Australasian Talent Conference Social Media event hailed a success

23 December 2009

The Australian Talent Conference's (ATC) inaugural event, Social Media: A Recruitment Revolution, held in Melbourne in December was a resounding success. I was lucky enough to speak at the event alongside some of Australia's most connected social media experts which was an honour and a great opportunity to share Buchan's expertise in online reputation management - an area that is of growing interest to many of our clients in the professional services sector.

I'd be lying to say that I didn't feel at all anxious before taking to the lectern, but I was in my element in no time. With a full room of people, there were plenty of questions around how organisations can influence their employment brand by better-managing their online reputation and lots of interest in ‘how' to get started with social media engagement. Of course, every organisation has different needs and while you don't need a Rolls Royce social media strategy to start engaging online, you do need a strategy, not 100 tactics.

As well as presenting, Buchan's role was to raise awareness about the new Conference in the lead up and following the event. Much of the pre-event work involved planning the conference structure with the project team; advising on relevant themes; interviewing speakers to develop newsworthy stories; as well developing e-marketing collateral; driving debate online; inviting media to attend; and conducting impromptu interviews with attendees on the day for an online vox pop video that will appear on the ATC's website.

The event was over-subscribed and buzzing with energy. Embracing the spirit of social media, it was different to most conferences as part of it was an ‘Unconference', meaning people could nominate and vote for the topics they wanted to hear about. These sessions were completely unstructured with only a facilitator fuelling group discussion and ‘participant-generated' content giving people some useful tips and real examples.

It was a real hit with the recruiters and HR professionals who attended, with lots of healthy debate and discussion.

Throughout the sessions we also had people Tweeting event updates to their networks on Twitter from their mobile phones. These comments appeared on the wall of the Conference throughout the day and for people who were not able to attend, it meant they were able to keep up to date in real time with how the event was panning out. It was a great way for us to keep up the momentum and online ‘hype' about the event.

However, no time to rest, with plenty of post-event media material being developed and planning for ATC 2010 already underway!

Danielle Murdolo, Account Manager, Buchan

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