How to use your graphic recording visual charts for maximum impact.
There’s immense value and experiencing the unfolding of graphic recordings created in real-time. One of the big reasons why I decided to dedicate the last 5 years of my life to this work in particular is the amazing power of long-term memory retention of this information. One thing that I have been experiencing is that events, meeting and conference organizers aren’t leveraging the power of the visual notes POST event. Here’s a few tips on how to get amazing impact out of your graphic recordings and charts after your session is over.
Email them out!
This should go without saying - share the images with the people who were there! I’m surprised to find out how many speakers don’t receive their own image after the event, let alone the event attendees.
I know how tiring putting together an event is, especially if the event is volunteer run but making a plan to email out the images post event is important.
Whether it’s a small group facilitation who participated in a brainstorming session or a conference of 1500 or more people, taking the time to email out the images post event is crucial. I run all photos through Photoshop and clean them up for my clients. Having high resolution images so that people can zoom in to be able to read the details allows participants to engage deeper. I challenge people to review them days, weeks, months or more later to see what jogs in their memory.
If you are an event organizer and you are emailing our event attendees with a survey, what a great opportunity to send a website link for your attendees to download the cleaned up images. I’m happy to create an option through my website as well and set it up for you and provide a link for your participants. A lot of people love to take their own photos at the event but having pristine images in their inbox creates an even bigger impact.
Share the love on social media.
The visuals are a great way to engage people with the storytelling during events, but there's great power in post-event as well! Scheduling out images out over the next few weeks or months with a prompting question is a great way to continue to engage your participants. This helps with the memory retention and keeping your vision alive as well as making sure your event was top of mind so they want to jump on the registration for the next one.
Not sure if YouTube is really considered “social media” but I’ll throw out another idea here for that platform. A lot of events I work with post videos of the talks from the event. Feel free to incorporate the visuals in the video in someway or use it as your thumbnail image.
A great recent example I saw was from the UX research conference in Toronto that I created many charts over the course of the day. They posted visuals for a few weeks after the event with a prompting question. Check out an example photo from their twitter here. Check out the level of engagement this post got too (shares and likes!)
In marketing your next event.
Use a combination of both emailing and social for marketing! Maybe 6 months have passed and your selling your early-bird tickets. In a similar fashion as the previous suggestion, why not share the photos in your email marketing or on your social media to remind the people who were at the event last year how awesome it was and how much they learned. Include past attendees in your email marketing as well as other email lists that you may have for people who maybe are on the fence about attending. Create a little bit of FOMO for people who didn’t attend last year showing them what an amazing fun time they missed out on!
I actually had an event attendee a few months back tell me that he missed last years event but followed along the graphic recordings I was posting on twitter and then was disappointed that he didn’t go. He assured me I was a large contributing factor in deciding to go the next time!
Gifts & Gratitude.
Because the photos are high resolution you can feel confident of great print quality. I’ve seen some client print copies of the graphic recordings and share them with the speakers or sponsors as a thank you gift after the event. A lot of events will choose to give the original copy to the speaker but sometimes having a smaller framed version is a nice memento that makes more sense to hang on a wall!
Send some graphic recording photos, printed or emailed to sponsors while sending your thank yous so show them how much impact their sponsorship had. Even better if they sponsored the graphic recording and their logo is showcased on it! Bonus!
Here’s a great example from the Canadian Pharmacy Association showing off on their twitter gifting the graphic recording a framed version to one of their speakers.
Want some advice on sharing your photos post event, need help or just have a question for me - why don't you reach out! Always happy to chat!
Keep colourful,
Ashton