SHOW ME THE SOCIAL HANDLES! — EVENT MAVEN TIPS FOR EVENT PRODUCERS

I’m sitting at an event, enthralled with the speaker. I jot down a quote, I take a photo, and I think, “I want to tweet this and post it to Instagram and Twitter.”

I look at the slides being shared. I search my conference program, the conference website, and my conference app for the speaker’s social handles.

THEY ARE NOT LISTED ANYWHERE.

Now I’m distracted, trying to listen to the rest of the talk. I want to be present, and I’ve paid to be here. Instead, I’m trolling a search engine on my phone for the speaker’s name — no results — so I give up for the moment. My tweet/Instagram post is half-written and saved in draft.

This conspicuous absence of speaker social accounts presents itself at most events I attend, on every level from user groups to meetups to industry events to large technology conferences.

This is a call, an appeal to ALL EVENT PRODUCERS.

Help us help you socialize, celebrate, promote, and engage with your event — because we will!

PLEASE SHOW US THE TWITTER & INSTAGRAM HANDLES OF YOUR SPEAKERS AND PANELISTS:

• On the speaker listings on your website

• Inside the printed conference guide, in the session listing and their bios

• On your conference app

• On the bottom of the session slides

And don’t forget your event handle and hashtag on the bottom of every page and slides, please.

PANEL SPEAKER SLIDE GUIDANCE: 

If it is a panel discussion, put panelist’s Name, Title, Company, Social Handles, and Photo. Do this in the proper seating order. If I’m in the back, of the room, we are squinting to see them.

Help us help you promote, celebrate, socialize, engage with your speakers and ILLUMINATE all the hard work that you put into producing your beautiful event.

When you make something easy, people are 10x more likely to participate. Please make it easy for your attendees to engage with you on social media.

I also prep social media before I go to an event.

Cutting and pasting, hunting and pecking for speakers’ social media accounts to collect and share are colossal time sucks for your attendees. Spending my best energy on this makes me less inclined to socialize. I like real-time social media, and I also tend to prep a blog post with pictures to upload a few days after the event is over. Twitter Lists of your speakers, sponsors and panelist are so easy to put together, and they drive traffic back to your Twitter Account.

1. Go to your small profile picture on the top navigation Click Lists

2. Click Create List

3. Name the List & provide a brief description

4. Designate the List as Public or Private

5. Save the List

6. Add people to the List

7. Share the List

Time is money, and even if someone on your attendee’s team handles social media for them, they are still using their time for what you should be providing as a value to your attendees (and as a perk to your speakers to help promote them). Sponsors love this too….

Help us help you promote, celebrate, socialize, engage and CONNECT to our larger collective communities.

Social amplification is a growth mindset. Let’s make your hashtags trend, let’s grow your event by 10x, let’s amplify the nuggets of goodness your one of a kind speakers and panelists bring to the world. Let’s share the juicy goodness of your event to the broadest audience possible.

Help us help you socialize, celebrate, promote, engage and GROW the interest in this beautiful event you worked so hard to produce.

Anytime you can bring more value and ease to your attendee experience they will participate more fully. Show us the social handles and you will be happy with the uptick in buzz about your event.

#EventMaven off the podium.

From one producer to another, with love.