How to cover an event successfully

Written by Fani Sánchez

We all love to tweet when we attend an Online Marketing event and write summary chronicles about it. It is our way of being even more connected to the rest of the attendees, sharing opinions, enriching ourselves with those of others and making ourselves known. Whether you are participating on behalf of an agency or attending in a personal capacity, it is advisable to follow some guidelines to get organized and not be caught by surprise by any last-minute changes. In this article I will share my knowledge about event coverage, including the secrets to liveblogging that we love to do at Human Level.

Days prior to the event

The days before the event you should leave several things ready to make sure that everything goes smoothly on the day itself.

Follow the event on our blog

You know that at Human Level we like to do what we call liveblogging (also known as streamposting, liveposting or whatever anglomodern terms you can think of). The idea is to summarize each of the key moments of an event in individual posts, practically in real time. For example, in an event composed of different presentations, we could summarize in a post each of the presentations and publish them as soon as they are finished.
If you decide to jump into the pool with this practice, here are a couple of tips:

One of the main keys to make this work really immediate is the forecast. We should know what you are going to do each of the posts about (we may not be able to do an article on all of them) and in advance, leave the entries corresponding to the summaries of the talks as drafts on our blog.

• Titleulo. Since content schedules often change at the last minute, the only way to do this without surprises is to headline the entry with the formula “Summary of the talk by [Autor] at [Evento] [año]”. The name of the entry will be the same or even shorter if possible: “[Autor] at [Evento] [año]”.
• Tags. The main label will be the one corresponding to the event. It could be “[evento] [año]”or just “[evento]. This way, we will not be as precise but we will make sure that the page has a lot of content (from this and other years) that will reinforce the positioning of the tag .
• SEO fields. Make sure you have completed the title and description beforehand.
• Featured image. The entry should have a prominent image that represents the article well. It can be a photo of the speaker, the logo of the congress specifying the year… Afterwards, you can exchange it for a photo of the speaker giving the talk.
• Enriched formats. Complete the enriched fragments if you use them. OpenGraph, Twitter Cards…

The rest is up to your improvisation and agility: bolding, hierarchy titles, insertion of images or presentations of the talk and, in short, all those elements that cannot be foreseen or guessed. You can publish and disseminate without all this (but with a minimum of qualities that provide readability to the article), and edit the entry in the following minutes to finalize the details.

The main key to successful liveblogging of an event is anticipation, although a good Wi-Fi connection will help a lot.

Compilation of our blog entries

It is in your best interest create a shared document preferably through Google Drive (several people can work online at the same time) that collects different fields about your blog entriesThe following information will be provided: Twitter user name of the speaker, title of the talk, original URL and tag for the different social networks and even for the tag that will be used as a thread… This way, when you publish, all you have to do is copy and paste the URL and you’re done!

Internet connection on the premises

Repeat after me:

I will not rely on the Wi-Fi connection at the site.

If it exists. In fact, sometimes you can’t even trust your own mobile connection. Festival-goers and fans of any kind of mass event in general can attest to the fact that when hundreds of people congregate in a small space and want to use the Wi-Fi signal simultaneously, it does not respond. And at that moment…yes gentlemen, at that moment panic sets in. Because it won’t throw all your work in the trash either, but you will no longer meet the deadlines.

For these occasions it is not superfluous:

• Make sure you have enough data connection to last the entire congress on devices such as your cell phone or tablet.
• Learn how to use your cell phone as a modem for your laptop or tablet.
• You will need a prepaid USB modem to use on these occasions.

Announce your attendance

It is recommended that in the days leading up to the event you publicize your attendance through all the channels you use on a regular basis. This will create expectation about them. Mention in all publications that refer to the event the official profiles of the event in social networks and use the corresponding hashtags.

Information about hashtags

A few days before, hashtags will already be swarming the Web. It is very likely that there are multiple hashtag options for the same event: official channels promote some but followers are a movement of their own that will generate similar ones spontaneously. I would recommend you to create your pre-event posts with the official hashtag, and during the event, test the use of the rest and use them based on their popularity.

Tool configuration

Install, configure the profiles and tools with which you are going to interact during the event, on all the devices you carry with you: cell phones, laptops, tablets… This way you can always use one of them when the other one fails you. Monitor the official account of the event and all the hasgtags related to it. If you have all this prepared, you will go a long way. I recommend tools like Hootsuite as it has an app for both Android and iOS and you can also manage profiles of many social networks from it.

Technical equipment

If you want to be the envy of the barnyard and win some favors and friends, bring an extension cord with multiple socket entries. Probably in the event they have foreseen this issue, yes; but there are many of you and there is not enough for everyone. It is very possible that at the rate you are going to tweet, post or take pictures, your battery will die very soon, and that is something we can’t afford. Check also that your chargers are working perfectly. Carrying multiple devices is something that doesn’t cost you anything (we usually always carry our cell phones with us) and can get you out of a jam.

During the event

Use good, nice and cheap tools.

There are many tools that will facilitate the correct transmission of the event. Some of the fundamental ones:

• Google Drive: We will use it to work online with the rest of our team, if you have not gone alone to the event; and also to work faster between multiple devices. For example, to upload images you take with your cell phone and attach them to your entries.
• Hootsuite: as we have already mentioned, it is a very useful tool when we want to disseminate through several social networks. In addition, not all tools have applications for mobile devices and ideally we would like to work with the same one on all our devices, so Hootsuite is ideal.
• SocialBro: important to monitor if you are gaining visibility on Twitter with the coverage of the event. Do your followers go up? Your interaction rate? Check it during the event to see if you should correct the trajectory of your strategy in situ.

Take images

Images of the event speakers during their talks and some of their most representative slides will help you illustrate your posts and make your tweets or publications more eye-catching. Don’t forget to take pictures. To have them quickly available from any device you can use Google Drive, Dropbox or any other Cloud system that is convenient for you.

Different social platforms

Blog

Although Twitter is the king in this streaming commenting on an event, you have seen that you can also give a lot of prominence to your blog. Whether you do liveblogging or not, it is always recommended that you write at least one article about the event on your website, if you have one.

If instead you choose to write several entries or do liveblogging, create a tag that unifies them all, such as the name of the event and the year, or just the name of the event. Link to this page from social networks and disseminate the various entries throughout the week to ensure a regular flow of visitors to your site.

Niche social networks

Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn… depending on the event, even Instagram, with its stories, would lend itself to it. Identify previously the social networks where the event and its attendees move and be present in them during the event, applying the frequency of publications that each of them requires.

Colorín, colorado

As you have seen, experience and trial and error are points that lead you to develop the superpower of foresight. Because our mothers used to say that foresight is worth two. Yes, she had been preparing us all her life for these events and we didn’t even know it…. Thanks mom!