Attending an industry event or conference is a great way to connect with fellow professionals, gain new skills and knowledge, and raise your personal brand visibility. But the experience doesn’t have to end when you walk out the door. Writing a LinkedIn post recapping your time at the event and sharing key takeaways can help you get even more value from the experience.
Why Write About the Event on LinkedIn?
Posting about the event serves a few key purposes:
- It shares your perspective and key learnings from sessions you attended with your connections.
- It highlights your participation and engagement with your industry.
- It continues conversations and connections made at the event itself.
- It raises awareness for the event itself, which organizers appreciate.
In short, it lets you extend the shelf life of the knowledge and connections gained at the event beyond just those few conference days. The further you can stretch the value, the better return you get on time and money invested in attending.
What to Include in Your Post
A good post-event recap includes:
Overview of the Event
Give a brief description of the event itself for context – where and when it was held, who organized it, what the theme or focus was, and why you decided to attend. This gives readers who weren’t there themselves a sense of what it was all about.
Key Sessions/Speakers
Highlight any sessions, speakers, or presentations that really resonated with you. Summarize the key ideas or insights you took away and why they stood out as valuable to you.
Examples:
- “John Doe’s keynote on digital transformation in the industry was eye-opening. His data on how quickly legacy systems are declining made it clear how urgent it is to digitize.”
- “Jane Smith’s workshop on customer retention strategies left us with several concrete tips we can put into practice right away to reduce churn.”
Memorable Moments
Share any anecdotes or moments that made the experience stand out for you – funny stories from speakers, intriguing attendee questions, hands-on workshops, cool booth demos, etc. These personal details make the post more fun and engaging to read.
Examples:
- “The demo at XYZ’s booth where we got to pilot drones using VR goggles was so cool – it really felt like the future is now.”
- “I totally wasn’t expecting the dance-off during the networking lunch! It was hilarious watching executives battle it out and then join together for a giant conga line.”
Your Key Takeaways
What were your biggest takeaways from the event? What ideas, insights, or tools will you apply to your own role and company going forward? Share the knowledge so others can benefit.
Examples:
- “My biggest takeaway was the framework John Doe shared for Change Management. I can’t wait to bring it back to my team to improve how we roll out process improvements.”
- “I loved the hands-on UX workshop – I’m returning with a dozen ideas for improving our app’s design and navigation based on what we learned about mobile users’ behavior.”
Connections Made
Part of the value of events is meeting new people. Share some of the new connections you made – what you learned from them, insights you gained into what others in the industry are doing, etc. Giving them a shoutout makes the connection more concrete.
Examples:
- “It was great chatting with Jane Doe of XYZ Company at breakfast. Her perspective on the industry’s direction was really thought-provoking.”
- “I loved meeting the team from 123 Startup in the exhibit hall. It was so interesting to see how they are using AI in a totally different way than we are – I think there’s a ton of potential for us to collaborate going forward.”
Recommendation for Others
Given your experience, would you recommend others attend this event in the future? Why or why not? Your insight helps colleagues determine if it aligns with their goals and is worth the investment to attend.
Examples:
- “I would highly recommend this event to other marketing professionals – the sessions gave me hands-on strategies to drive more qualified traffic and lower our customer acquisition costs.”
- “While I got a few valuable nuggets, I was overall disappointed in the quality of the sessions and workshops at this event. Unless it’s hosted somewhere more convenient next year, I likely wouldn’t recommend it for time-strapped colleagues.”
Tips for Writing a Compelling Recap
Beyond including the key details above, these tips can take your recap from good to great:
- Share photos. Include pictures from sessions, speakers, exhibits, or networking to make the post more visual and fun.
- Get personal. Share your honest thoughts, reactions, takeaways, and feelings to show your unique conference experience.
- Keep it concise. While you could write a novel about everything you did and learned, shorter recaps are more consumable. Summarize the key facts.
- Engage your audience. Ask thoughtful questions to spark discussion, like “What would you have liked to learn about X?”
- Tag relevant connections. Mentioning people you met or speakers you saw gets them engaged with your post.
- Promote future events. If the conference will be held again, include relevant details to help others get involved.
Sample Post Summary
Putting it all together, your post could sound something like this:
[Conference Name] 2023 Recap
[Paragraph overview of conference, dates, location, organizers, and goals]
The keynote speech from [name] really resonated with me. [1-2 sentences summarizing most impactful points].
My top takeaways from sessions were:
- [Key takeaway 1]
- [Key takeaway 2]
- [Key takeaway 3]
I made some great new connections, including [name], [name], and [name]. It was valuable discussing [ summarize interesting topic] with them.
From the exhibitor demos, [name]’s booth stood out for showing [compelling demo]. [1 sentence reaction].
One fun highlight was [describe memorable moment].
Would I recommend this conference? [1-2 sentence recommendation with reasons]. [If recommending positively, include key details again like date, location, and organizers if known already for next year.]
Thanks to [conference organizer] for hosting such an impactful event! I’m already looking forward to next year.
Turn Insights into Action
While the recap helps preserve learnings and connections, you want to maximize the value from your time investment in attending. Here are some next steps to drive action:
- Categorize takeaways – What insights apply to your personal development? What is most relevant for your team? What is best shared company-wide? Segmentingallows more targeted follow-through.
- Share with colleagues – Discuss takeaways that align with your team’s goals and implement together. Or, host a post-conference lunch and learn to present to a broader group.
- Apply learnings – Don’t let action items languish. Calendar time to work through new ideas or tools from the sessions that support current projects.
- Connect with new contacts – Schedule meetings or send messages to build relationships with your new connections while the event is fresh.
Measuring Impact
To help assess the value from conferences, track quantifiable metrics before and after, like:
Conference Impact Metrics
| Metric | Pre-Event | Post-Event |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant new contacts gained | 15 | 28 |
| New leads or sales generated | $25,000 | $41,000 |
| Client retention rate | 77% | 81% |
| Team productivity | 84 | 90 |
Tracking metrics before and after helps measure the tangible business impact of attending. It also identifies areas the event influenced positively to guide choices for future conference attendance.
Key Takeaways
In summary, remember these best practices when recapping industry conferences or events on LinkedIn:
- Provide an overview of the event details and purpose
- Highlight key sessions, speakers, or moments
- Summarize your biggest personal takeaways
- Share new connections and networking highlights
- Give recommendations for if colleagues should attend in the future
- Include visual elements like photos for engagement
- Segment and share takeaways across teams to drive action
- Track quantifiable metrics to measure business impact
Following this framework helps you extract maximum value from conferences through comprehensive recaps that educate colleagues, build connections, and drive real results.
