Business Matters: Five Conference Survival (and Marketing) Tips

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I recently returned from the fabulous annual conference of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) in Columbus. In this blog I’ll share five new strategies that helped me survive and thrive an intense professional conference (and, to some degree, these strategies should work for fellow introverts at local STC chapter meetings as well).

Set goals for your networking. For example, prior to leaving for Columbus, I set a goal of collecting 25 business cards and I collected 23―and I also received six LinkedIn invitations from people who attended my sessions. During the conference, I adopted a new, low-tech method of storing these valuable cards―I used a small, resealable sandwich bag (probably not the classiest way of collecting cards, but it worked). Of course, the cards are only a means to an end: My larger goal was to land one new medical editing client as a result of my interactions with people whom I met at the conference. See #3 below for a description of my follow-up plan to make that happen.

Use social media before, during, and after your conference. I’m not the best person to speak about this strategy, as I don’t use social media diligently. But my friends tweeted and posted on LinkedIn that they were attending and/or presenting, and several attendees tweeted from both of my open sessions. I’m now following them on Twitter. And, as I mentioned, LinkedIn invitations were flying during and after the conference―I gained at least 30 new contacts! I think I’ll try harder at my next conference to use social media (I was partly hampered by having a new laptop, which provided more than enough technology challenges for me at the time―do not upgrade two days before your next conference).

Follow up consistently and quickly with the contacts that you made during the conference. I created a four-column table to track all my cards and my new LinkedIn connections so that I could document sending my editing postcard to new contacts and the emails that I sent and received from various contacts. I also plan to phone the most likely targets―which will now be a “warm” call as opposed to a “cold” call.

Remember that you are always an ambassador for your chapter or for your other professional organizations, so when you network, be sure to chat up your other affiliations. I loved that STC had a booth manned by local STC members who gave out information to many AMWA members. I had several of my AMWA chapter members approach met to ask why I belonged to both organizations and what I thought that STC could do for them. (You may not know that both STC and AMWA are offering reciprocal member rates for conferences and other educational experiences.) Other organizations’ conferences provide an opportunity both to be the face of STC and gain valuable new connections in other groups.

Feel free to “bail” from any activity when you are feeling overwhelmed (except your own presentations, of course). Once, during a huge networking event, I left to go to the bathroom and instead went to my hotel room to just “chill” (I’m an introvert and it’s easy to get overloaded at these events). I did feel guilty that I wasn’t mining every opportunity at the conference, but the bliss of silence quickly dispelled those feelings. Later that day I was offered a free ticket to the formal banquet and I briefly entertained accepting the generous offer, but I know that I don’t like those formal events and I desperately needed a few hours to “veg out” after three 12+ hour days. I’m glad that I am learning to do what I need to do to preserve my sanity and mental health.

I have been to many, many professional conferences, and yet I am still amazed at how I continue to learn to increase my networking effectiveness. I look forward to seeing you all in Phoenix next May. I’ll be the lady with the plastic sandwich bag filled with business cards―including yours!

Elizabeth (Bette) Frick, PhD, ELS is president of The Text Doctor LLC in Boulder, CO.  She teaches technical writing in corporations and edits medical documents. Bette is an STC Fellow and has been independent for 23 years.

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