Our events are generally local in reach and impact. How can we get more reach, engagement and impact by intelligently using social media platforms.

1. Super-Charge your Events with Social Media Integration
This ebook is written by Saurabh Pandey. Saurabh is the Founder and CEO of
dotConverse (www.dotConverse.com), a social media agency that works with an analytics and
metrics driven brand strategy to leverage social media effectiveness for their clients.
Saurabh is also an avid blogger and writes regularly at www.atomthought.com since 2008.
AtomThought.com is now India’s largest and first platform to address the needs and challenges
of the new age Chief Marketing Officer, or as we at atomthought.com have christened- the
Chief Marketing Technology Officer.
Saurabh has over 16 years of experience in Media, Internet and Telecom companies like Google
India, Bharti Airtel, Ibibo and OLX where he created and kick-started various world class
products and services.
Catch Saurabh Pandey on:
/atomthought
/pandeysaurabh
/in/saurabhpandeygoogle

2. Super-Charge your Events with Social Media Integration
You are hosting or participating in an event or an exhibition. You have invested
your time, money and people to get the best of these events. Now, how do you get a little more
by integrating social media with your events?
Before we venture further, events are one of best ways to showcase your technology, products
and thought-leadership. Events also help you converse directly with the decision makers and
influencers.
But there are these challenges that you face today:
1. Events no longer attract the same physical attendance like they used to 5 years back.
2. Events are almost always limited in impact. In terms of being local or being able to
accommodate only so many guests.
3. How to device new ways to create pre-event publicity.
4. How to think beyond Press Releases to create an echo-effect so that even after the
event is concluded, you could still see people collaborating or engaging with you
We will try and answer all these and more in pages below and help you get the best out of your
events by way of social integration.
To start, let’s divide the time duration into 3 parts:
1. PRE-EVENT DURATION
2. EVENT DURATION
3. POST-EVENT DURATION

3. Super-Charge your Events with Social Media Integration
PRE-EVENT DURATION:
Here is a list of things that you must do to engage and spread awareness about your event in
advance.
Set up an event page on your website- You get a few hundred or few thousand people on your
website. All these can help you in some way or other. You can pop-up a quick form to collect
questions, to check intent of participation or to get an insight into topics that interest
prospective attendees.
The questions, ideas and insights are great way to engage a diverse set of audience right from
the beginning as also helps you create relevant content for the event and takeaway for your
product or international teams.
Create a blog or a series of blog-posts under your event category- Once you have triggered an
interest in people, try and tell the world how you are preparing for the event and how you are
using the insights collected from your surveys to make the most of it. Post photographs,
videos, polls, highlight people who gave great ideas, introduce speakers and explain agenda.
You can also give glimpses of past events.
Twitter: Publicize the event via # tags 2weeks before a event. Small tweets about speakers,
agenda, location and maps, pics etc. –all with a specific hash tag. E.g. click here to know the
direction of #PicSmart Venue. http: bit.ly….
Twitter: The second most important thing to do is to follow all invitees and speakers on twitter.
Mention them in your relevant tweets periodically. Re-tweet their relevant tweets. Don’t forget
to put your hash tags.

4. Super-Charge your Events with Social Media Integration
EVENT DURATION
Twitter: Can you do a Contest? The first 30 people who register at the booth get a free T-shirt.
As soon as the event starts – This is the most apt time to keep tweeting hourly about next
speaker or topic alongwith timings and location. Also tweet every 15-20 minutes about
interesting snippets from the talks.
Twitter- Contest again: Ask people to ask questions on a topic. The best questions win
something every hour. And they are also put up to the panelists. Imagine your event now has
questions and participation from remote corners of the world. Not to forget that our event
content also gets enriched.
Track your hash tags- follow people who are using your hash tags and re-tweeting.
YouTube and Google Plus (hangout): Live stream or lagged streaming of the event on the blog
and YouTube (Read more on how you do it absolutely Free and Easy here:
http://atomthought.com/2012/12/2-free-live-broadcast-tools-for-your-business/)
Flickr: All the photographs should go on Flickr with appropriate tags and description.
Facebook- Integrate Live streaming on Facebook as also the Flickr photos-through a 3rd party
app. It’s extremely easy to do so, and is very effective.
Facebook: Start an Ask the Expert tab throughout the duration of event- Let people ask
question on Facebook or twitter- and the expert answers them or gets an answer from panel
and posts.
Infact Facebook becomes one of the most important elements in this strategy for two reasons:
1. It’s extremely easy to integrate external channels like Photos, Videos, Q&As and Blogs
2. Nothing can beat the viral effect of Facebook. It can enhance your reach and make your
event talkable like anything owing to a huge audience and the ability to leverage their
social graph.

5. Super-Charge your Events with Social Media Integration
POST-EVENT DURATION
Blog- Now you have tons of material to post over the next 7-10 days in the form of Posts,
Photos, Videos and Q&As etc. Publish them
Slideshare: Put up all the presentation on slideshare on free viewing. Create thought-leadership
and get seen by influencers in addition to whoever attended your event.
Twitter: Very important: tweet link to pages from where people can download free
whitepapers, presentation derived from the event.
eMail: Of course send everyone a link to download stuff (as you did on twitter)-Put a
newsletter subscription form which people can fill (optionally) before downloading
Twitter & Blog: tweet a follow -up survey on how the attendees felt and how the experience
could be improved the next time
Linked In & Quora: The questions that people have raised at the event or on twitter- can be put
up on LinkedIn Answers and Quora. You can also post answers that you received at the event
and also hope for others to pitch-in with their thoughts.
This is going to stay there forever- not only are you creating thought-leadership by putting-in
relevant questions and answers but also igniting participation from a whole set of influencers
who may not have participated in your event.
YouTube: Release an edited version of your real time broadcast. It will look great and as you
know with the tablet and mobile revolution- video content becomes very effective.