Coverage of live events is becoming a much more reactive “thing”. We can access the internet pretty much anywhere at any time. Social media is predominantly accessed through your phone. Add these to an event and suddenly effective live social media coverage becomes an increasingly important activation tool for your brand followers.
Being at an event is a costly venture. You need people there to spread your message on brand, they need to be trained and knowledgeable. A display stand takes time and effort to design, build and maintain. Spaces need to be booked and wi-fi needs to be paid for. Food and drink is consumed, travel is expensed and you end up with a rather large bill.
This is of course in the name of lead generation, maybe direct sales at the show and increased brand awareness. Being at a trade show, for instance, can be a great way of achieving your marketing goals. But thanks to the technological world we live in, not only can you see the results of your effort (hopefully) in the weeks after a show, you can monitor the effectiveness live. Not just that, but great live coverage can lead people to the show itself who weren’t thinking about visiting. Or, appeal to those who are already there, to draw them to your display.
At Fox we do this through several methods. Our primary focus for live coverage is Twitter. We can tap into any official hashtags to interact with fans and visitors alike, but also then measure results. This can also incorporate quick 10-15 seconds Twitter videos, to further drive engagement. But a big key is images.
Every smartphone has a decent camera these days, so you can quickly and effectively tweet and image out to your audience in seconds. But we go one step further, with high-quality camera equipment that enables us to transfer a higher standard of image straight to our phones to then tweet immediately.
We can also use those images on Instagram too. By offering live tweets and regular Instagram updates, we can really drive your brand’s awareness in a very short period of time, with the added benefit of hopefully raising awareness of the event as a whole. This is especially useful if you are displaying for multiple days or planning on going back the next year.
Plus, who knows where the future will take us? Live streaming is on an upward trend, 360 video is very much en vogue and SnapChat continues to grow. We aim to keep up with the latest live trends to keep our coverage at the very pinnacle.
Imagine several live tweets and Instagram posts during the day, backed up by a live Periscope or YouTube feed, then a Facebook and Pinterest album at the end of the day and the whole thing compiled on Storify to view back after the fact. All the content can then be packaged together as a website news article, newsletter piece or press release, further increasing the event reach.
You see, investing in the show is one thing, but social media can help activate that investment. Don’t get left behind and cover events the live way.