Most conference, summit and corporate event planners these days try to cast a virtual net by linking their event to a centralizing set of social media hashtags – mainly for easy findability and shareability on Instagram and Twitter. Making sure your event photographer is aware of these unifying communication tools and using them appropriately can help you get maximum value from your conference or event photographer.
Photographers are all seeking to cultivate their own realm of influence in social media. One mutually beneficial way to reach into different networks is to provide bits of snackable content generated by events as they happen.
Personally I’ve grown to enjoy using Twitter and Instagram to jot down insightful things I pick up while observing conferences or to help my client broaden their event footprint by creating and quickly sharing images guests and attendees will want to reshare.
It’s not always a perfect fit – while covering the Governor General Performing Arts Awards press conference (#ggpaa) in Montreal this month I actually tweeted out the name of a recipient BEFORE the official announcement (deleted 2 minutes later after a politely urgent message from Ottawa) but when it works, it helps spread the excitement and generate buzz about the event.
Not all photographers are going to want to multi-task for you, but it doesn’t hurt to ask for their social handles and add them into your network, while sharing with them the hashtags and IG names they should reference when getting social with your event images.
And sometimes, sharing is also really funny. Like this old SNL clip of Fr Guido Sarducci’s 5 Minute University that I saw at a recent conference on autism I immediately had to go find and watch. 