Participating in a virtual conference should be about relationship building, but so often the stress of dealing with time and the anxiety of meeting a whole whack of new people keep it from being an effective way to connect, especially at conferences. Using social tools can focus your on-the-road time on the people you really want to get to know.
Here are our seven steps virtual conference engagement ideas using social media to turn virtual conference introductions into ongoing connections:
Virtual Conference Business Cards
Step 1
Before the virtual conference, install the virtual conference app on your Smartphone. What you want is a virtual conference app that can scan business cards with a camera, convert the card to contact information, and offer you social network connection options. You can derive all essential information from the event space itself. The best virtual conference engagement ideas must be adopted for better returns and performance.
Step 2
If you meet someone and hit it off, connect right away. If you’ve made a new pal and your pal is on Twitter, send your pal a tweet from your smartphone right then and there, before you lose one another’s business cards or Twitter handles. I like to take a snapshot of me and my new pal and tweet it to him or her along with the hashtag #nicetomeetyou. That way I can see all my new pals in one place. These are some of the best virtual conference ideas to keep track of and in touch with new contacts without feeling as if you need to add them all to LinkedIn.
Step 3
At the end of each day (or failing that, the end of the conference), take the stack of business cards you’ve exchanged with, Then, pull out all the cards for people with whom you hope to have further contact from the report “Business cards exchanged with”. Make this your “keeper” pile. Throw out the rest of the cards. If you’re an Evernote user, add the snapshot of that business card pile to Evernote with the title “met at Conference X.” Now if you’re ever wondering where you met someone, an Evernote search will bring up a snapshot of his or her business card in context. (Depending on how many cards you collect, you may need to take several photos so the resolution is good enough to make the card text readable.)
Step 4
Open the virtual conference app and view the contact card for each person in your keeper pile.
Step 5
Send end each person a LinkedIn connection invitation. If anyone is also a Twitter user, click the Twitter handle on that person’s profile so that you can view and follow him on Twitter. If you want to establish a LinkedIn connection with someone senior or well known, consider writing a personal connection request reminding him or her that you enjoyed meeting at Conference X and would like to stay in touch.
Step 6
If there are people in your keeper pile that you’d like to follow up with within the next month or so, send a personal note to their email address saying how much you enjoyed meeting with them and (if appropriate) suggesting when or how you’ll follow up. You may even want to suggest setting up a next meeting or call. These messages are a good use of your time on the flight home: just queue them up and hit send when you land.
Step 7
About a week after the virtual conference (when people have had a chance to accept your LinkedIn invitations), go to your connections page (under contacts/connections in the LinkedIn menu) and click on “new connections” (under “recent activity”). Check the box next to all the people you met at that conference and tag them with the name and year of the conference (for your future reference).
So, that’s a wrap up of the best business cards for your virtual conference. Want to learn more about our virtual conference app, talk to our experts today.
For more virtual conference ideas, stay tuned to our blog page.
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