketing programs. However, with the growing importance of a strong digital community, weaving social into event plans has become more and more significant.

This month, I attended the Percona Live Conference & Expo and NAB Showto execute two separate social campaigns on behalf of Zeno Group’s client Micron Technology. These two conferences differentiated in terms of audience, industry and size, however both were targeted as places to further brand awareness and connect with industry influencers.

Having fundamental social media practices in place prior to attending will ensure your efforts have better results. Here are my top four social “musts” for conferences:

1. Do your homework. Weeks before your conference/expo/tradeshow, confirm the event’s official hashtag. Make sure to include it in all of your social activity during the show for measurement purposes as well as inclusion into the event’s overall conversation. Also define a hashtag for your brand to use throughout for consistency and measurement, space permitting. Ideally, this hashtag is one that the brand is already using (we used #Micron).Then, create a list on Twitter that pulls in the handles of influencers and media outlets confirmed to be at the event so that you can monitor those conversations and jump in where appropriate.

2. Tell people about it. At least a week before the event, tease your attendance via your social channels so that your audience knows you will be attending the conference and make sure to include the hashtags that will be used and any activities planned. This will help start the conversation before the event and prepare your followers for the flurry of activity to come. This is also a great way to indirectly inform influencers and media outlets of your plans. Easy ways to do this is to craft content around your involvement and activities, and schedule it throughout your regular content. Once a day is fine for most social platforms.

3. Have a game plan. Have objectives clearly outlined and approved by your client. What do you want your social activity to accomplish? What are your indicators of success? Once this is ironed out, identify your team—onsite and offsite—and assign roles and responsibilities. Even if you have someone onsite, it’s best practice to have an additional team member offsite monitoring and responding while you post. This allows the member onsite to engage in conversation with event participants and exhibitors while ensuring that response time to any social engagement is done in a timely manner.

4. Make it social. Being on social media platforms means engaging directly with your audience, regardless of where they are. For a conference/expo/tradeshow, a raffle or give-away is always a great way to break the ice, promote your brand, and get the conversation around your brand above the noise. For NAB Show, Micron Technologies partnered with Silverdraft to giveaway a variety of items through a fun, social game asking participants to pick up devil horns at their booth and take photos at other partner booths.

Another way to activate your fans socially is to bring them into the event with you. At Percona Live Conference & Expo, Micron Technologies and Zeno live-tweeted during the brand’s speaking session and engaged people on social who were unable to attend the event through Q&As and retweets.

In terms of social activations, there are plenty more items to incorporate into your overall PR and marketing programs but these four will give you a solid foundation to build on.