How To Attend A Conference When You Can’t Physically Be There…
- Do you love conferences but don’t have the time or budget to go to them all?
- Do you want to learn more about the latest in your industry?
- Do you want to make new friends in the digital space?
While we would love to go to every single conference, it’s just not always realistic for many reasons. Yes, you WILL miss out on the organic interactions with real people at the conferences, but you can still benefit from a live conference even if you can’t physically be there. You just have to shift your focus a little.
- Buy a virtual ticket. Most conferences (including SMMW and NASPA!) offer virtual tickets that let you listen live, or listen afterward to the speakers. If your goal is to learn about the industry, this is a great way to soak in the knowledge on your own schedule.
- Research The Speakers. Do a quick search through the speakers for ones that you relate most to. Then, go search for them on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and the like to see what they’re all about. Even though you aren’t going to be live with them in real life, you can still get to know them and strike up a friendship digitally via social media.
- Follow the conference and conference leaders on Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. These are the top social media apps where speakers post real-time posts and short videos. Make sure you know what the conference’s hashtag is so that you can follow what the leaders are posting.
- Sign Up For Notifications of Live Video. As live video becomes more and more popular, make sure you have set up any notifications on Facebook for live video broadcasts!
- Interact with attendees’ tweets and posts. Follow the conference hashtag(s) to see what others are posting about the sessions. While you can listen to the sessions yourself, it’s always good to see what other people are saying about the tone and mood of the session.
- Connect on LinkedIn! Go back and revisit the conference a week or so after the conference and connect with key people you “met” digitally because of the conference. Sometimes connecting with people after the dust has settled a bit allows them some mental space to see and respond to your request and messages. Send speakers a message telling them something tangible that you learned from their session and start up a friendship.
- Sign up for next year! Often there are offers to sign up for next year’s conference shortly after this year’s event. Keep it on the radar to make sure you grab the best ticket price.
- Interact with the speakers, event leaders, and new friends throughout the year. Remember that while a conference is a blast, those same fun people are available all year to have as guests on your blogs, videos, and podcasts. They also could become good friends!
We love going to conferences, but life doesn’t always let us go to every year to the ones we want. If you can’t make it to the best social media conferences this season, it still is possible to get a lot of benefit out of them from afar!