When attending or hosting industry events, have a plan in place for live social media coverage. Minute-by-minute updates can be partially planned in advance, as well as created in real time. By combining both techniques, you will organically grow new and existing relationships, up your storytelling game and see a surge in social media followers. Here’s how.
Schedule Posts
It can be overwhelming to constantly update all of your channels throughout the event duration. Alleviate some of the burden by pre-scheduling content about moments you know are going to happen. Use a scheduling tool of your choice, which could be Hootsuite, Buffer, Tweetdeck, and/or native scheduling features within social sites like Facebook. Take care to cancel any scheduled content before posting if it becomes clear that what you thought would happen, isn’t.
Use the schedule of events as your guide
If you have advance notice about the details and timing of the event, map out your personal schedule and plan specific posts. For example, if you’re attending a fitness competition and know there is a weight lifting challenge at 1pm, automatically schedule an introductory posts to go live at 12:50pm: “Up next: heading to the weight lifting room to watch our champion dominate last year’s winner. T-minus ten minutes to go. Let’s do this!”
Scheduling periodic posts like this keeps your feeds current, but also be sure to pepper in real time photos, videos and quotes to make your updates interesting and reflective of what is happening in the moment. In the case of this example, you’ll want to take pictures of your champ in the middle of her most impressive lift.
Act and Think Like a Reporter
By sharing updates as the event unfolds, your social audience can follow along on your journey from their phone. When done right, compelling coverage makes followers feel like they’re experiencing the event right by your side, only from the comfort of their couch. As you compose and produce your content, think like a reporter, providing enough information to help people understand the situation, and taking photos and videos to illustrate along the way.
Document, document, document
Take a lot of photos and videos, and take care to make the media high quality. No matter if you’re using a DSLR or your phone, keep the camera steady and shoot in well-lit areas when possible. Also, try to capture different angles and perspectives. If you’re attending a conference or competition and have access to backstage, take photos and conduct interviews that show scenes not everyone has the privilege to see firsthand. This exclusive sneak peek helps you add more value to the broader online conversation.
Strategically Create Content
Give people a reason to care
You’ve probably anticipated this event for months, but followers likely need to be educated about why it’s important to the brand. In your posts, communicate your excitement by providing background information, facts, and noteworthy news, such as one of your brand ambassadors participating in the event, or how significant it is to the community.
Post an appropriate amount
Twitter and Snapchat expect and encourage constant updates to remain current and relevant in the stream of content from other users. However, other channels like Facebook, Instagram and others have a more carefully curated approach. If you post too frequently, you run the risk of being unfollowed.
Facebook is best for periodic, longer-form posts that explain what’s happening, and advises people to visit your other social platforms if they’d like to follow along in real time. This gives people the option to participate, without forcing them to.
Facebook and YouTube are also great platforms for archiving multimedia content. Create photo albums and video playlists to organize and showcase your best of content from the event and link to it from Twitter.
Tweet the excitement
Twitter is one of the social media platforms where you can get away with constantly posting. Think of yourself as a sports commentator, providing thoughts along the way as someone speaks and/or performs. You can share great quotes, facts, observations, opinions, photos, GIFs and more.
Be sure to repurpose rich social media content into a blog post. If you’re providing live updates on an event or presentation, you can continue to update the post with updated timestamps, similar to Mashable’s coverage of Apple announcements. Not only does this nicely archive your coverage, it is a resource for you or others to refer back to later.
Use the most commonly used #hashtags
Look for signage in the area where event organizers are advertising the correct hashtag to use. If it is your event, post said signage so attendees know what to use, and you can track and monitor conversations.
While tweeting, use the hashtag to indicate where you are, what you’re talking about, and invite others who are at or interested in the event to engage in a dialogue with you. You can also find other great informative accounts using the hashtag and share their updates on your feed, keeping your feed current and cutting down on the number of tweets you have to write from scratch. Hashtags can also be used on Instagram to find photos from other people at the same event and location. Joining the conversation this way helps other accounts find you, often leading to increased engagement and new followers.
Tag People
Stretch your post reach farther by tagging people in the photos you take, your check-ins and in your posts. Not only will you get the attention of those tagged, your update will populate in their friend’s newsfeeds, spreading the word into deeper networking circles. Also, if people are tagged, they are more likely to share your content from their own accounts.
Snapchat
What better way to share what’s happening in real time than by Snapchatting it? Check to see if your location has a custom geofilter to add color to your snaps and help your followers understand where you are and what’s going on.
Consider interviewing VIPs at the event on Snapchat, which gives you 10 seconds to film. Create one, or a series of snap videos, featuring a “VIP.” This could be a celebrity, winner of a competition, or a member of your team acting as a reporter broadcasting live from the event. Ask strategic questions to get fast, intriguing responses. Depending on the type of event, you will elicit humorous, inspirational, serious, etc. energy from your interviewee, helping to paint a full picture of the event for your followers.
What’s next your event calendar? Share your social media accounts with us in the comments and we’ll keep an eye out for your live coverage. Happy reporting!