BIG 2013: Local:Global Business Innovation for Growth Conference
by
Nathaniel Cassidy
Wednesday 10th July saw the Local:Global BIG 2013 Conference hosted by Creative Lancashire about Business Innovation for Growth. With fabulous keynote speakers such as Wayne Hemingway MBE of HemingwayDesign and Red or Dead, and Phil Jones, CEO of tech company Brother amongst others, and with around 200 delegates in attendance, it is no surprise Creative Lancashire really wanted the online community buzzing about the event. In order to keep online conversation thriving, the conference organisers wanted to hand the social media reigns over to a team they could really trust; step in, 3ManFactory.
Before the big day arrived we had spent weeks online rounding up attendees for the conference by engaging in Twitter conversations and using the conference hashtag to provide us with the perfect platform to get people talking to each other about the event; #BIG2013. This gave the people interested in the conference a place to have a nosey at what others had to say, and was a great way for us to keep people talking and build up momentum for the event! Once businesses had signed up and we had got a fair few people interacting online, we knew the exciting bit was just around the corner.
Armed with Macs, laptops, iPad’s, phone’s and DSLR we left the factory floor and headed to the LICA building at Lancaster University; the home of BIG 2O13. We set up camp next to the University’s interactive whiteboard in the main conference hall. This acted as the social hub for the conference, with live tweets being broadcast both on the board next us and on a large screen at the front of the hall.
On the interactive whiteboard we were able to pick out the best tweets using #BIG2013 and colour code them; a feature that proved particularly popular with the delegates! The busy Twitter feed meant that we (tweeting on behalf of both ourselves and Creative Lancashire) could talk to the speakers, those in attendance and reach those who couldn’t make it! It also meant that anyone outside of BIG 2013 that wanted to know what was going on could be kept up to date.
Tweeting on behalf of Creative Lancashire, Tom and I manically live-tweeted all the main, salient points from some of the fantastic speakers, prompting active discussion and re-tweeting from those engaging with us online. The Twitter discussions proved so popular we literally couldn’t have tweeted more, hitting Twitter’s tweet limit not once but twice! Whizzing between workshops and talks, we made sure that everything was relaid to the online community, and the camera wasn’t missing out on any of the action either!
Concluding the day with a Twitter-commentary of guest speaker and local entrepreneur Martin Higginson, the event was a huge success for 3ManFactory.
We were asked to create an online buzz both before and during the event, and we excelled in doing so. Executing a well considered and carefully planned Twitter campaign, we got people excited about the event, raised awareness, converted registrations and, more importantly, engaging about the event.
