Real-time posting on social media: 10 tips

Panel discussions, conferences, webinars — these events are major time and financial commitments for any organization. And that’s why, to realize their full value and expose the content to a wider audience, it is important to leverage their content through social media. But promoting an event on social media in real time is not as easy as it sounds. Careful planning and coordination will help.

Here are the Top 10 tips to consider when preparing to post to social media during an event.

Pre-event preparations

Tip 1:  Determine the point person responsible for creating the posts and, if necessary, approving them. If creating posts and approving posts need to be done by separate people, consider using a social media tool such as Sprout Social or Hootsuite. These applications allow multiple people to log on to one account and edit, schedule and approve posts for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. Be sure to also establish any necessary tags or campaigns on social media scheduling tools to evaluate the success of your live posts.

Tip 2:  Prepare posts before the event. While catching those great quotes on the fly helps to capture the heart of the discussion, not all posting has to be done in real time. Gather as much information on the event as possible beforehand, such as slides that will be presented. This allows the creation of posts to fill in between attributable quotes and other key moments, and ensures that posts align with your organization’s social media content strategy.

Tip 3:  Publicize your plans to post live on social media. By alerting followers, it will encourage people to watch the feed if they are interested in the topic and to interact with your social channels. Use relevant social media handles to engage with people and institutions connected to the event. Also, promote your social media presence in marketing collateral as well. It will help to drive both current followers and new followers to your social channels.

Event organizer and speaker permissions

Tip 4:  Do the groundwork ahead of time to gain the necessary approvals — it is important to establish a protocol. This includes acquiring permission from the event organizer and ensuring that speakers approve of posting images of them on your social channels. Have a checklist of the people whose permissions you need to gain and reach out well in advance of the event. A helpful tip is to  feature only speakers in posts and images. While a group shot is always great, it may require a number of permissions to post. Also, gaining approval for attributable quotes from your company’s participants in advance can help speed along the process and create social media content that is ready to post.  

Social media content strategy

Tip 5:  Use multiple types of posts during an event: direct quotes from speakers or presenters, photos, retweets from others, behind-the-scenes videos of speakers, questions to your followers on the topic of discussion, etc. Also, monitor the event hashtag and the other speakers’ social handles to get inspiration from other types of content being posted during an event. Bottom line: Adding context to your posts can help to draw in those who might not be in the room to hear the full discussion.

Tip 6:  When live tweeting, make sure that your style guidelines and standards are maintained. It is easy to get caught up in the moment and introduce a typo when trying to keep up with the pace of capturing a discussion live on social media; however, it is important to keep in mind that every insight does not have to be posted. Being selective with quotes and high-quality photos will ensure that standards are maintained and will also project to your followers that you are being considerate with your posting. It also helps to have a single person in charge of approving and scheduling the posts, so that the tone of voice is maintained throughout the stream of content.

Audience engagement on social media

Tip 7:  Prior to an event, research and follow all the relevant social media handles and interact with them. Throughout the event, monitor your channels and the relevant hashtags in order to acknowledge when someone engages with you during the course of a discussion. Asking questions, planning a live Twitter poll or posting a particularly interesting comment are all ways to change a stream of posts into an actual discussion.

Tip 8:  Establish and use a consistent hashtag. Doing so will not only help with tracking your posts following the event, but it can also alert you to engagement if other people catch on and include your hashtag as well. Again, promote the relevant hashtag in advance with all posts leading up to the event and in marketing collateral, to establish it as the “official” company hashtag for the event. If an event organizer is using its own hashtag to promote the event, that hashtag should also be included in posts. This will help to elevate the visibility of your social channels. Keep in mind that unofficial hashtags may arise during the conversation, so be sure to monitor and include those as well in the social media posts to be an active part of the discussion.

Post-event considerations

Tip 9:  Compile all the tweets that were created to see whether the content can be leveraged for other purposes, such as a blog post, a Q&A with one of the presenters, or an infographic with top highlights. A post-event poll about a particularly interesting point of discussion is also a possibility. A few weeks or months following the panel discussion or webinar, scheduling tweets or posts on LinkedIn that look back at the event and revisit some of the lessons learned can also help to repurpose and leverage the content.

Tip 10:  Lastly, keep the conversation going by following the other panel participants or those people who interacted with your social media accounts. Tailored thank-you posts tagging the event organizers, other panelists and those who participated in the online discussion during a panel can go a long way in maintaining current followers and encouraging new connections following the live tweeting of an event.

Need help developing your firm’s social media strategy? Learn more about Infinite Global’s social media services.

Shannon Dempsey is a senior account executive with Infinite Global, based in New York. She works with law firms and professional services organizations to drive media engagements and enhance visibility. Shannon can be reached at shannond@infiniteglobal.com.