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Marisa When all of your industry professionals are in one place, it’s a great opportunity to capture a variety of content that you can use to fill your marketing calendar throughout the year. Take advantage of everyone being in one place at one time!
That’s exactly what we helped the folks at EA Ignite do for their spring event in Nashville. While on site, our team captured event photos, sponsored and ran a headshot station, live streamed a panel session, recorded b-roll, conducted interviews with staff & attendees, operated a podcast booth and handled a photo booth for their networking reception. We turned their event into a content capturing factory.
We also did this at a recent event in New Orleans for the Transportation Sales & Marketing Association’s 2024 Elevate Conference. There, we captured the stage sessions, recorded interviews with attendees and grabbed b-roll throughout the conference.
Capturing photos at an event is usually a given. Everyone loves to see the album of photos post-event. But, having a collection of photos is also helpful when posting on social media, filling your website with new content, or helping to promote your next event. You can post them as is, or use them to create still or motion graphics as well.
The same can be said for videos. Recording interviews and b-roll on site is a great way to capture the energy of the event. It’s also a great way to get direct testimonials from attendees, speakers, thought leaders, and industry professionals. Usually, the way we see this content being used post-event is in a highlight reel, or in videos that specifically highlight aspects of the conference like networking or sponsorship. These videos are a great way to draw people in for your next event.
But these videos don’t always just have to be highlight videos! EA Ignite wanted new video content surrounding their ASAP community and resources, while the TMSA wanted a video that celebrated the association’s 100th anniversary. That gave our team specific direction in terms of what questions to ask in the interviews and what b-roll to capture for each respective project.
Scheduling interview subjects to come into a podcast studio, or even appear virtually for a recording, can be tough. But, if a large group of professionals in your industry are going to be in one place at one time… it’s the perfect chance to batch record a bunch of episodes. You can set up a space off to the side to pull people and record short segments for a podcast. Creating a cool looking booth may even draw more people in and generate interest in either your audience, or potential guests! There’s even an opportunity to turn this podcast booth into a secondary stage, where people can watch what’s happening while you’re recording content. At EA Ignite, we recorded 9 podcast episodes in 2 days. But we’ve also seen this “pop-up podcast” strategy be successful at a few different events we’ve worked at.
This is something that is no secret to those in events these days: hybrid is the way to go. Not everyone can make it in person to your event, so why not offer a virtual component? By live streaming all or part of your main stage events or breakout sessions, you’ll expand your audience (and potentially even draw in more money from registration if you charge)! It also doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In the case of EA Ignite, we only live streamed one main stage session. You don’t have to offer your entire conference online, maybe just your one premiere panel or keynote speaker.
Sometimes, live streaming isn’t always necessary. But you should still record your event sessions! This allows you to give life to that content beyond your event. You can use these as full session recordings available for online viewing later for those who may have missed it or want to go back and re-watch, or you can cut it up into snippets to use in your marketing and on your social media. At TMSA, we set up 2 cameras at the back of the room, one tight and one wide, so that we could edit together and deliver a produced session complete with slides (as needed) to the client.
Everyone needs a good headshot, but it’s not something you update often. So, a conference might just be the perfect place to get a new one! After the event is over, we take the headshots and send them to everyone who came to the booth. It’s a great value add for your attendees that will give them something to walk away with and continue to use. It can also be a way to collect more information about your attendees if you choose to do so.
For the celebratory reception at the end of EA Ignite, we set up a simple photo booth using a ring light and an iPad in front of a branded step and repeat. Attendees could come up, take a couple of photos, and get them sent right to their phones or emails. It was a hit! People don’t just come to conferences to learn, they come to make connections and have some fun (especially in Nashville)! Having a simple photo booth that sent the photos to the attendees right then and there was another great value add. It’s a similar concept to the 360 booth that we often times bring on site to events with us. Giving your attendees a fun, interactive experience at your event can help make it more memorable.
ALL of these types of content have more than one use, and there’s no one right way to use each one. There are a multitude of different ways to repurpose each type of content – that’s the beauty of capturing it all at once! You spend 3-4 days during your event capturing it and then you’ve set yourself up for success leading up to your next event.
