6 Reasons to Live Blog Your Next Conference

by Julia Vernersson |  March 7, 2018

M100 Sanssouci Colloquium is an international forum aiming to promote democracy and freedom of expression, bringing together Europe’s top editors, commentators and high profile public key figures such as Angela Merkel and Sigmar Gabriel, the German minister of foreign affairs. The latest meeting in September 2017 focused on the impact of recent political developments, as well as the future and responsibility of the media. Sophia Wellek from the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium staff says:

“Using Live Blog had a specific impact on the debate at the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium. We were able to provide a versatile coverage, which illuminated the debate from different angles and focused the event.”

M100 first used Live Blog in 2016 to train their team of young journalists in how to live blog an event. Experiencing the effect on the debate, the exposure of the live coverage and the benefits of having instant documentation, the M100 team found Live Blog was a must-have tool.

The Challenge

Live coverage is proven to raise engagement and reach a wider audience. In the setting of conferences, it brings an opportunity to add more diversity to the discussions. In cases where Live Blog is present on stage, the Live Blog editor can function as a moderator by embedding relevant tweets and comments from the audience, allowing instant interaction with the speaker. Sophia Wellek:

“Through the live blog different opinions were visible at the event and attendees could participate digitally in the debate. At the same time, quotes from speakers could be highlighted and content reproduced. As a result, the tool did not only enrich the discussions, but also facilitated the coverage of the event.”

With Live Blog, editors can embed tweets, short quotes, audio and live streams. As the M100 is an invite-only event, it is interesting to engage with a non-present audience online. The Live Blog posts themselves consist of short highlights and it is easy for an outside audience to quickly get an idea of what happened at the event.

Tweets from the audience which enhanced the discussion themes were embedded in the Live Blog.

What is live blogging’s advantage compared to using general social media channels? Live blogs are more versatile than Twitter hashtags, where information might get drowned in the volumes of content, and at the same time more open than a Facebook page, which requires membership to interact. Instead it is an ideal combination of curated social media content and content provided by the reporters on the ground. As it can be fully integrated into the design of a conference website, it is easy to reach out with information and connect with attendees.

The Solution

The M100 Live Blog was managed by 25 young journalists who took part in the event, and learned how to live blog throughout the meeting. With its journalistic workflows, Live Blog makes it easy for teams to collaborate and contribute, while editors are able to keep an overview, as well as prioritize and correct items before official publication. This is how Sophia Wellek from the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium staff puts it:

“By using the contributors’ function of the Live Blog we were able to correct errors in the documentation and interpretation of the discussions. Thus, we could effectively prevent the publication of false quotes and misunderstood statements.”

The contributors’ function enabled the organisers to make sure quotes and statements were captured correctly.

Following the event, the live blog functioned as curated documentation of the event and was seamlessly integrated into the design of the M100 website. Posts can be sorted in ascending or descending order, and important highlights can be filtered by users to get a quick overview of what happened. Also the possibility to pin prominent posts at the top of the timeline allows for the archived live blog to be kept as documentation of the event that people can refer to anytime afterwards.

The Results

The liveblog embedded in the M100 website.

Through our partnership with M100, we identified six advantages of using live blogging tools at conferences.

1. Live Blog makes it possible to cover an event fast and intuitively. The Live Blog Reporter app makes sure your live blogging team can collect all the content they need on the go, but also rely on content prepared as drafted posts prior to coverage.
2. Providing your press team with live blogging tools that follow professional journalistic workflows makes it easy to engage new staff, beginners and volunteers in live reporting. You can gather highlights conveniently through multiple channels with drag and drop functionality and review what is going online before it is published.
3. Deciding to add live coverage to an event promotes live interaction between attendees, speakers and even your outside followers.
4. A live blogging platform creates social media-friendly event documentation on the go, adding your own branded channel of information.
5. Live Blog enhances your relationship with your sponsors through specifically sponsored live blogs and advertising management in the flow of the feed.
6. Take advantage of extra publicity using our SEO-friendly theme, which will make your live blogging platform more visible to search engines.

If you are interested in using the best live blogging platform for your next event, get in touch with us: saas@liveblog.pro

We provide software solutions and can offer training and a custom introduction to our tools for your team.