I've attended some brilliant live events where I was blown away by the quality and content on the day, I found myself thinking how pleased I was to be there and how dreadful I would have felt if I had stayed at home. I got so much value from the day, the warmth and support from the other attendees as well as the ideas, suggestions, and encouragement were priceless.
Putting this down in writing as a blog post is a great way to share you experiences, here are 5 reasons why.
1. Process Your Learning
I will admit my brain can feel a little overloaded afterward as I process and try to organise what I had heard, written, and planned during the day's activities. Writing it up into a blog post can be a really useful tool to help you process the day but also share what you learnt with your audience.
2. Review Your Objectives
I always have three or four objectives when I head into any live event, it helps me focus on what I’m trying to achieve. Including these in the blog can help you see if these were met and if so how.
I keep these to quite a shortlist on purpose as I don't want to give myself an unrealistic target (a common trait of mine). It helps to trackback during the day, if you get time, but also afterward. Is there anything I didn't achieve, and could I approach it differently in the future?
By setting out what I wanted to achieve in advance I can quickly assess what I’ve achieved and write it up.
3. Share Share Share
I am a helpful person by nature and I think there is real value in sharing what you learn so others can benefit. Your next post after the event should be about what you learnt and how you can put that into practice, this can help educate and inspire others too.
There is no harm in announcing that you’re going to an event on your social media accounts but avoid broadcasting – for example; “we’ll be at BIBA, come to stand 999” is to be avoided, instead let people know you’ll be there and why “we’re delighted to be at BIBA (Stand 999) come and have a chat with us about how we can help you with XYZ” or “We’d love to see you at BIBA where we’ll be launching our new XYZ, which you need to know about because it’ll (insert problem it solves)” It is much easier for people to engage in these types of post that ones which broadcast information at them.
If you are blogging about the event the chances are, so is someone else but don’t let this put you off, if your event was using a hashtag or had an online group (i.e. Facebook group) then you can use this to see what other people are saying and share their stories as well as engage with them with comments and likes.
4. Build Relationships
Make sure you follow up with people you met on the day via meetings, email, or social media. Also follow the organisers, speakers, and sponsors to pick up any useful follow-up material and provide feedback on the event. Tag them in your follow-up post as a like or share should increase the reach of your blog post and could drive more traffic to our website.
5. Harness the Momentum
Re-reading my notes and getting them all in one place has certainly helped me build a detailed plan setting out activities, things to research with timescales, and time set aside for each. It is too easy to attend an event and then go back to the office and slip back into business as usual, with the best intentions some of the energy and momentum can be lost.
I am determined to make the most of the events I attend this year, in terms of money and time and have blocked out time for planning and research to ensure that I am ready to go, what are your favorite tips for getting the most out of attending a live event?
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