Preparing for Dreamforce 2014?
You and 130,000 others; all of whom will soon be descending on the streets of the San Francisco financial district to network, promote, learn… and share their insights on social media.
That’s right, at marketing events as large as Dreamforce, social media is more than a past time — it’s one of the most effective ways to tie your offline and online efforts together. Let’s take a look at a few ways social media can help you get more out of your event experience, and how you can prepare ahead of time. And don’t forget to check out our Social Media for B2B Events Handbook for more tips, best practices and worksheets!
Share Your Favorite Highlights
This is a great way to connect with other event-goers, drive engagement with your handle, and accrue new followers. The keynotes will drive a flood of social sharing, so pull up the hashtag feed and join the conversation! Sharing valuable insights is a great way to amass a large number of engagements — and on a feed that some of the top minds in the industry are likely to be following.
Pre-event preparation: Make sure you have the session titles and speaker handles on hand before you head in (the worksheet below can help!). If you have this information ready to go, you’ll be able to share memorable quotes and insights quickly — and not miss portions of the presentation while you’re scrambling to look up the speaker’s name.
Build Relationships
Listening and building relationships is what social media is all about, so make sure you’re using your networks to enhance the relationship-building process as you make new connections at Dreamforce. If a visitor has a great experience stopping by your booth (and particularly if you just handed them some awesome swag), you have a window of opportunity to turn them into an instant fan of your brand. Don’t let it pass you by! Follow them, thank them for coming by, and keep the conversation going.
Pre-event preparation: Don’t wait until you get there to start building relationships! Start monitoring the #DF14 hashtag now, and follow people who are talking about preparing for the conference. You can open the door for building relationships before you even touch down in San Francisco.
Cut Through the Noise
To give you perspective, during peak hours at last year’s event the #DF13 hashtag was trending right around 3,000 tweets an hour (!) —and this year’s conference promises to be even bigger. So how do you keep from getting completely lost in all the noise? Pictures (and particularly those with people in them) are going to be the most effective content for capturing attention in a rapidly moving feed. They’re also a great way to get a lot of information across quickly (without exceeding your 140-character limit), so share a picture of your booth location, some of the great swag you’re giving away, or just of a few of your employees enjoying the event. ‘
Pre-event preparation: Take a few pictures of your booth (and the employees who will be working it) during the set-up process. This is a great way to start getting the word out about your presence at the conference and let prospects know where to find you — before the hashtag feed goes into information overload.
