Social Media for Events: Insights from an Experient e4 Exchange Cafe

Last week Experient hosted it’s customers and key industry supplier partners in Orlando, FL at the beautiful Hilton on Bonnet Creek and Waldorf Astoria hotels.  While the weather was certainly hot, as it is August in Florida after-all, the education content, networking and social functions sizzled!  For a great video recap of the event please check out Jeff Hurt’s blog article.

On Tuesday afternoon (August 17, 2010) I facilitated two (2) fifty minute “Exchange cafe” sessions addressing the subject of Social Media for Events.  For context, an exchange cafe embraces the following:

Café Culture — Focus on what matters.  The event should be embedded with a spirit of collaboration and shared learning.

Open Minded — No idea is a bad idea

Collective Insight Evolves from:

• Honoring unique contributions
• Listening into the middle
• Connecting ideas
• Noticing deeper patterns and questions

In each session we spent the first 15-20 minutes, after introductions, in small groups of 3-4 ppl ea.  and shared experiences, ideas and best practices with one another on effective ways to utilize social media with events.  An individual in each group was appointed as a scribe.  In the second part of the session we came together as one group and each sub-group shared their thoughts.

Exchange Café Insights Shared

Deidre Ross Discussing Twitter Base Camp

From those group discussions came the following takeaways:

Strategy — Several participants shared that their organization crafted a strategy to help focus their organizations on where, how and why to use social technology with their events.  Point well taken.  I adamantly support this best practice.

Do the Research — In conjunction with building a strategy, learn about which social networks conference participants frequent, and then align your strategy with those channels.

Attendee Instructions — Provide some instructional support to attendees regarding how to use social technology applications as part of the conference orientations process.  Examples of this are tutorials at the event website, or written information in the conference program.

Video Wall with Twitter Stream/Flickr Photos — Setup a large two-sided video wall in a heavily utilized passageway.  On one side place a Twitter stream posting tweets from the conference hashtag and on the other feature a rotating digital photo album (using a program such as Flickr) with frequently updated candid photos taken at the conference.

Live Video Streaming (Webcast) with Twitter Back Channel — Several café participants brought up this method of utilizing social technology as an effective event strategy.  This one speaks for itself.

Twitter Base Camp (Customer Service) — Establish a service team of organization staff to monitor the Twitter stream and respond to Tweets.  (Through Hashtag)

Use of Conference “Wiki” for Information Exchange — this really is a terrific collaboration tool and enables conference participants to build upon each others ideas and knowledge to solve challenges and develop new processes and best practices.  There are a number of wiki programs available.

FourSquare Contest (Location Based Technology) — Great for scavenger hunts, or trivia contests.  Fosters attendee engagement and builds buzz for a conference.

Question:  What social media best practices have you adopted with your events?  How have they benefited your attendees event experience?  Look forward to receiving your feedback!