Post More Than Photos. What Did You Learn?

     A colleague of mine is a devotee of the “show your work” style of social media. He posts photos of everything he does. I will concede that this can get results but there are more effective ways to impact your followers when you attend an event.

Posting photos: good.

     This proves you showed up to the event. It can show who the speakers were and who     you were networking with.

Summarize the presentation: better.

     This shows you were paying attention. You are familiarizing your followers with the topics presented and the key points. Provide a little background on the speakers and the host organization. Include the date of the next meeting. This might give your followers a reason to look for your summary if they missed the meeting or are deciding if they wish to attend the next meeting.

     If you ask the speaker and the host for permission, they might allow you to post some material from the presentation. (Always attribute other’s materials properly and include active links to the appropriate websites.) If your summary is good, the organizers might invite you to post summaries of this and future meetings on their website.

Analyze the meeting: better still.

     Now you are showing that you were listening actively. Did the presentation provide useful information? What did you learn? Did the speaker present in a novel way that made their points easy to remember? Did they expand your knowledge? Were they accurate? If there were multiple speakers, did they tend to agree with each other or have different takes on the material? Do you have experience that confirms or disputes the presentation?

     Was the meeting well attended? Did it attract people you knew and people you wanted to meet? Was the facility appropriate? Was the staff efficient, the room comfortable? Did it make you want to clear your schedule for the next meeting? What did you learn from networking that wasn’t presented?

     Now, you are providing content that your followers cannot get anywhere else. You are giving people a reason to seek your input, to visit your website, to read your blogs. You are demonstrating that you may be a source of knowledge, perhaps, an appropriate partner.

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