Conference creativity

A little cheekily, this was one of my tweets (@kirstydunphey) from the recent (and fabulous) ARPM (Australasian Residential Property Management) conference in Sydney.

“Wondering if it’s a conscious decision for @1form_live to “man” trade stand with attractive young men at a conference full of women?”

1 Form Live were trade stand exhibitors at the conference and even this happily married woman was having an extended glance at their booth over the conference. I thought it was a smart strategy given that the conference attendees were probably 70% women.

Later in the day I promoted them to the level of geniuses when I noticed that their Wi-Fi connection had been renamed to this: “1Form – Chris is Single”. To me – a brilliant way to leverage off their existing strategy.

Knowing I was going to be compelled to blog about it, I went and got a photo of the 1 Form team to add to the blog and they had a giggle as to why I’d come over.

But I am going to downgrade them from genius to just clever. What else could they have done? Well, if your company’s going to have a Twitter account and you’re at a conference with a hashtag and people are tweeting – engage!

If someone posts a cheeky tweet about your sales team being hot – REPLY! Have someone checking Twitter during the day and responding and engaging where appropriate.

So many people see Twitter as a way to get a message across when really, the true value of it comes from it being a way to communicate. Communication is two way. You’d rarely ignore a customer talking to your face, why would you ignore a potential customer’s tweet.

Secondly – and disappointingly – their Wi-Fi was renamed to “1 Form Live – come and visit us!” on day two of the conference… yawn! Ahh well, boys – thanks for the memories.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27: If I Can do it Anyone Can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21.

Now Kirsty does lots of fun things which you can read about here. Her favourite current projects are Elephant Property, a boutique property management agency, Baby Teresa, a baby clothing line that donates an outfit to a baby in need for each one they sell and ReallySold, which helps real estate agents stop writing boring, uninteresting ads.