Professional conferences like Exchange offer attendees tremendous direct value. Aside from the direct learnings and networking opportunities, smartly leveraging social media can be a difference maker in professional development. With the right preparations, you can make social media compound your conference experience. Here’s what you need to do …
Set Yourself Up for Success Before the Conference
Failing to properly prepare is the most common pitfall. Financial services professionals have a host of responsibilities, and making sure your social media is up to date is an easy task to put to the side. Don’t fall into that trap. Update everything that needs updating, and then, crucially, start talking about the conference. A month or two in advance of a conference is the ideal time to begin alerting your network you are going.
This way, others in your network who are also going can include you in their plans. Additionally, this gives you something of substance to talk about on social media. The content churn can be challenging for some, so take advantage of the opportunity.
Learn the Hashtags & Increase Your Social Media Posting Cadence
Generally speaking, you don’t want to overpost on social media. However, when you are attending an industry event, you can ignore that practice. Post frequently, learn the hashtags being used by event organizers and sponsors, and deploy them early and often. This helps others at the conference connect to you digitally, and shows your clients you are continuing to grow and evolve your knowledge. Accordingly, it codifies your expertise to them.
Don’t Just Connect With Others, Engage
Meeting a new contact and connecting on LinkedIn is great, but if you go the extra mile and engage with some of their past posts, you’ll stand out. It’ll help showcase your desire to be part of a network and community as opposed to merely self-interested in your own network and own ideas.
Get a Conference Bestie
Whether you are meeting friends at the conference, going there with colleagues or contacts, or flying solo, finding a new “conference bestie” can help you break out of your usual social media patterns. Being open to others can be challenging, and some folks are slow to make new friends. Conferences are an opportunity to just roll with someone whose energy you like even if you don’t know them well. Because they happen in condensed time, don’t be afraid to make fast friendships. Finding a conference buddy can help you divide and conquer different sessions, process learnings, and generate fun content for social media.
Leverage the Conference for Social Media Content
The iPhone made everyone a photographer. Similarly, social media has made everyone a blogger. There is an old-school line of thought that says professionals should jealously guard knowledge from competitors. In actuality, sharing knowledge is critical to growing your practice and being seen as an authority. When you learn something new and fascinating at a conference, write about it! Add your own thoughts. Tag in the people involved, if applicable.
Even after a conference is over, you have the option of writing about how you felt about the event after reflection, and where you’ve been able to apply specific learnings.
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
Even your professional social media should showcase fun, human moments every now and again. Not everything has to be an interesting learning or a picture of you with a finance thought leader. Sometimes you can just share something funny, amusing, or delightful. It is hard to make human connections if you don’t occasionally remind folks that you are human. Have fun. Fun is infectious and will draw people to you.
Register for Exchange here.
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