8 Tips for Turning Trade Show Content into Marketing Gold

Introduction

Thanks for joining us for eight tips for turning tradeshow content into marketing gold with Megan Saad, senior account executive at Session Board.

Hi everyone, my name is Megan Saad. I'm so excited for you to join for today's webinar with Swapcard. This is eight tips for turning tradeshow content into marketing gold. I am a Senior Account Executive at SessionBoard.

We are a next gen speaker and content management platform. And I was previously in the association world. I was the marketing director at IAAPA, the global association for the attractions industry. By starting,

Content Types Throughout Your Event

let's talk about the content types that happen throughout your event.

A colleague of mine likes to say that content is absolutely everything that is happening at the event. And she's right. Content ranges from main stage presentations with the keynote speakers that are sometimes big names that draw the crowds to your event. They're the smaller breakout sessions that happen as part of your conference program, but there are also a lot of things that happen in.

Things that sometimes we forget to consider. We can have candid conversations with speakers. Sometimes this becomes very exclusive content. We can interview attendees and sponsors and exhibitors, ask them about their experience and turn these into testimonials.

We can capture a conversation that is happening on the trade show floor. Anything that is happening at your event can potentially become content, which becomes overwhelming, but that's a good challenge do have. I'm gonna talk about how to organize all of this content and really get the most bang for your buck after the event and keeping the conversation going, keeping the momentum going, and ultimately extending the shelf life of your event. It doesn't have to end once the doors close on the final day.

The two types of content that I want to focus on particularly today are presentations and breakout sessions. At Session Board, we like to say that that speakers are your superpower. Speakers inspire the audience. They engage them with their ideas, and they really refresh them depending on the content, or they can inform them if it's very

Tip #1: Look at the Most Valuable Content

timely and educational.

And this is crucial for whatever their presentation is can keep the conversation going Afterwards. Tip number one, look at the most valuable content. And this is easier to do after the event once you have a moment to breathe and you can look at your attendee surveys, or you can see the buzz online and what people are talking about. This is even more helpful if you can get the data prior to the event because then you can prepare and know which sessions and which presentations you really need to capture.

My time at IAAPA, there were a handful of sessions that we knew to prepare for larger rooms. Oftentimes they were standing room only. And they were sessions that became a tradition year after year. One of the sessions was called the legends panel, and it was just that.

It was a panel of industry legends in the attractions industry, and people wanted to be in the room to hear from them, hear their experiences, hear how they landed an attraction, hear how they built the career that they did. If you know that there's going to be a popular session, make sure that you have either a team member or someone in the room that can take photos if you don't have an on-site photographer, but also make sure that they are capturing, recording, pulling quotes, and getting the the key takeaways from those well attended sessions because beyond the people in the room, you know there's going to be interest.

So you can do summaries and you can turn that into post event content to keep the conversation going. Tip number two, determine the best format for your content. And just like I was talking about how there is an overwhelming amount of content at your event, there's also an overwhelming amount of content that you can repurpose it into. There is short form, and there is long form types of content.

And both have pros. With short form content, let's Think social media carousels, quotes, small tidbits from the session, and long form content becomes more extensive. These can be white papers. These can be ebooks.

These can be articles. And they're a little bit more of a deep dive

Tip #2: Determine the Best Format for Your Content

into the actual presentation or session itself. And you don't have to do it alone. A very valuable piece of post event content are blogs and summaries of the event.

As a show organizer, doesn't have to come from you. You can lean on user generated content to help you with your post event strategy. So think about your members, industry professionals that are very active online. Have a conversation with them beforehand So it can extend the reach and tap into the interest of your audience, but it can also become content for you to share.

So user generated content is so powerful, especially if you have a pretty significant and large conference portion. You can't be everywhere at once.

Tip #3: Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines

Tip number three, write attention grabbing headlines. I know this seems like an obvious tip, but so often, we are so laser focused on writing the blog, writing the summary, capturing the standout quotes that the headline falls to the wayside.

And that means your content never actually ends up in front of anyone. So it's all about getting conversion to your content, and third, these attention grabbing headlines. One example that I love to share is be vague in your headlines. And I don't mean be so vague that it becomes clickbait.

I mean, be vague and inspire curiosity. Want someone to click through to your piece of content to learn more. And a recent example that I could think of was the headline that said, we need to talk about AI. It's a game changer.

That's so true. Right? This was from a session, a marketing event, where someone talked about how AI can be a game changer for the events industry, but also while you're marketing your events. So, of course, I wanted to learn more.

Tap into your creativity. Use creative headlines, attention grabbing headlines, and that's going to ultimately help the success of your post event content.

Tip #4: Focus on Your Audience

Tip number four, focus on your audience whenever you're creating this content. So don't attend a session and do a summary just to check the box and just to do it.

Think about what's going to be valuable for the audience and the members that you're creating this content for. So think about what were the key takeaways? What were the main ideas that came out of this presentation? And then go from there.

And you don't have to do this alone either. If you don't have help or you don't have other team members or user generated content, you can take session recordings and use transcription tools to transcribe the session, and then you can use AI like ChatGPT to upload the session and create a summary. So this is a very easy way to take a session and pull the highlights and the takeaways. Tip

Tip #5: Add Visuals to Boost Engagement

number five, add visuals to boost your engagement.

This is so important. When's the last time you saw something that was only copy and links and it made you really wanna click on it? Probably never. Oftentimes, don't overthink it.

You may not have an in house graphic designer, they may be bogged down with other projects. So think about the photos that you have from the event that you can use. How often do you get photos of each speaker on stage for their session? And you hand it to them, but it may not go anywhere else.

You can also use footage from smartphones and from participants in the room. Doesn't have to be a professional shot. And then I also love tools such as Canva. It's one of my favorites to create some form of content.

And I have no design background whatsoever, but Canva is such a great tool for adding your branding to any photo. And it also has templates that are already created for you size per channel. How awesome is that? So creating your content with your branding on it is also really key to make sure that that post event content is still tied to your event.

Tip number

Tip #6: Promote Your Content

six, promote your content. It's not enough to just publish it and then hope people are going to find it. You have to promote it. And often this means cross channel promotion.

So what does that mean? Are we putting something on social media? Are we publishing a blog? And make sure people are getting to that blog and you're driving traffic to that blog.

So make sure the blog is present in your email newsletter that goes out. Make sure you're pushing traffic to it from your social media channels. Make sure that people know where to find it or else it's not gonna go very far. Promote.

Promote. Promote. You can even assign marketing dollars. It's going to make a big difference in boosting social media posts even a little bit if you have a business profile on social media because oftentimes, social media algorithms are going to cut you out of the feed unless you really assign marketing dollars behind it.

Another great way for cross channel promotion is to leverage any media partnerships that you have. For IAPA Expo, I would work on about thirty plus media agreements for on-site. So this helped me not only with the on-site press coverage, but also after the event. That's articles, press releases, social media content.

And they would also be willing to share any content that I put out from the official owned accounts. So this is a great way to lean on your partners and expand your reach.

Tip #7: Make It a Two-Way Conversation

Tip number seven, make it a two way conversation.

This seems like a no brainer too, but oftentimes we make it a one-sided conversation when that's not what social media is meant to do. So think about how you can make it interactive. Challenge yourself for new ways of testing out the content. Think Think about quizzes, surveys, polls, anything that's really going to get the audience engaged and interacting with your content.

If you're posting a blog of summaries, then you can ask your participants to share their takeaways as well. Don't make it just about you. Make sure that you're getting them involved. You can also turn it into a competition.

So gamification is huge on-site at live events and trying to get people to cover as much ground on the trade show floor that they can to visit sponsors, to attend education sessions. So turn post event content into a game. If someone has a great summary or a great takeaway or great feedback from your event, Interact with them too. Find it online and make sure they are rewarded for that post event content that they're creating

Tip #8: Measure Your Success

final tip, tip number eight is measure your success.

It is so important to track all that activity and post event content to see what worked so you can make informed decisions on not just your content types in general that are resonating, but really in planning your experience for next year. Already, you'll be able to understand the topics that people are interested in, the speakers that were really popular, and improve your experience for your attendees the following year. So through your post event content, not only are you fostering a more engaged community throughout the year, but you're really empowering your team to create a memorable and even more exciting experience the next time your annual event takes place.

So following these eight tips is going to turn your trade show content into marketing gold for not only year round engagement, but for helping your team make more informed decisions and program planning for your next year's event.

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