L is for… Local Events

L is for… Local Events

You should use your social media presence to complement your real life networking. When you attend local events, check out the buzz on social media before, after and during the event. It doesn’t have to just be networking events, if you are attending anything locally in your town or city why no check out what is being said on social media and engage in the local community by using the town or city hashtag and any event specific hastag.

Attending a Local Event

Attending local events can also be a great way to meet your online contacts in real life (or reconnect with contacts that you’ve not met in person for a while).

Before you attend an event, make sure you:

• look out for any social media buzz before the event and join in
• create a twitter list for local events and organisations
• follow the organisers on all platforms / platform of choice
• announce to your network that you are attending and check out who else might be going
• invite other contacts that might be interested
• connect, follow and chat with other attendees.

At the Event: Now that it has becoming more acceptable to be on your phone at events and people are expecting you to be “live tweeting” events that you are attending – you may want to consider your own strategy for use of social media at events and whether you are planning to engage during the event. If so how are you going to engage and what prep are you going to do.

After the Event: This is the perfect time to thank speakers and comment on the event as well as follow up with other attendees that you met at the event.

Organising a Local Event

If you are organising a local event, using hashtags on social media can be a great way to network to attendees and boost visibility. For larger events (such as a conference) you may wish to create a standalone hashtag. For smaller events you may want to create a branded hashtag or a shorter more generic hashtag to use for your more general events.

You should use the same hashtag across all platforms. An event hashtag when used well brings together all the online discussions about your event and connects all your attendees online. A well-chosen and well-promoted hashtag also increases the online visibility of your event and encourages other social media users to join the conversation.

Use your hashtag everywhere!

Thank you for stopping by during the A to Z Challenge.

Do you use your online networking and IRL networking together?