In this special conversation, two of Leoni Consulting Group's team members, Social Media Lead Hillary Trussell and CEO Elana Leoni, sit down to share best practices for using social media to leverage EdTech companies' presence at education conferences. In great detail and with great enthusiasm, they explore what to do before, during, and after the conference. Even if you're new to the convention circuit, you'll walk away from this podcast informed and energized.

Access this episode's Show Notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.

Elana:

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. Today, we have something pretty special. A lot of the times, we interview guests that are either our clients, our partners, our friends, just awesome people. Well, today is no exception on the awesome people part, but I get to show off one of our team members. So that's really exciting for me. I feel especially proud to be talking with Hillary. And Hillary Trussell is a really valuable member of our team. She helps lead all of our social media efforts within LCG. So we're today going to be talking about all things conferences, but specifically conferences as it relates to social media. So many times I see brands go to conferences and say, "Wow, they really missed the boat on social media. They don't use it as a vehicle to engage in the conversation."

I'm getting into it now, but it's just such an amazing opportunity. I want you, if you're an EdTech brand, to walk away from this episode with tactical, practical, and also strategic ways that you can use social media to attract people to where you're at in the conference and help you with your goals of brand awareness and lead generation and all of those things. If you are an educator listening, I think you might find this fascinating. I think that you'll say, "Yes, I do want you to do that and that," and we'll try to also weave your voice in throughout this podcast. But this is a little bit more of a workshoppy collaborative podcast. I'm super excited to introduce Hillary Trussell. I'm going to talk a little bit about her, and then we'll get into all of the things.

So Hillary came to us as a referral, and I would say that if you are an EdTech professional right now, you always value referrals. You always say, "Hey, can my team or my friends refer people?" Because that's sometimes how you get, I don't know, just awesome people. And as soon as Hillary talks and gets into this, you'll understand, too. But Hillary has over ten years of experience in social media marketing. When she talks about social media, her eyes light up to the clients. She is on Instagram. Her house looks like it's something that not my house looks like, it's beautiful. She's redone her entire house. So our clients like to call her crafty, and she has Instagram to prove it. Seven of those ten years, she was dedicated to higher education. So it's very hard to find that perfect combination of people that are in education but also in social media. So she was in the thick of higher education, where she promoted resources, services, she collaborated with students to make sure they were engaged and connected throughout the collegiate experience.

She had her own social media marketing consultancy during and prior, too. She now represents the Central Time for us, so she's based in Texas. And for those of you that don't know, I'm on the Pacific side, and a lot of our team is on the Eastern Time, too. So Hillary, I am so excited to have you on. You put something in Slack today that just made me smile. She said how grateful she was because she listened to one of our episodes, we'll put it in the Show Notes, about our team. It just really reflecting on our culture, and it might have been about the foundation or maybe just about the team.

Hillary:

Yeah, it was just reflecting on your five years.

Elana:

Oh, that was our five-year anniversary. Yeah, so we'll put that in the Show Notes. But she says she listened to that more than she will admit because she used that as a way to say, "Is this part of a team culture that I want to be a part of?" And that gratitude of me even inviting her on, I was like, I feel like you're doing me a favor and being on. And so I thank you. I'm excited to get into the conversation with you. So Hillary, welcome to the show.

Hillary:

Thank you. Like I said this morning, I'm so excited and honored to be here and a little nervous. This is my first podcast to be on, so I'm really excited. And yes, I listened to that podcast episode more times that I care to admit. And then I had to be careful when I was interviewing not to fan girl when I met all of you.

Elana:

You'd be our first fan. And I was saying, "Hillary, don't worry." Before the talk I was like, "Don't worry. The only people that ever listened to this is my mom and my sister-in-law." So don't worry.

Hillary:

Join you today.

Elana:

So why don't we just quickly start out with a level set of just what's your role? Because I think it will give the listeners context on the recommendations and the things that we get into afterwards. But what do you do with the team here?

Hillary:

So I am the social media manager, and I'm an account manager. So I work with our amazing clients and help them come up with social media strategies. And I work with our programming team to actually program and schedule out social media posts. And we do support a lot of our clients when they go to conferences and events. And so I have some tips and advice from that experience as well.

Elana:

And I love that on our side we get to be thought partners with our clients. We get to look at what's coming up, what's valuable for an educator, what are some timely events, what are things that you care about as a brand? So we come together and weave out a programming plan that fits not only with the business and the audience, but what the algorithms need, which is really critically more important as organic reach is declining more and more. So Hillary is that account manager. She's on the frontline, she's interacting with the clients, she's helping working hand-in-hand with me on the strategies, on the programming aspect. She's working with Porter, who, I think was our first-ever guest of this podcast. Also our Director of Joy at LCG. So working with Porter on the engagement side on social media. So you do all the things social, so what better guests to talk about social media and how to really use it to compliment your conference efforts.

Hillary:

Yeah, well, I think first of all, as a brand, you have to look at and think about what conferences will your target market and prospects be going to, because obviously those you would want to prioritize. And you can do that in a variety of ways, but ways by seeing what are the topics and what's the goal of the conference, who's the conference being targeted to? And you can also look at conference hashtags, which conference hashtags will come up a lot in this conversation, because there's so many ways to use them. But that can help you see who went to the conference the year before, the session topics, people who may be already talking about being excited to go and that can give you a really good insight into what to expect and who's going to be there.

Elana:

And conferences are weird now, and I don't know how to explain it, but what for me is the most valuable thing about conferences, especially post-pandemic, and I say that with maybe an asterisk, but we are not yet, in EdTech, back to the conference scene that was pre-pandemic. So we need to figure out, you can go to their websites and I think all those are really good tips, too. "Hey, is my product or service generally being talked about? Are decision makers going to be there?" I typically look at their media kit and what do they promise in terms of decision makers, like 20% admins or that kind of thing. But a lot of the times that's their hope, and what actually happens is really different. So I have to rely on my personal network, too.

And if you are an EdTech professional and you're like, "What's a personal network?" -- you should have a group of colleagues or peers, and they shouldn't be actually in your company, but that you can say, "Hey, how is this conference? How did you go to that? Would you go to that next year?" Always collecting data. So FETC, TCEA just happened. There was Tassa that just happened. There's a lot of conferences just happening. And although I didn't personally go to them, I stayed curious and asked them, "Hey, how was it? How do you think the vendors fared? How did you fare? What was the expo hall like?" I was just constantly asking questions because that's the only way you're going to get data, honestly, right now.

So that we didn't really talk about a conference plan. But what I would say is, generally, we have a free resource, it is our EdTech planner, it has all the conferences in education. Download it. I think it's backslash 23, leoniconsultinggroup.com/the number 23. And we will also put that in the Show Notes. But look at all of those. And like Hillary said, you got to prioritize which conferences you go to. So a lot of my B2B clients, for example, are saying, "Hey, we're not going to go to the big EdTech shows this year. We're just going to go to the decision-maker shows." And that might be the superintendent's association, or maybe it's NAESP, the elementary school principals, or whatever they decide to, or they may go local and target specific areas that they want, business.

So I would say, you shouldn't do this alone. You should collaborate with your executive team, senior team, people on your marketing team, and figure out how do you prioritize it within a set budget. Usually you're going to have a budget in the real world. So I got a set budget, which ones are the must-haves based on that target market, and then which ones are like, "Okay, if I had money or maybe I want to do a half presence, one person's going to go, or maybe I'm going to act like we're going to go." And Hillary and I will talk about how you act like you're going to go, or you act like you're still there, but you're like hashtag-not-at-ISTE, right? And ISTE is the big EdTech show so that the people that are not at ISTE get to participate anyways and sometimes reap the benefits, too.

So if you want more resources on conference planning, we'll put them in the Show Notes. The biggest thing, and I know we could have an entire podcast about this in particular, is ROI with conferences. So you need to say before you get into the conference, "What is my metric for success?" So if it's lead generation on the expo hall floor of teachers, "Okay, what am I going to do to increase that foot traffic? How many teachers will I need to meet or decrease my acquisition cost, my normal acquisition cost?" So these are the things you should be talking about. And almost like what I would do is create a campaign brief and say, "Hey, I'm going to ISTE. I'm going to AASA, here's our metrics for success." So if you don't do that and you come back and you're like, "Oh, I don't know, it wasn't really good," you don't have any backbone. You don't have a foundation to really understand if it was good or not.

So start there and happy to reach out to us on Twitter, and we love talking about these things. So that was a quick cliff notes about how do you create a conference plan for the year. And then we'll also put something in the Show Notes, we interviewed Joyce Whitby on the podcast, and she talks about a beyond the booth plan, too, and a little bit more on how to pick the conferences you should go to.

Okay, so once you've decided which conferences to go to, all right, so I've green lit, like say I'm an EdTech startup and I'm doing a lot of webinars this year, so I'm going to only go to five shows and put five primary shows this year. So how do I begin to prep and let people know that you're going? Well, what are some best practices that you've seen and that you do with clients, Hillary?

Hillary:

So, the one thing that is consistent across all conferences is that every hour of every day is packed full of opportunities. And you have to figure out, "How am I going to get on people's must-do, must-see, must-stop-by list and calendar," just because it can be really overwhelming, and it's important to have a plan. I'm the kind of person that I like to fly by the seat of my pants when I'm traveling, or I've even tried this at a conference and just see what happens and what comes to my way. But if you do that going into a conference, a lot of times you get there, and before you know it, the conference is over and you haven't achieved and accomplished all that you wanted to. And so having a really solid plan in place for the conference is important. And if you can, think of what are those special opportunities that you have that people wouldn't want to miss?

And so, maybe it's a special guest or influencer at your booth or in your session that you can promote in advance, or maybe it's that you're offering a special service, and I know that you've done this before, where it's like, "Hey, schedule a meet-up with us, and we'll help you. We'll do a 15-minute audit of your social media," or something like that. Something that people can only get when they're there and that's really special and important to them. And so, planning those things in advance versus, "Oh, I'm going to try to connect with some people and schedule meet-ups while I'm there." It's just almost setting you up for failure. And then you also don't have a lot of really exciting things to promote in advance, and you want to let people know early on that you'll be there and how you will be there, and what are the exciting things that you have to offer. And then you can post teasers and things like that when you have those things already set in place.

Elana:

So, super great tips. I think things you hit the nail on the head on is what we want to do is really look at if I have a booth, how can I drive people to the booth in a value-driven way? So, what are people hoping to get out of the conference? Maybe I put my top influencers at the booth, maybe I do a book signing. Maybe I do a free service like you're saying. So this is usually something that we charge for, come and do a one-on-one with one of our advisors on how to increase engagement, and blah. So think about what you want to do and try to get people to book it in advance. Like you said, it's super smart because you have a bunch of teachers, educators, even decision-makers, they have booked calendars. If you don't have stuff booked with people before the conference and you can't just wing it. People are never going to say, "Oh, I'll just randomly grab coffee with you." They're pretty booked solid. People go to social events to happen to run into people, to do that serendipitous kind of networking. But in general, people are booked solid. You have to have a calendar of things that are as booked as possible.

And so before the conference, you want to tell the world you are going. And it's not just the brand, it's you professionally. If you're in sales, if you're in customer service, if you're in engagement, whatever you're doing, I want you on all of your socials to have, "I'm going to BET, I'm going to ISTE, I'm going to ASUGSB." I want it in emojis. I want you using the hashtag in your profile. I want you to say it multiple times. Sometimes people are so thinking it's self-promotional, but beautiful things happen when people know that you're going to be at the event, and you can plan things in advance.

Hillary:

You could also, whenever you do create a tweet or a post, be sure and plan it where it has all the information of where you're going to be, when your session is, where your booth is, that kind of thing. So that way, if people do happen to go to your page, but you also have to remember, a lot of times we assume people, they're coming to our social media pages and looking at them, and that's often not happening. But if they do, you want it to be front and center that you're there. And I think another important thing before the conference, especially in situations where maybe you have a team on the ground, that they're at the booth, oftentimes, or well, I would say 95% of the time they're not thinking about social media. They're there to connect in person.

But what I like to do, since I am part of a social media team, is I like to make sure whoever's on the ground has my contact information, and I tell them, "However it's easiest for you to send me pictures and information, do it. You can text me, you can email me, you can send me a message in Slack." And I give them some basics of what I'm hoping to get from them. So if they could give me a picture of the booth once they get it set up, or if they could send me a selfie, or if they're having giveaways, be sure to snap a picture, because if you just leave it open-ended, "Hey, send me some pictures," oftentimes they're not in the mindset of, "Oh, this is a social media-worthy photo." But if they know I see success in getting what I need, so that behind the scenes I can help support and drive people to the booth through a social media post, or drive people to the session in those more real-time moments. And so that's another before, is just making that list and deciding ahead of time what you really want to post about.

Because that's another thing. If maybe you are the social media person and you're also at the conference, the last thing you want to do at the end of the long day is be like, "Oh gosh, I need to say something on social media, and I'm too tired to think about what it's going to be." So having your social media plan in place, whatever that looks like, is also really important.

Elana:

Yeah, I would say that that's a hard fail if at the end of the day you're like, "Oh shoot, I forgot to post." But I think I was nodding a lot in this conversation, because so many times I walked through the expo hall, and people are just at booths waiting for people to come to them like it's their job. No, your job is to think about you as you're creating inbound leads, and you have to make the case why they should stop by your booth or why they should have a meeting with you versus all of the other distractions and all the other awesomeness that's happening, and that can help give them value in their day-to-day. So it's really important that you have a plan in place. And I'm a documenter, so if you have a campaign brief started about the conference and you have goals, you can add the social media plan there and just say, "Okay, here are the MVP of what we want to do in social media."

So maybe it's every hour snap a pic, send it to the social media person who's not on the scene, or come up with a little bit of recipes. I would say because short-form video obviously is really helpful in social media and algorithms, if you can, almost give them a script of maybe on the hour. It's like, "Hey folks, I'm here at the booth. I'm here with this influencer or this big user of our platform, and we're just going to talk a little bit about their pro tips for the platform." You can do something super quick and live and get people to say, "Wow, they're at the booth." And they're actually doing something different on social media rather than those stale tweets and social posting, "Come to our booth." Why, why?

Hillary:

Exactly.

Elana:

And Joyce would say, we'll put her in the Show Notes, I mentioned her, Joyce Whitby, she's like, "Don't just hand out a pen."

Hillary:

So true.

Elana:

One thing I think I just wanted to add, we're talking about before, so don't be afraid to tell people multiple times in multiple ways. Your social media team should be interweaving consistently that you're going to the conference, and here's the value that you will get, and maybe here's how you can book some time and meet with us there. But beyond that, I haven't seen another EdTech brand do this, and maybe I just haven't been looking. But it might be nice to get them to say, "Hey, we're thinking about elevating our users, our superstar users, at our booth. Fill out this quick form and we'd love to highlight you. Maybe you can run a session." That is the biggest compliment, and that's the beautiful way to elevate educator voices that we don't tend to hear at conferences. So I'm just giving that away to freebies of those EdTech brands thinking about the big conferences right now.

Hillary:

Yeah, that's such a good point. And I think a lot of times we EdTech brands often think like, "Oh, that's asking a lot." But like you said, educators, anytime I've ever reached out on social media, I'm like, "Hey, we'd really like to feature you in this way." They're just so honored and flattered and excited. And so I think that's a really good point. And educators love to hear from other educators. It's just like all of us, we'd love to hear from others who are in our same industry and going through the same things we're going through. It's always good to hear from them.

Elana:

Yes. So we talked a lot about, it's almost like a checklist of "Here's all of the things you can do on social media beforehand." You can also do teasers. So what are they going to learn? So think about rather than promotion, we're going to be there, but what value can I give them? Give them a hint, give them a little carrot of here's all the awesomeness that's going to be here. Or if you meet with us one-on-one and maybe you don't have a booth, here are some things I might talk to you about. So think about that. Come up with your plan. And before the conference, if you're using this for business development and reaching these decision makers, you should have a list of who's going to be attending. Talk to your target audience, have personalized emails out to them. "Are you happening to be there? Can I get a meeting with you? We can go over X that will help you." You have to do that.

I would say I spend countless hours going over who's going to be there, how can I meet with them one-on-one, and do it in this value-driven way that they can't say no and they want to book time with me. So do not underestimate the time it takes to see who's going to be there and book time on their calendar prior to going there. So we got a little bit of B2B action where it's like you're the one-on-one meetings, but I hope you also got some great tips on if you have a booth, here's what you do in terms of social media to get there. And you're not being a showboat. I want you to think about social media as a way to tell your story, but more often than that, "How do I give value? How do I contribute to the conversation?" It's like you're participating in this awesome movement of learning. So join in, and don't be afraid, and don't muddle the feed with your "Step right up" promo type of things.

Hillary:

So one other thing you can do, and I know we've got to move on past the before prep, but you can also get your social media audience engaged and excited by using a Twitter poll, which the Twitter algorithm loves. And your audience will love with just a simple, like, "Hey, are you going to this conference? Yes or no?" And then they can answer, and they may share something in the comments. And then on Facebook, you could do a text post which, side note, if you want to really make the algorithm happy on Facebook, use the text post feature where it has their background and you can type text on top of it and ask, "What are you most excited to learn about?" Or, "Who are you most excited to connect with?" Those kind of questions, and get people to answer in the comments. And that can also give you insight into what your audience is hoping to take away from the conference. And you can ask yourself, "Is there a way to that we can weave this into our plan?"

Elana:

Yes. And I hear some of you naysayers going, "Oh well, organic social media you can't target. And it's a waste to ask people to if they're going to one conference and if it's not a big conference." What you could do is say, "Hey, we know this time of year is big." Obviously you wouldn't say that because that's not as concise as we like to be on social media, "But what conferences are you most excited about going to," and connect with each other down below, too. So again, you're talking about how do I open it up broad enough because organic, you can't just target Texas if we're going to TCEA, right? But that could be a great way to do some discovery on where your target audience is going to be and get them excited and tell people that you're going to be there. So yes, "Ching, ching, ching."

Hillary:

Yes, yes.

Elana:

Okay, before, lots of things, we apparently could be talking about this for the entire podcast. So let's talk about during. So we hinted, during is a super crazy time. It is just you have a schedule. I actually do old school and I do an Excel spreadsheet of every 15 minutes of what I'm doing, and I color code it. It's gnarly. But educators do that. They have it on the app. Decision-makers have meetings scheduled back to back. So what do you think in terms of during the conference, how do you stand out? And specifically what should you be doing on social media?

Hillary:

So again, on social media, any kind of behind-the-scenes glimpse or making sure to remind people of that special opportunity that you have in your session or at your booth. I actually was following a conference recently, and I can't remember which one because I followed so many, and you know me and the acronyms, I get that all confused. But I felt there was one specific person, and they were tweeting from the moment they left their house until they got to the conference. And it was just like this journey to get there. And then I found myself, I kept going back to be like, "Well, what happened? Did you make it to your session on time? Well, how did your session go? What were the takeaways?" And so I kept going back, just because I felt like they took me on that journey with them.

And so again, it was behind the scenes with a mix of the takeaways of what people were getting from attending that session. So, anything that you can share like that, and again, I know it can be hard when you're in the moment and you're connecting with people in real time, but if you can just on your way to the next stop, tweet out what just happened or things that stood out to you, that's something that gets people really excited. And using the hashtag is really important, because it can help you reach people who are maybe at the conference but not connected with you on social media yet. It can help them discover you.

Elana:

Yeah, as you were talking, I was like, "What are the tips that we can ask people as they go, as they're during all of this craziness?" And you might be manning a booth, you might be back-to-back meetings, you might be going to sessions, you might be doing lunches, you might be doing all of those things. So how do you prioritize? So sometimes it's nice to have people that are somewhat accountable, and I hate to do that because social media should really be everyone's job. But if there is one person accountable, when you, say, go out at night, and this is a time that when Hillary says behind the scenes is important. People want to not just get attached to your product, they want to know your story, they want to know your why. And a lot of the times, they associate humans with the brand. Surprise, surprise. And social media is the best at humanizing brands.

So if you are in Chicago and you're at a blues club and BB King comes on or whatever, I want you to share some B-roll and be like, "This is awesome," and just show your staff having fun for a hot minute. Then those things you don't think of related to your product, but you have to blur the lines a little bit and take down your barriers and say, "I want to connect. I want to connect authentically just like educators do."

Hillary:

Yeah, it can also help. So, I'm an introvert, and so a lot of times at a conference, I'm really pushing myself to go out and meet people and have conversations. And so I've been following someone or following their brand, and they do share some of those personal moments. It helps with conversation starters, too, and not just with introverts. And it also makes people like me more comfortable like, "Hey, I feel like I already kind of know this person, or the people behind this brand," and now I'm more comfortable to show up at their booth, or I know what to expect when I get there. Same with the session. And two, reminding people to connect on social media and making sure your handles are clear and available in your session slide deck or at your booth so that people can easily connect with you.

Elana:

So, lots of good tips there. I think what I've seen that I've admired during conferences is brands that can put themselves out there a little more, too. I loved the behind-the-scenes stuff that you were talking about, but maybe you can do a makeshift podcast. You don't necessarily need to have a booth, but I have seen people at booths do podcasts. I've seen people in the expo hall, on floors. Sometimes I go around, and I have a lav mic and just interview people. It's okay, get messy. People are sharing such amazing things. It's your job to share it out, and it doesn't always have to be about your brand. I want to pause and say that again. It doesn't always have to be about your brand. It's not like, "Step right up, go to this booth. We're talking about this." Sometimes when you do that and you're so heavily lead-driven, you're going to scare people away.

And what you want to do is build up trust during the conference as well, and show that you listen to your users and decision-makers, and you elevate their voices. So I love people that do podcasts. Sometimes if you do things that get people to go to your booth or whatnot, you have fun photo booths, or I love the stuff where people do wellness stuff, too. And then you can use social media to complement that and have people, if it's photos or it's wellness, show people indulging using the things that you have and get them over there, too. I will say there is a fine line between tchotchkes and getting just random educators over there. So don't just bring everyone in the world over there because you're giving up free stuff. You want quality leads, too, but whatever you're doing, I want you to say, "How can I tell this story on social media?"

And as you prep for the conference, you can put that in your pre-plan and say, here's what we're going to do during, just so you don't have to think of it on the spot, but there is beauty about thinking about it on the spot, too. So if an educator just happens to say something or overhear something and you don't get them on video, that's fine. You can do a tweet, "Just overheard, Newsela was the thing that saved my life," whatever. No endorsements in Newsela, they're awesome, but I could have put anybody in there.

But I want you to think about, "Okay, how can I use my pre-plan as much as possible? Who is accountable, so no matter what, I have somebody, but how can I personally tell the story and not be afraid to get out in my uncomfortable zone?" Because that's what learning is about. We want to be lifelong learners. You should be exhibiting those characteristics of your target users and decision-makers as well.

Anything else to add? I know I'm talking to mile a minute here, Hillary. On during, there's so many things you can do during, and I would say don't be afraid that you're flooding the feed and annoying people. You're not.

Hillary:

Yeah, that's a really good point. And you mentioned one thing that I want to get a little specific on, and that's elevating voices while you're there. And so, one way you can do that is to just go through the hashtag, see what people are tweeting about, and are they talking about a topic that's close to your brand if you're a brand, and is that something that you could retweet and share out? And that's a way to be really involved and to not just be talking about yourself and your brand, but to also show like, "Hey, this is great and important to us, too, in elevating other people's voices as well."

Elana:

And if you have a team on the ground at a conference, always make sure you have someone back at the HQ or home office or virtually that's following along for you. So if you are going to social parties, or you're hosting a meet-up, or you know that the keynote's happening at this time, there's key moments within the conference you want them to be on. It might be after hours, it might be weekends, sorry, but you have to be able to have someone that can help support you and be that foundation as well. Because people are going to tweet, "Hey, where are you? What booth are you at again?" They're sometimes testing you if you're going to be available on social media as well. But you want to have people that have a little bit more time and not getting interrupted all the time to say, "Here are some other things that they can do to elevate educator voices from afar as well."

Okay, so we talked a lot about during now, and now we're going to do, okay, the conference has ended. What do you do on social media after a conference has ended? How do you make sure that you are keeping the momentum going and doing all the wonderful things that you've been saying?

Hillary:

So, one fun thing that you can do is just think about the highlights. What were your highlights? So, do you have images that captured those moments? And can you share your top three to five photos from the conference and just reflect back and show your appreciation for all the connections that you got to make and the experience that you had? Because people, again, people connect with people. And so if you're posting photos that really encompasses your experience and the people that were on the ground and maybe even some of the people that you got to connect with, that's something that people just naturally want to engage with and react to. And the algorithm really likes it, because that kind of post also looks the same as a post that your family and friends are posting of what they did over the weekend. And so, it really flows into the feed nicely. And so, that's the one thing that comes to mind of just a recap, and you want to do it soon.

But then there are other things that you can do to make sure that you're staying connected with your audience and talking about some of those things, same topics, and maybe sharing even more insight into what your session was about or what happened at your booth that now that the conference is over.

Elana:

I would say, more often than not, you're going to go to a conference, and your target audience and your decision-makers are going to either bail on you or forget to go because they had so many other things. And maybe you didn't do a good job on making sure to prioritize, but maybe you did do a good job, and they still couldn't get to you. That's the reality of conferences. So when you follow up, I like that reflection, because I was just thinking when you were saying so many conferences I've been to I take a nice picture of Santa Monica or whatever I'm at and say, "Thank you so much, SDASCD," wherever I was, "For this awesome," just this gratitude and reflection, and maybe here's what I learned, and it could be a reel, it could be a picture. Those things really do well.

But beyond that, when we think about reflection, I want you to say, "What's my wrap-up? How can I contribute to the conversation?" So maybe there's a blog post, maybe I can get a couple of my power superstar users to write some blog posts about what they thought the main takeaways were. Get in there, and get in there as soon as possible. A week later is a little too late. So you should have assigned blog posts to people to do, so they know they're looking for it during the conference, and they're writing them quite quickly, too. So I think be a part of that conversation. And then if you are going around, I remember one year, I noticed there were so many awesome book recommendations going on when, not only with presenters or maybe it's people that are at your booth and have books, whatever, you want to be able to make it easy for people. And educators are in this world of professional development, even decision-makers are wanting to learn as much as possible, so make it easy for them.

So your job is to curate. So you can curate a Pinterest board full of books, whatever. I did that once for an ASCD conference, and it went bonkers. So think about "How can I make their learning journey be as continuous as possible and give them value, too?"

Hillary:

I love that. I love that idea, too, because so often you're so excited at the conference and you're like, "Oh, I'm definitely going to read that book." And you get home and you can't even remember what the book was. And so I love that idea, because then it's a place to go and find those resources and follow up.

Elana:

And speaking of following up -- this has nothing to do with social media, although it can -- when you meet people, follow up, please. If they take the time to give you their business card or sign up or have them scan your badge, please follow up in a timely way. It's kind of a fun game for me now, is if I get someone to scan my badge or I give them my business card, I'm like, "I wonder how long it'll take them for them to follow up." I think it was a big, I'm not going to name the brand, but one time I did it for a really big brand in education. I was like, "I wonder how long it's going to take them. It took them over a month to do a generic email that said, 'Thanks for visiting us, blah, blah, blah.'" I'm like, "Ugh, fail." You got to do it quickly. You got to figure out how do I personalize it a little bit and hit their pain points too. So they actually want to convert. Because a lead is nothing if you don't get them to do anything.

So there is that. And then the one other thing I was going to mention is when you're in this crazy sea of, "I didn't get to go to your booth, I didn't get to go to your session," make it available to them for free. So maybe we were doing some things at the booth and we were recording them and live-streaming them. Hey, there is another idea. You can live stream all of your sessions. You can chop them up into YouTube shorts, you can throw them into Instagram Reels afterwards. Slicing and dicing the content is the name of the game, and trying to create evergreen content that puts you in the seat of relevancy and thought leadership.

So if they don't get to go to all of the things at your booth, or they don't get to take advantage of your one-on-one, whatever, try to give it to them for free. If you have people talking about your product, get that slide deck, and maybe the LiveBinder or the Google Doc of all the resources, and share it out as much as possible. Those are great ways to earn trust. Also, get more leads. Come on, people. This is another way to get more leads after the conference, too, so it doesn't end at the conference. And you should be able to create that momentum right afterwards. And don't be afraid if it's the day of and everyone's exhausted, that's when you continue to do it.

Hillary:

Yeah, I think those are great resources too. For the people that do reach out on social media, and they're like, "Hey, I didn't get to go, but I really wanted to hear what you had to say in your session," well, if you can respond and let them know, "Hey, it's going to be available, and we'll send it to you after the conference," then that gets them excited, and it keeps the conversation going with them.

Elana:

Oh my God, this reminded me, too. ISTE, three or four years ago, I know this is old school and retro, but I remember going to a talk with Adam Bellow, he's the founder of Breakout EDU, but at the time it might have been eduClipper. And he had a presentation, and as he was talking, he created this technology, I think it integrated in with Keynote, and as he was talking, it triggered time-based tweets. The second he said something, it would then retweet it, tweet it out and say, "Here's that great quote." And I'm like, "How is he doing this?" And he wrote a blog post on it, and it probably has deprecated at this point. But the fact of the matter is, I want you to think about if there are things happening in keynotes, or people are talking about your product, or if they're side conversations, how do we get that momentum showing you were there and it was awesome and there's this pulse, but then afterwards, how do we make some of that evergreen too?

Because there's so many amazing quotes and amazing learnings. Maybe on Instagram, you can create a great carousel of all of your top favorite quotes. You can do reels and do a whole series of reels on your top favorite things. But again, think about it, you want it to be slightly entertaining and inspiring, but you also want it to be valuable. You don't want to just waste people's time in education. They have no time, let's be cognizant of that.

Okay, any last words on this whirlwind of before, during, and after social media, Hillary?

Hillary:

Oh gosh, I felt like we've covered a lot and we can keep going, but I think one thing we have beat around the topic, but we haven't really pointed it out is to -- and early on before -- check for any brand mentions. So, are there any sessions where they're going to talk about your brand, or during the conference whether you're there or not, watch for brand mentions, because you want to be sure that you're connecting with those people and elevating what they have to say about your product or your brand and how they use it. And so that's something you can do even if you're not there and maybe someone mentions you, you want to be sure that you don't miss that opportunity.

Elana:

Yes. And as you were talking, I'm like, I would gather an army, and I know that's the wrong analogy, but if I have an ambassador program, or if I have a community, or if I have an active core group of people, I'm reaching out to them and say, "Hey, can I give you free swag? Can I give you t-shirts? Can I give you things to pass out to people?" Obviously I'd love to have a program in place around a community or an ambassador program, but if you don't and you're just getting started and you have some advocates, say, "Hey, are you going, and can I give you stuff? How can I help you spread the word?" And maybe there's an affiliate program or referral program, I don't know. But you want this reverberation of your brand to not just come from you.

And when you are saying checking brand notifications, I'm like, "Yeah, maybe we should definitely be doing that." And you should be engaging with them. And always put yourself in the seat of an educator who took time out of their busy day, especially at an awesome conference to say, "Hey, shout out to blah." Or, "I'm so excited to go to this session," mentioning this brand. You better be engaging, and you better be engaging in an exciting way, in a timely way, people, because then otherwise the educator's like, "Oh, they didn't even engage. I was so excited. I thought that they would do something." And then you might have lost that person, right?

Hillary:

Yeah. So true.

Elana:

Okay, so lots of things I hope that you took away and you're jotting down, or you're rewinding if you're on a run or listening in your car, of some practical things that you can do. And I want you to just, maybe as a challenge, say what's one thing I didn't think of doing before, during, and after as it relates to social media, and implement it and document it so you can build on it for next conference and the next conference.

So Hillary, as we wrap up this podcast, one question we ask all of our guests is around inspiration. I get to work with you, you are a very optimistic, can-do, love challenges type of person, but I know even you have days, especially even just recently when you had all the ice storms in Texas where you couldn't get out of your house. How do you deal with those days that you were just mentally drained and you're like, "This was such a challenging day, I know I need to show up tomorrow and be refueled." How do you fill your tank?

Hillary:

Oh gosh, this is a good question, and I've learned a lot from you and the team around this. And for me, a big part of filling my tank and staying motivated is setting boundaries. And that's something that I wish I would've learned sooner in my career, because if you're always used to, in my career, I felt like to be reliable and to really show off my work ethic, I had to be on and available 24/7. And that meant that I was never mentally stepping away from my job. I may physically be stepping away from it, but it was always in the back of my mind. And our bodies and minds aren't meant to sustain that. And that's often what starts to lead to burnout. And so I really try to be aware of that, and I try to make sure that I'm time blocking and not just during my workday, but also after hours.

And I have two young kids, so it's really hard to make time for myself. But that's so important, because if you're always pouring into others and you're never pouring into yourself, you are pouring from a very bone-dry cup. And so then you do start to have those feelings of like, "Oh gosh, how am I going to get through the next day? And how am I going to get all of this accomplished?" And I'm a doer, and I love to get things done, but when you start having those feelings, it just makes everything feel a little bit impossible. And so I have really spent, I would say the last year, working on setting boundaries and being intentional with my time, and giving myself time to breathe and take a break here and there. And sometimes, even just even on your busiest day, if you can just take ten minutes to clear your mind, and maybe it's just going outside for a few minutes, taking a quick walk and come back you, you'll have a new fresh, positive perspective that you didn't when you left your desk ten minutes ago.

Elana:

Yeah, so true. And I remember when you first started LCG and you took a vacation. And you took a vacation, and I think you went to a beach with your family.

Hillary:

I did.

Elana:

And you said, "This has been my first proper vacation in seven years or something."

Hillary:

Yeah, yeah. Because I used to take my laptop. I would load up my laptop and everything I needed to work just in case. And there was always a just-in-case moment that I could step in and work.

Elana:

And you certainly didn't come to LCG dragging your feet, but I have seen a beautiful change in you, of you growing as a human, too, and setting those boundaries. And when you have those, you become more joyful, and that joy spreads, and then your productivity increases. And so if people go, "Oh, she sounds like a boss that doesn't understand the bottom line" -- okay, I'm speaking to you people, yes -- you become more productive when you're happy.

Hillary:

And when you have a clear mind, because again, I was all about, it wasn't because someone was telling me to be on 24/7, but I just thought that's how you showed that you were reliable. And turns out you can be extremely reliable without being on 24/7. And I just have a clearer mind, and I'm able to be more productive because when I'm on, I am 110% on versus having this part of me that's like, "Oh my gosh, I just need a break. How am I going to keep going?"

Elana:

Yes. So teachers, I said that we were going to talk some things about you. This is what we're talking about to you, and all of you EdTech folk that are burning the candle at both ends and just being online. And I've been there where you're late at night going, "I just feel like I need to be on." You're deer in the headlights. This is for you of being able to set your own boundaries and come back as fresh as possible for the next day.

So I thank you for that reminder, and I thank you for coming on this show. I know that I threw this at you and said, "Come on the podcast, you're awesome. You have so much wisdom to share," and you do. And so I thank you for your time and taking a chance on a new medium, since it's your first-ever podcast.

Hillary:

This was so fun. I had a great time.

Elana:

And Hillary, if people want to reach out to you, how best would they do that?

Hillary:

So, you can find me pretty much everywhere as Hillary Trussell. If you are into home decor and that kind of thing, you can find me @Trusselletransformations on Instagram. But everywhere else, I'm Hillary Trussell. Apparently, there's not another Hillary Trussell out there.

Elana:

That's one R, two S's, Trussell.

Hillary:

Yep. Two S's, two L's.

Elana:

Two L's. That's what I meant. Yes.

Hillary:

Yes. Two L's in Hillary, too.

Elana:

Okay. Two L's and two S's --

Hillary:

All capitals.

Elana:

Okay. Thank you again. And thank you everybody for joining us. And I mean it, when you think about we don't do this podcast just for kicks, I want to make sure that we are helping the industry, and we are helping you transform to be as valuable as possible to your audience. So I want you to really walk away with "How can I hold myself accountable" or just at least one idea, but my stretches do one idea for before, during, and after with social media. So we mentioned a bunch of resources that'll be available in the Show Notes. You can access those @leoniconsultinggroup.com/45. That's 45 for detailed notes on what Hillary and I spoke about. Plus all of those related conference awesome episodes that we've had over the year now within the podcast and the guests.

So thank you everybody for your time. We really appreciate it. If you enjoy what you hear, go ahead and give us some positive reviews and ratings and we will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.