Key takeaways:
Videos with speakers and attendees help promote each event
Social media is a powerful way to drive awareness and registrations
Socialive makes it easy to record or go live from each event
Everyone who runs events knows that the “Field of Dreams” logic of “build it, and they will come” doesn’t apply to their trade.
A significant marketing motion is usually needed to get people to register for a conference, sign up for a digital event, or promote a webinar. Setting up and running an entire campaign — emails, social posts, advertising, and everything in between — can be complicated.
What if the organizers themselves had a way to boost attendance?
While the dedicated marketers and promotional teams have the resources and ability to boost attendance, there’s a simple way the organizers can help get people through the door. Plus, it can be an additional arrow in the promotional quiver.
Let the people organizing the event and attendees speak for themselves in short, authentic videos straight from the event itself.
How video helps promote events
People love to hear from people. Novel concept, we know.
The people who will participate in the event — whether a speaker or fellow attendees — can help sell the event to others.
The look and feel of the tradeshow floor, the location, and the explanation of “what attendees get” are great to know, but the people make each event truly special. Getting those people on camera goes the extra mile by allowing them to tell their own stories.
Promoting keynotes and sessions to drive registrations
Your speakers are your strongest advocates for your event. Especially if you’ve procured a notable person or an influencer to give the keynote, you want their network to know about the event.
An easy way to tap into their audience is to have your speakers record a quick promotional video ahead of the event. Here’s a quick sample script you can use:
“Hi there! I’m [Name And Title], and excited to be here at [Name Of The Event And Location]! We’re going to have a great time highlighting [Main Points To Get Across About The Event]. Make sure you’re there for my session [Title Of Session, Date And Time, And Location Of Session]. I can’t wait to see you there!”
It not only works for self-promotion, but a quick video like this also encourages presenters to meet with one another and create some teaser content for panel discussions.
Jo Reynolds of the Royal Society of Chemistry did exactly that with a quick greeting on location from a conference. She quickly introduced herself and Dr. Zuriati Zakaria, who treated Reynolds’ audience to a preview of their upcoming roundtable on her social channels.
Showcasing highlights from previous events
A recap of previous events can be just as powerful as a teaser of what’s to come.
We know many marketing teams will head to events to create slick highlight videos, but there’s room for more authentic, audience-driven content. It doesn’t need to be the best-produced video; it can be a few interviews with some B-roll mixed in.
Again, turning to the Royal Society of Chemistry, their man-on-the-street interviews with participants in the Broadening Horizons program highlighted the event on their social media. The participants spoke about the event’s value and provided a perspective few others can give.
Engaging your audience for each event
It’s well understood that each promotional asset helps grow awareness for the event and increases the likelihood that you reach new people.
It’s also beneficial to bring back people familiar with your events. You may need to remind your existing audience of the value of your event. With shrinking budgets, each bit of travel is under further scrutiny.
These promo videos and highlights are a great way to reach attendees from previous years and give them a reason to return. Video can also help build and maintain a tight-knit community around your events.
How to quickly create event promo content
OK, now for the practical part — how do we create a promo video? With Socialive, it’s simple.
Record, edit, and share snackable social clips
Socialive presents several easy-to-use, flexible recording options, regardless of where your speaker or event team is. It doesn’t matter if your speaker is on the road, in their home office, hanging around the office’s recording studio, or straight from their booth at the event.
You can guide a speaker in a recording session, where you are in a virtual studio setup, and they join from the field. Or you can meet them where they are and use your device to film on location. Or you can have them record their piece, which automatically uploads to your recordings library and then removes it from their device.
It’s all up to your preferred workflow.
After recording the take, it’s instantly ready to edit within the platform. The great thing about Socialive’s Editor — you don’t need to be skilled in video editing to use it. The AI-powered editor automatically creates a transcript, you edit the words like you would a document, add some branding, and your video is ready to go. It’s really that easy to edit a video!
After editing, you can instantly transfer the content wherever you need it. LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Hootsuite, Brightcove, Google Drive, you name it!
It’s straightforward to record a speaker, add some polish, and get it where it needs to be in just a few easy steps.
Going live from the event floor
While a recorded video is a nice way to get viewers to interact with your event content, a livestream is an even more powerful engagement tool.
Rather than finding a quiet space for a sit-down interview or editing together a piece, you can just pull in a few prominent people from the tradeshow floor to give their take on some of the big themes from the event. After all, it is the most authentic way to showcase your event.
Socialive also makes it easy to pull off a quick, studio-quality livestream. You can connect a camera and external microphone to a laptop or just use a mobile device as your input feed. Either way, the entire production sits in Socialive rather than feeding into a full video production suite.
Without any clunky hardware, you can livestream straight to your audience on YouTube, LinkedIn, or a number of other channels.
How Zebra Technologies uses social media for events
Zebra Technologies has made this their bread and butter for event promotions.
During in-person events, their social media team works with the event teams to livestream directly from the event. Their event coordinator serves as host, grabs a couple of presenters live from the event, and livestreams directly to LinkedIn.
While this does include coordination with the social team, Zebra’s approach is straightforward and easy to implement for all event teams. If you have people at your event and at least a mobile device, you can create high-quality video content from your event with Socialive.
Driving leads and registrations from events
Creating promotional materials — whether for an in-person conference or a digital event — can be a bit of a pain. But with Socialive, making a promo video that helps drive attendance is easy and straightforward.
It’s not enough to put out a static graphic on social media or to send a few emails. Your speakers are your best advocates for the event, so let them do the talking.
This playbook has worked well for a number of Socialive customers, such as JLL, which saw more than 13,000 people sign up for a single webinar in the fall of 2023.
Putting together an event is hard, but Socialive makes sure the promotional cycle doesn’t have to be. Once your speaker records their piece, it’s easy to edit the video down into additional pieces of content, such as blog posts and even promotional copy. You can even use the automated transcriptions as a rough “first draft” for your copy.
Check out some of the ways Socialive users have turned their longer virtual events, such as webinars and livestreams, into a complete content campaign in our guide to driving demand from LinkedIn Live.
