Conference Liveblogging: Let Your Event Live Forever

TEDx Stanley Park by Cathy Browne

It happens all the time. Literally, it happens every time you have an event. You and your team work together, perhaps for months, even years, promoting and sharing and engaging and then all of a sudden it’s here, showtime, and then it’s over, you’re exhausted, and everything you did becomes a slowly fading memory. Insights, personalities, moments, all scattering to the four winds or scrolling back into the distance on someone’s social media accounts.

But there’s a solution.

Liveblogging is an effective, affordable way to help your event stand out from the crowd, for all time. A liveblog of the event on your own website can let those spontaneous, you-had-to-be-there moments live on and be shared across all social media platforms, giving your event more depth and reach than it could otherwise ever approach. You can use the liveblog of last year’s event in the publicity for this year’s event, and so on and so on. People who couldn’t make it can live vicariously through the liveblog and find the motivation to pre-reserve for the next time (link included in the liveblog, of course).

By bringing in tweets, Instagrams, and other social media shared by actual participants and audience members, a liveblog brings an ongoing sense of buy-in among your community, enabling them all to become spontaneous evangelists for your hard work and the people who shared that experience. I generally sit off to one side in the audience where people can see I’m media, working away, but where I am not interrupting the flow of your event.

I’m one of Canada’s most experienced bloggers, having been at this since the turn of the millennium. No, literally. And I’ve been working with social media since 2003, long before we had words for it. My personal blog has been studied as part of the curriculum in three different university New Media programs, and I’m President Emerita of the Social Media Club of Vancouver.

My prior liveblogging events have included academic conferences, Occupy Vancouver, nonprofit happenings, real estate conferences, sales training events, networking meetups, social media camps, my own Shebeen Club literary gathering, and more. Tools I have used at events include CoverItLive, Storify, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare/Swarm. It’s a matter of what works for you and your event.

Want to hear from a satisfied customer? Ping me and I’ll put you in touch, and of course I have testimonials.

Strategic research and pre-blogging allows me to include links to speakers’ own social media accounts, images, and websites that go live as the event begins. Contents will of course be customized to highlight the organizers’ and speakers’ priorities, and will bring in content from the audience both onsite and on social media.

I, personally, love conferences, particularly if they are in fields about which I’m in the dark. The learning experience is what makes it fun for me.

Drop me a line and let’s talk about what liveblogging can bring to your event, both the day of and into the future.