My Favorite Conference Social Media Tool
With Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate, at the Texas Conference for Women
With thousands of attendees, capturing the energy and spirit of huge events like the Pennsylvania, Texas and Massachusetts Conferences for Women in one succinct package is like trying to put a flock of birds back in a cage after they’ve been released. By live tweeting and moderating the Twitter stream all day, I get a good sense of the conference vibe, what’s getting people excited, which speakers are knocking it out of the ballpark, which sponsors and exhibitors are actively engaged and how broad our viral reach is.
However, not everyone is using social media during or after the event, and many attendees don’t realize that there’s another entire conversation happening online throughout the day.
I use Storify to create a social media highlight capsule after each conference. It’s free, easy to use and can be done without waiting for video editors to create a sizzle reel. I pull a mix of tweets and images that tell a visual story of the day, mentioning speakers and sponsors, special moments and key takeaways.
Using a report from TweetReach (with a shout-out to their awesome customer support rep Betsy Rowden), I can see who the top influencers of the day were and search for their tweets from the conference on Storify. I can also search for terms that help me filter and curate thousands of tweets; for example, searching for “morning” and “txconfwomen” within the “images” category will give me a nice range of Twitter and Instagram images to choose from. Finally, I use the “distribute” option to let people know their tweets were included, which results in retweets and even greater viral reach.
This is a great way to recap the entire day for the conference team, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, volunteers, and attendees, as well as to get people excited about attending (and tweeting) in the future.
Take a look!
2013 Pennsylvania Conference for Women Storified