Sprout at AfroTech 2024: Best practices for social media for events

Building a social presence isn’t limited to engagements on networks. It takes bringing ‌real-life experiences to your audience’s fingertips to nurture community and connection. Blavity is known for combining social media and IRL experiences, hosting events throughout the year. But their key annual event is AfroTech™, the largest multicultural conference in the United States.

This year Sprout Social attended AfroTech™ for the first time, so we wanted to bring our audience along on our trip to showcase the importance of brand diversity in social media. In this article, I’ll share our journey to AfroTech™ and our strategy for event coverage, including our collaboration with LinkedIn. And I’ll share Sprout’s social media for events best practices to inspire your strategy.

What is AfroTech™?

Based in Los Angeles, Blavity is the world’s leading enterprise premium content and network for Black culture and technology. The media tech company hosts AfroTech™ Conference annually. Each year, a global network of over 20,000 creatives, engineers, venture capitalists, founders, executives and other tech innovators join for a series of digital and in-person events. The conference features panels and workshops, along with networking opportunities with industry leaders. The annual event also offers an expo hall with mid-market and enterprise recruiters. AfroTech™ 2024 was hosted in Houston, Texas.

Journey to Sprout AfroTech™

If you search #AfroTech across social media, you’ll find people referring to the event as a reunion, a safe space for community‌ or an innovation incubator. For me, it’s all one in the same thanks to my mentor who introduced me to the conference. Our relationship began during the pandemic over Zoom. She encouraged me to attend AfroTech™ in 2021, when Blavity built the event on a metaverse platform, eXp World Holdings’.

The event was fully immersive, enabling attendees to use personalized avatars to speak and listen to each other in real time. There were even live performances from artists like Jidenna. Impressed by the programming and enterprise presence, I knew I had to attend in person.

In 2023, I attended the event in person with my mentor. I met professionals that have since become my friends and business partners—many of whom have served as subject matter experts or guest speakers for Sprout. Given the impact on my career and understanding the potential business impact, I wanted to bring Sprout to AfroTech™. Our network partners, customers and industry peers were present, so Sprout joining was a natural fit. I shared the insights I learned with Sprout Marketing leaders and highlighted stand-out programming with our DEI team and Black@, Sprout’s community resource group for Black employees.

As a Black@ leadership committee member, I pitched Sprout at AfroTech™ to our co-leads, Kiara Ealy and Chelsey Jordan. With their leadership and the collective support of our executive sponsor, DEI, Recruitment and Equity teams, we were able to send 11 Sprouters to AfroTech™ 2024.

“Attending AfroTech™ seemed like a dream at first, but when support from leadership started to fall in place, it showed Sprout’s willingness to act on its DEI efforts. The conference was inspirational because it was filled with leaders in the tech space that are underrepresented in our industry, but it also brought light to ideas and perspectives that come from historically underrepresented groups.

AfroTech™ was more than a space for networking and representation, but it served as a place where our partners, customers and prospects joined for inclusive and global innovation.” Chelsey Jordan, Customer Success Manager, Corporate and Black@ Co-lead

As our co-leads and internal teams navigated logistics, I began developing a social media event coverage strategy with Sprout’s Social Team.

Social media for events: Sprout’s strategy for AfroTech™

For our social media strategy for AfroTech™ Conference 2024, we planned for pre-event, during event and post-event coverage to create a holistic experience for the conference.

Pre-event

Pre-event coverage breakdown for AfroTech™ 2024:

• One static post with a branded graphic on LinkedIn
• One curated Employee Advocacy link featuring the LinkedIn post
• One poll asking about event coverage
• One static post from a nano-influencer
• One hype video on LinkedIn and Instagram
• One Sprout Social Listening Topic

For pre-event coverage, our goal was to spread awareness about Sprout’s attendance, along with encourage people to tune into our upcoming content. With the LinkedIn static post, we announced our attendance and event coverage on Instagram. We amplified the post internally using our Employee Advocacy solution. We curated an Advocacy Story and shared the link through internal channels so Sprout employees could repost it on LinkedIn. We created a poll to share more awareness about our attendance and coverage.

We also partnered with Kerry Hartley, a LinkedIn nano-influencer who shares tips for preparing for AfroTech™ each year. This was important because we wanted to extend our reach by collaborating with someone who already has an audience tied to AfroTech™. Along with sharing tips for AfroTech™ attendees preparing for the conference, he encouraged people to follow Sprout on Instagram and watch our event coverage.

Lastly, we ended our pre-event coverage with a hype video sharing some of my favorite moments from last year’s conference to further share our messaging:

Before we headed to Houston, our Social team set up a Listening topic in Sprout to gauge conversations around the event and identify any potential media opportunities.

During event

For our coverage during AfroTech™, Sprout really wanted to bring our audience along for the ride, so we posted Instagram Stories daily. To ground our posting and center Sprout’s connection to the event, I made sure to include content centered around two of our narrative focus areas for 2024: memorable brand experiences and artificial intelligence (AI). For example, we shared videos of brand activations in the expo hall and venue campus. We also posted clips from the AfroTech™ AI Stage and other event stages.

Post-event

Here’s a recap of our post-event coverage:

• Daily Instagram Stories
• One recap video on Instagram
• Attendee reflection posts on LinkedIn
• One partner video with LinkedIn
• Three TikTok videos featuring fit checks for article promotion

Since our goal was to raise awareness about Sprout’s attendance, we shared a recap video, had attendees post reflections on their personal LinkedIn accounts and a partner video‌. We also published TikTok videos featuring fit checks to promote this article.

Several Sprout partners were sponsoring AfroTech™, so I worked with our Partnerships team to secure a collaboration with LinkedIn. I did a tiny-mic-style interview on the ground with Andrew McCaskill, LinkedIn Career Expert & Global Communications Executive. Along with being a career expert and marketing leader, McCaskill is a culture analyst known for his DEI activism, making him the perfect subject matter expert for our video.

In preparation for the interview, I met with the LinkedIn team to discuss day-of logistics and potential questions. Championing DEI is part of Sprout’s values, but I also wanted to use our AfroTech™ partnership to support our AI narrative focus. With that goal in mind, I asked McCaskill questions about social media, AI and the impact of investing in diverse talent. To help maintain a social-first feel, I incorporated icebreakers about his favorite memes, internet cultural moments and Black-owned brands on social.

“[My favorite cultural moments on the internet] has to go back to #ScandalThursdays and Shonda Rhimes. But nothing beats Beyoncé entering country music. I mean, the cowboy hats, the rhinestones, doing the [Mute Challenge] at the actual concerts where everybody went on mute all over the world,” he said.

These rapid-fire questions served as an engagement hook and launchpad for deeper questions about AI, social media and the impact of DEI on long-term business success.

“You’re committing professional malpractice if you don’t have people inside of your organization to help you understand, respect culture, decode culture and then have some modicum of reciprocity with your audiences…we have so much power in terms of driving the cultural conversation and [industry conversations]. That’s cultural capital,” he said.

The video was ‌shared on Sprout’s brand accounts and LinkedIn for Marketing to promote this article. If you’re looking to amplify your key messaging, extend your reach and nurture partner relationships, consider co-marketing initiatives when planning your social media coverage for events.

Social media for events best practices

Planning social media for events isn’t an easy feat. Here are some best practices we used to stay grounded.

Start planning early

The sooner you start planning ‌your event coverage, the better. This way you can get teams on board in advance of the event so they understand their roles and what to expect once the coverage launches. For example, for events like AfroTech™ where applicants, enterprise brands and prospects are present, you might want to coordinate with sales, partnerships and recruiting. Starting early will also enable you to create certain elements of your posts, like social copy, well in advance so you’re not scrambling to create content all at once. An early start will help you create, build anticipation, keep your content top of mind and get ‌your audience excited.

Identify partnerships to extend your reach

Collaborate with creators, influencers and industry partners to broaden your social media event coverage exposure. These partnerships can help you reach new audiences, driving more interest and engagement. You can work with partners to amplify relevant messaging that’s important to your brand. For example, in our LinkedIn interview, we talked about social media and the AI revolution’s impact on culture and diverse workforces. Also use employee advocacy strategies to amplify your coverage.

Use artificial intelligence and automation to support your work

Use AI and automation tools to automate tasks like scheduling posts and analyzing performance. Using AI to save time and effort means you’ll have more time to be creative—plus you can be more present during the event. For example, we scheduled Instagram Stories in Sprout to save us time on the ground. I also used generative AI tools like Writer.AI to help proofread this article according to Sprout’s editorial guidelines.

Use social listening to guide your planning

Identify conversations and sentiments surrounding your upcoming event with social listening. You can use these insights to plan your approach to social media for events coverage. In Sprout you can set up a Listening Query and add in relevant themes, hashtags, handles and phrases to gauge discourse around your event.

Successful social media for events exist beyond the screen

With a strong strategy for social media for events, you can shape memorable brand experiences that resonate with your audience in-person and digitally. Planning ahead, pinpoint partnerships, leaning on social listening and using AI will help streamline your coverage.

AI wasn’t just a focal point in our event coverage at AfroTech™ 2024—it’s a tool Sprout continuously uses to amplify our work, save time and create quality content. That’s why we created an AI marketing toolkit to help other teams do the same. It’s filled with resources you can use to enhance your content and document your current AI processes. Use it to support your social media for events and more.

The post Sprout at AfroTech 2024: Best practices for social media for events appeared first on Sprout Social.

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