I love the buzz of a good business conference. It’s one of the best opportunities for focused networking: people come with an open mind to do business.
It’s also a great accountability deadline: it forces you to ask yourself what you want to have achieved before you leave, and what would be your best answer to: “So what have you been up to?”
However, these events can be quite an investment in terms of time, money and energy. So if you’re wondering whether they’re worth attending, I’d say yes, very much so, but choose a great conference.
That’s very much down to the organisers and as a professional speaker, I work with them all the time. I was MC last year for InBusiness InCork and I have to say, it was an admirable blueprint for how a conference should be run.
As Project Manager, Siobhan Finn did a masterful job. There was a lot of digital activity in the lead-up as you could study the list of attendees and start networking with the hashtag #InBizInCork14 long beforehand.
Preparation always increases the ROI of a conference. Ask yourself how will you be able to network with attendees before and during the event? Who do you want to meet? If it’s someone you’ve been trying to get an introduction to, you can make your way to them in the room or strike up a Twitter conversation.
The digital storm remained consistent on the day and the hashtag was trending by 10.30am. There were two Twitter walls with tweets being added by the second. This provided another invisible layer of networking through interaction and branding as the attendee’s name, picture and message appeared within vision of all attendees.
There were six panels, plus the exhibition space, plus the mentoring booths, working in synergy as a constantly reinforcing loop of engagement, as panelists were then available for questions and consultations. As MC and moderator of those individual panels, I fielded questions to the speakers from the audience both verbally and as they came in on Twitter, so make sure and use this Q&A opportunity to connect at the events that you attend this year.
I find that these periods of time present an opportunity to step off the treadmill and hence provide fertile ground for inspiration and ideas. Take time to reflect. What have I learned at the conference? What will I implement in my own business? That’s when the rubber hits the road and you make the conference really worth it.
The biggest mistake people make when attending business events is that they don’t realise only half of the work is done and about 90 per cent of the benefit is yet to come through follow-up.
It’s so crucial to put time in your diary afterwards to process the LinkedIn requests, write the e-mails, make the introductions and send thoughtful notes. Try to send your new contacts something of value, for example a blog post that you have written, an invite to another event that might be of use to them or a tender that you spotted in their field. It’s so much more impactful than a generic message.
The window of time is right after the conference, when everybody is still riding the adrenalin high and you have the feeling that everything is possible. InBusiness InCork had a dedicated supplement in the newspaper, and everybody who had a key role on the day had a piece. This was ideal to sustain the buzz: this served as a regional reminder on the success that it was as well as a prompt to go back and do the follow up that you had intended to do.
I find that people are full of energy and enthusiasm as they register for a conference and busily plan how to make the day worthwhile as they get a coffee at the start of the day.
For 2015, make a resolution that your preparation will be long before and your follow up will be valuable and take place immediately afterwards. I expect that you will see a much higher ROI on your time, effort and money on attending business conferences and events with this strategic approach.
Susan HayesCulleton is MD of international training company Hayes Culleton Ltd. For latest entrepreneurship news and the free Savvy Podcast, follow her @SusanHayes_
See More: Business Conferences, Networking In Business
