Increasingly social media web sites are being used by convention and trade show managers to promote the event and facilitate communication about the event itself and also as a means for attendees and exhibitors to link up at trade show displays or other locations.
If you don’t know your Twitter from your Squidoo, here is a brief guide to what is being used at the moment.
Twitter is a messaging system which allows you to post an answer to the general question “What are you doing?” – sounds simple and it is, but how can this be used in conjunction with your convention attendance?
First of all, you can use this to keep your contacts and audience updated with the latest breaking developments regarding the show and your attendance – if you decide you are having a new product line or, what if your booth address gets changed at the last moment? Twitter will take care of the announcement for you and it will also send text messages to cell phones too. Excellent tool for on-the-day show announcements and devlopments.
Launched as a social networking site for students, now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon.
With Facebook you can share photographs, messages, information and manipulate the presentation as well as join or form groups of interested users; some of these groups are extremely large!
IAEE and others have formed groups for Facebook members to join and contribute and you can establish your own group to include your customers and prospects as well as colleagues.
A networking tool – you complete a profile which feels like you are applying for a job, and post this up on the site – people then make connections to you based upon past and present business relations.
Event organizers have cottoned on to the event news feature that the latest version has included so all of your connections and contacts can be updated at the same time if something changes. You can arrange to announce your own events to which will give you control over what is distributed through the medium.
YouTube
YouTube allows users to upload videos, whether they have taken them from somewhere else off the web or their own home movies.
Several trade associations and businesses have created video for YouTube which has been uploaded including information on careers, the general business or association work as well as product information and “How to” type infomercials.
Simple and easy to use and this puts a human face on your web activities to share with colleagues and business contacts.