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        After attending the SouthWiRED Digital Marketing Conference in Atlanta last week, my mind was completely blown away with digital and all that is happening digitally in Atlanta. Additionally, this was one of my first digital marketing conferences. I’ve been to more networking events and panels, meet and greets, career fairs and formal recruiting events than I can even count. However, SouthWiRED was my first dive into the digital conference realm. I immediately appreciated the casual environment and was excited to begin following the hashtag for the day: #SWstudent. The live twitter feed quickly filled up with excited students and panelists tweeting about the day ahead of us. Everyone was excited and inviting everyone to join in the conversation on twitter ans Instagram! New and slightly intimidated by this encouraged interactivity, I decided to start small and began with retweeting some of my classmates. By the end of the day I had connected with over 40 of the attendees, panelists, companies represented and discussed. I had a blast posting quotes or questions that inspired me during the panels and a final tweet and Instagram to thank the panelists and hosts for an awesome conference.  I am now extremely excited about the many connections I was able to find and spent some time after the conference adding all these new connections, ideas, and companies on LinkedIn. I have had some great luck reaching out to companies and individuals to stay in touch or learn more about their careers and organizations. 

        I feel that I was able to capitalize on the social media opportunities and now have been able to connect on a professional level with many individuals in such a quick, easy, and almost casual way. I am excited to see where this leads, as these are some of my first connections and experiences networking with digital professionals; especially with some of the best digital and social media marketers Atlanta has to offer!

        Mashable just published an article with tips for utilizing and capitalizing social media when attending a conference. Here are the 5 most important tips for using social media during conferences:

1                                              1.  Play Nice

2                                              2. Get the hashtag right

3                                                                               3. Interact with others online

                                                                                  4. Don’t get carried away

                                                5. Have fun with it

        Personally, I  had the most fun with and benefited most by interacting with others who are posting about the event online. It was so easy to favorite or retweet an account that was sparking my attention during the conference. I was even able to arrange to meet with someone to talk about her career path between two of the panels after I commented on her tweet. I also agree with the article’s statement: “The key to finding that happy medium is posting enough so that it's informative but not so much that it seems like you aren't even really paying attention to the event”. I learned so much from the SouthWiRED conference about starting my career in digital. However, one of the most applicable and personally helpful takeaways for me was becoming comfortable connecting with professionals on social media to engage, listen, and learn through digital conversations. I am excited to continuing engaging in the future with companies and individuals via social media.

 Connect with me on Twitter!

@GraceHulett2015

Article referenced: 

http://mashable.com/2014/10/21/using-social-media-events/