Accounting Events 2019: [Part 7 of 7] 7 Things You Must Do After Attending An Event

From ‘the list of top events for accountants to attend’ and ‘preparing an ideal schedule that balances the work life and events’ to ‘toolkit for attending events’ to ‘DOs and DONTs during events’, we have covered almost every topic to make sure you take out the best of your money and time investment.

However, the possibilities of making the best out of the event are present even after the event is over. This time we are going to cover – key takeaways from the events and the steps you can take to utilize the event better for networking, lead generation, and updating knowledge.

Now that you had a wonderful time at the events, made new connections, and discovered new trends and technologies during the sessions but still, there are a lot more things you need to do with your event visit.

Yes, you must be exhausted, and there’s much work that must be waiting at your office table. You may have to discuss your visit with your team and colleagues about the event. However, don’t forget the following steps before you conclude your visit:

1. Relax and Analyze

After multiday events and lots of traveling, attending sessions and conferences all you may think of is your warm bed. It’s obvious, and you should take some rest to refresh your mind and energy as you need that in the coming days.

After sufficient rest, analyze your whole visit to the events. Make a list of every person or professional you met and categorize all the business cards that you got at the event. Figure out their worth and plan how to connect to them. Also, check social media posts and hashtags, and revert to the ones you find relevant.

2. Event Maybe Over, Networking has Just Started

During the event, you must have met many professionals, and you had a great networking experience there. Connect with the possible prospects, partners, influencers, and others to follow up with them. Prepare your email template, phone call pitch, and social media posts (approach the right people over the right medium).

Make sure you take a follow up on all the contacts within three days after the event because later you may get forgotten by those contacts and it can be awkward for you to introduce yourself again to them. So, don’t let your contacts wait more than three days.

3. Reach Out to Organizers to Share Feedback

It’s the right time to say your thoughts to the organizers. Organizers usually email the attendees after the event for feedback and love to hear the attendees’ opinion. So, give your feedback to them, what you liked and what didn’t.

Even if they don’t reach out to you after the event, you can contact them on social media or mail them with a note of thank you including your feedback. As feedbacks are the best way to improve in future, the organizers will happy to hear from you and who knows if they offer you a coupon or discount for your next visit.

4. It’s Time to Take Out Your Notes

During the sessions and the conferences, you may have written down some critical notes. Now is the time to check them out and do your research and analysis of those points or facts. Pull all of those notes together and compile them to create your strategies and findings.

Organizing all of those notes will help you to locate essential and relevant points to be used in the future. Moreover, you don’t have to struggle for finding any specific point that you learned during the event.

5. Social Media Networking

Now, the list you have prepared of all the professionals you met during the events and the sack of business cards that you brought back with you, it’s time to take follow up of all of them. Send them connection request on LinkedIn as it is a professional way of making connections. Depending on your interaction with them, you may reach them on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

So, as soon as you reach back to connect to them on social media platforms, send them a connection request. Use hashtags of the conference or events if you wish to search them as it will be easier to locate them on social media. Don’t forget why you attended the event at first. These contacts will help you out in the future, so don’t lose them. Also, social media is a powerful platform, and you may write posts about your experiences and learnings during the events. It will surely help you out in social media marketing strategy.

6. Sharing is Caring

Yes, you must have heard it many times. Share your experiences, lessons, and findings at the events with your team and colleagues. It will help you to solidify these significant vital findings in your mind, and the whole team can learn from your experiences.

We would recommend you give a presentation on your visit to the entire team, where you can create various sections like market trends, latest technology, business updates, best practices, and others on the basis of your findings and learnings during the event. Here your compilation of notes will help you out. This way your whole team will be updated with these topics and will appreciate your efforts to do so.

7. Goals Analysis and Planning for Future

You must have had some goals in your mind while planning for attending events like networking, trends, and technology updates. It is time to analyze if you had met your goals or not. The speakers you wanted to hear and people you wanted to meet, did your goals accomplished? Have you recorded (in the form of notes, audio or video) all the critical points and information from the events?

If not, then a lot of the event just got wasted. If you have missed some of the essential sessions or speakers, then put them on your list for the next events. Also, if you doubt that there are some faults in your planning strategy due to which you missed on some of the opportunities then locate them and start planning to your next event visit.

Start your planning for the next event without making those mistakes, in case you find out some. This way you can ensure that you don’t miss out on opportunities again in the future.

Wrapping Up

Now that you know what to do after attending the event, you’re geared up for the events and must be confident about it. With this series, we have tried to offer information and guides to prepare a schedule, Do’s and Don’ts during events, how-to for networking, and what to do after the event. If you want us to write on a specific topic, then tell us in the comment section.

In our next blog we will round up all the essential key points of this blog series, so don’t forget to read that. You can subscribe to receive updates in your email or follow us on social media to find our posts in your feed.