Monday, October 31, 2011

9 ways to make your next event social media friendly

I came back from a recent event here in Rochester called the Social Share Summit.  I was both attending and speaking on one of the panels discussing B2B Social Media.  It was an all day event that featured a few panels beside mine and a few keynote speakers.

Yawning yet?

Now don't get me wrong there was some flashes of great content and I thought my panel went well but there was something lacking.  By the afternoon you could see the drag of the day taking its toll(I'm glad our panel was done by around 2:15).  It got me thinking about ways to encourage more interaction from attendies at events like this since its hard to keep focus for that long, especially when its mostly listening to others speak.

Here are 9 ways to get people more socially engaged at an event:
  1. Everyone gets handed a printed agenda with the following info:
    1. Event hashtag for Twitter
    2. QR code to scan to "Like" the event on Facebook, or auto generate a Tweet.
    3. Twitter handles of everyone who is speaking.
  2. Invite people to check in with plenty of visual signage in the halls and in the room(even the bathrooms).
  3. Assign someone from the organization who created/organized the event to create a steady stream of content from it.  This is photos, videos, etc and make sure to get peoples names and handles so they get noticed on social channels.  Make people feel important, its goes a long way.
  4. Large screen with constantly updated tweets about the event.  This could easily become a distraction but I think this encourages more people to interact to see their handles come up on the big screen.
  5. Partner with a charity and offer an easy way to donate to them.  This is one for the downtime either between speakers or during a boring stretch of someones speech.  Have the option to text to donate and especially promote that donation via social.  It keeps people realizing the bigger picture and makes them feel good.  That's a great association you want to have with your event.
  6. On every slide of every presentation - Twitter handle of the speaker and a QR code(or URL) that you can download the presentation from.  Make it really easy for the audience to get the speakers content, they are more likely to share it.
What have you seen that you would add to this list?