2 ways to newsjack a conference event for leads and traffic, even if you do not attend. By Alan O’Rourke

Our first guest post by the talented and extremely helpful Alan O’Rourke. Reformed Designer. Author of 30 Days To Sell http://goo.gl/UOjzYS  Runs http://beautiful-email-newsletters.com  & VP Growth @OnePageCRM.

Looking at my analytics for the work website last year I noticed one piece of content stand out above all the rest. The blog post listed the top takeaways from a conference. A conference in another country that I never attended. Do you want to know how I did it and how to get conference attendees to share it?

At the core of this process is a simple but powerful little web app called If This Then That (ifttt.com). The app connects different services together  and automates tasks. For example I have it connected with my website and social accounts. When I post new content to the website IFTTT will automatically post a link to that content across Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Email and others. So IF new blog post – THEN share link on social.

In the case of the popular blog post I asked the IFTTT to track a two day conference in London. Meanwhile I carried on with my daily work in the next country over (Ireland). At the end of the conference I spent about an hour preparing a new blog post of the top takeaways from the event and sent it to the attendees and others who could not attend. I also got a handy list of people to follow and a good reason for them to follow me back.

Here is the step by step breakdown how to do it:

• Find out if an event has a twitter hashtag to track people talking about it. In this example we will use #SalesKickoff16 which was on last week.

2. In IFTTT, I set up a new project and connected it with my Google Docs. The instructions, called recipes in IFTTT, look like this.

“IF someone on twitter tweets with the hashtag #SalesKickoff16, then add it to a new row in a Google spreadsheet.”

• When the event is finished open the spreadsheet and pull out the best quotes and insights to use in a blog post. It will take you about an hour to do this and format it nicely so it is not a wall of text.
  Tip: You can filter the spreadsheet to remove retweets and duplicates so you have a shorter list to work from. Or you can count the retweets to see what others thought were the most important takeaways.
• Give your post a brief introduction and publish. Ideally publish just as the conference is finishing or at the end of each day when interest is high.
• Tweet a link to your post using the conference hastag #SalesKickoff and attach an image. On twitter you can tag people without adding to the character limit on your tweet. So make sure to tag the conference organisers and anyone you mention in your post. The speakers will most likely retweet your link to their own audience.
• In twitter follow all the people tweeting from the conference using the hashtag. If they look at your profile they will see your post and assume you were at the conference too.
• Use this content promotion plan to promote your post.

Your post does not have to be exhaustive. Top 10 takeaways is fine. Readers appreciate the brevity. Avoid having the post looking very text heavy by breaking it up with some images from the event. Make sure you credit and link images to the source. You can also play with the structure of the post by grouping takeaways by topic or speaker.

Bonus tip: Republish the content in other ways. We did some quote cards like this to make them more shareable during the conference.

That’s it. Of course it will not work for all conferences as twitter usage varies across industries and countries.

The second way to newsjack a conference is from the company Heystaks.com.

Seeing all the overseas attendees heading to the Dublin Web summit Heystacks produced a handy guide for visitors . The guide combined data from different sources on Dublin, transport, where to eat, night life, details from the event, tips on networking, even the weather. All collected together in one handy guide for attendees.

Of course you need to give your name and email address to download it.

The guide was loved and approved by conference organisers and at one point ranked second in the search results for the event.

Download the checklist

This handy checklist has all the steps in an easy to follow format. Follow these to see results for your next conference.

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Alan Profile:

Alan is an ex artist, ex film maker, ex designer, ex product manager and ex entrepreneur.

VP of Marketing here at OnePageCRM.

Author of 2, soon to be 3 marketing books.

Almost made it to the big time as an extra on TVs A Tale At bedtime with Podge and Rodge playing snooker player #2 but they didn’t show his good left side.

Find me on twitter @alanorourke

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