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Social media channels give your audience a lot of control over your story. They can shorten it, summarize it, or modify it, and it’s difficult for you to control what they say. When the comments are positive, your idea gains traction, but if the comments are negative, your idea can die. Online conversations that occur before, during, and after your presentation happen through “back channels.” Make sure your story hits the mark in those channels..
Observe Audience Behavior
Get to know them by paying attention to what other stories and conversations your audience is participating in online. Active conversations can point you to hotspots on other social media platforms, including LinkedIn discussions or brand fan pages.
Provide A Channel
Make sure that you steer your audience toward a channel to continue the conversation. Create a Twitter hashtag for your presentation, and invite audience members to chat with you. Encourage audience members to use the back channel before, during, and after you share your big idea.
Ask For Their Input
People love to give input and help shape ideas, so try presenting a partially developed idea and asking your audience to help shape it through social media. You can use back channels to gain insight into your audience, and find out what they are looking to gain by hearing your story.
Spread Your Idea
There are many ways to spread your idea using social media. Consider streaming your talk or releasing slides and quotes throughout the presentation. Select a moderator to monitor the conversation and respond to comments or questions during your talk. Once your talk is completed, post photos of the event, and encourage blogging about your topic and the impact of your story.
Gauge The Connection
In addition to seeing the body language and audible reactions from the live audience, you can use back channels to determine whether you’ve connected with your audience. You can survey your audience after the event and answer additional questions to determine whether your talk was well-received.
You should analyze the sentiment to see if audience members understood and plan to adopt your idea. Finally, you should analyze your online reach. You can use analytics tools to see how far and fast your message is spreading.
Social media engagement continues to grow and change the way we communicate. The conversation goes beyond your live presentation, and you need to continue talking with your audience through the back channels to ensure that your story has maximum impact.
The P.E.P. Talk
This article is part of our P.E.P. Talk Series. Over the next month, some of the brightest and best authors, business professionals, and coaches are coming together to share their valuable advice for breaking free of “The Golden Handcuff Effect” so you can take full ownership of your careers and experience Professional Emancipation.
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