Guest post by Claire Williams

There’s been a lot said about the power of social networking online in recent years and it is an excellent tool for connecting with new people and promoting your personal brand.  But I’m interested in the ways online networking can interact with real, offline events to the benefit of both, especially in the case of event organizers and attendees.

For organisers, social networking opens up a new world of promotional opportunities and chance to ensure that all attendees have an excellent time at their event.  For attendees, interacting with an event’s online networking can help them feel more at ease and get more out of the day.

So here’s how organisers and attendees can use social networks to get the most out of the event.

Promote Your Event on Social Networks

As an event organiser, social networking is another tool you can and should be using to promote your event to a wider audience.

LinkedIn for example is a hugely popular social site for professionals, and you can add corporate events to it.  To really generate some buzz around the event you can also start conversations related to it .  Try to get speakers or other attendees that you know to join in so that you can get a real conversation happening.

There are many other sites where you can promote your events – pick the one or two where you know that your target audience already hangs out to get the most benefit from your online efforts.

Social Networking Can Help Break the Ice

Have you ever been to a conference or a networking event where you know no one?  And worse, it seems as if everyone there is already the best of friends?  It’s a shy person’s worst nightmare.

But by getting involved in social networks it’s easy to connect with other people who are going to attend the event.  A few days before, you can “introduce” yourself to other attendees, so that on the day networking seems less scary.

As an event organiser you can help by promoting the networks that you are using in all marketing materials.  Put it on your website and in any emails you send to attendees.  You may also be able to help out on the networks themselves.

For example, on Twitter you can create a Twitter list of attendees, start a short, simple and unique event #hashtag for attendees to follow and promote and encourage use of the #hashtag to attendees.

Live Updates Add to the Conversation

If an attendee is live blogging, tweeting or talking about your event on any social network they are helping to promote your event, adding new voices to debates, and they’re making a record of the day.

Not everyone will want to shout out their questions or contributions, but by monitoring online channels you could find new angles, controversial opinions or simply questions that take the conversation in a new direction.

To make this easier tell attendees how to talk to you online and make you aware of their questions and comments.  Let them know which networks you’ll be using and encourage them to join you there.

Organising an event is a brilliant PR strategy, and so is using social networks.  By using the two together you’ll get more out of your efforts and hopefully create a more memorable experience for everyone involved.

About the author

Claire Williams is the Manager of the Staffordshire Conference Bureau, an English organisation offering a free venue finding service to help event organisers to pick the perfect conference venue in the Midlands, UK.

Current and potential customers bring in money for a company in many ways. They buy products, they buy additional services, upgrades, maintenance and if hey like your service they’ll spread the word and have more money pouring your way.

But what you might overlook is that those people, if they come in high numbers, are also something to be sold. As an audience, they’ll generate a new found stream of revenue. You’ll position yourself as a high authority conference organizer and not spend much in the end. Why? Simply because others will pay to sell something to your audience.

Case Study – The Parallels Summit

Let’s take a real life example: the Parallels yearly summit for existing or soon to be partners and customers. This spring they chose a luxurious hotel, the Omni Shoreham in Washington DC and invited people from all over the world to attend. They had a small exhibiting hall (way tight if you asked me) where spots came at a price, two industry media sponsors of which I could only see one throughout the conference, the WHIR. And they had so high priced sponsorship packages that companies like Microsoft or Intel paid for.

They were bringing in a couple hundreds of people at least, so they got to negotiate a decent price with the hotel. In the end, what the guests got was impressive: great room, a hotel with a lovely view, a cruise on the Potomac river, a sunset cruise to be precise, a baseball game in VIP suites, Washington Nationals vs. Philadelphia Phillies, and many little things such as pens.

Intel sponsored the game, Microsoft the cruise and I am pretty sure exhibiting prices and other sponsorships covered the lunches and breakfasts. I don’t imagine they paid nothing, but imagine how much they got thrown in for free. If you want a taste of how it all felt, take a look at the photos I posted. If you’re not American and wonder why baseball would ever interest you, read this entry to see how addictive it is.


This is a high class example and I’d say it mostly works in business to business lines of activity. Although end user oriented products get a lot more customers, those customers are not really going to pay for a three day trip to attend conferences and decide on buying loads of expensive products as well.

How Can You Better Market Your Customers

You have to realize that an audience of over 50 people is something big. If you already have the good habit of meeting your customers on rare, mostly yearly occasions, why not reduce or even wipe out your costs? If they are decision makers or interested in related offerings, use that ace down your sleeve to get partners and other indirectly related companies to chip in for the organization costs.

If you think you’re good enough, you can do what Parallels did, have Microsoft (the same company thinking of providing its own virtualization solution) as your platinum sponsor! You might say that was a mistake, but if people use your product alongside something provided by a future competitor, close the deal, get more customers now, and worry about competition later. If your solution does a good job, no one would even dream of going through the switching hassle!

Being at the airport at 5 am is not an easy thing to accomplish! Especially if you didn’t finish packing or got enough sleep the night before. But we got there in time, went through the check in, the security check and had another hour to kill before boarding.

The flight to Munich was easy, the next 10 hour flight no Chicago was a different story. I was planning to sleep a lot, so was Silviana, but none of us actually did. What happened? Well we got to our hotel in Rosemont at about 1.30 pm and ended up sleeping until 7 pm. We woke up to no converters at the hotel and had to go buy one at the nearby mall. And so we said goodbye to our sight-seeing plans.

The next night I could get no sleep of course. Thank God I had 2 series and a half from Angel with me So at 8 am we went to have breakfast and head to the Stephenson Convention Center where ISPCON took place. We were sponsors of the Email Center and also had our exhibiting Kiosk. One of the computers in the center was not working, no browser had been redirected to the AXIGEN homepage and we were told to do it ourselves, if we knew how to Wow! So we paid quite a lot to be a sponsor and an ISPCON IT girl at the same time!

The first day was pretty quiet. So I thought it would be great to go visit the Press Lounge! Maybe some had already arrived! Tough luck, it was empty! And this part of the event didn’t change much over the next two days. But there were plenty of visitors, who turned out to be potential clients, partners or investors. But I was right, exhibiting always stands in your way. Being a sponsor gets you almost the same awareness and you are free to meet everyone you want. Then again, Jupiter Media had a weird deal for ISPCON that did not allow a company to be a sponsor without exhibiting.

On the second day, I had lunch with Barbara Rozgonyi of WiredPRworks. It was really great meeting her and she provided great insight about what we should see in Chicago. If you are wondering, she looks 10 times better than her photo and she has an incredibly warm smile. If you’d like a photo of the two of us and a way better story on our meeting, see Barbara’s entry!

Our time visiting downtown Chicago? About 3 hours. But we tried to make the best out of it. Yes, we were real tourists, went to the Navy Pier, got on the huge wheel near the carousel to take better pictures, bought the photo they took of us while going on it and so on.

We then got hungry, of course. And chose a Mexican restaurant where I had Loco Wings. And that they were, spicy enough to make you go loco, but so tasty I could not believe it! To have a complete experience, we drank Bud

And for the grand finale, we walked among the skyscrapers in the twilight, seeing all of them light up and making it all bright.

The ISPCON event was ruled by men. Only a few women, we were a bit overdressed, the evening events didn’t really appeal to us. If I ever want to gamble, I’ll gamble in Las Vegas, not in some Convention Hall in Chicago. The event is not that big as one would expect considering how well promoted it is. From what I heard, HostingCon is a better alternative for some. I think it still was a great start to find out more on the US market, to find out what people want to know and where they’d like to go.

So on the third day of our story we said goodbye to our Launchpad colleagues packed our banners and went to the airport. Next stop, NYC!