Investing in Conferences: 6 Ways to Get the Biggest Bang for Your Buck

Attending conferences is a powerful way to engage in your chosen industry. When professionals come together to discuss key issues, share emerging trends, and best practices, every attendee has an opportunity to stretch, grow, and deepen their own professional standing. This is true whether you are new to the industry or been engaged for years.

That's the up side.

As you no doubt know, the price of admission is often the down side of using conferences to learn about your industry. With the registration fee, the travel costs, and food and lodging expenses, you've got to have a budget for such a strategy!

Tips for Cutting Costs

No matter where you are in your career, it always helps to keep several cost cutting strategies in mind.

Housing options - Plan to share a hotel room with someone you know or see if the conference is arranging roommates. Look for a less expensive hotel in the area or explore options like AirBnB or online travel sites that allow you to pay less for open rooms close to the time of your conference.

Travel scenarios - Play around with different travel options. Could you drive? Carpool? Can you reserve your flight early to capitalize on low pricing?

Volunteer opportunities - Does the organization provide scholarships or waive fees for people who volunteer their time during the conference? It's always worth asking this question.

Virtual option - Review the website to determine whether the conference will stream one or more sessions online. More and more conferences are offering this option or they are moving to a virtual conference format for everyone.

Make the Most of Your Conference

If you decide to make the investment of time, money and effort to attend a conference, here are six ways you can make the most of your investment.

1) Do Your Homework - Your conference experience begins long before the first day of your conference. Sign up for announcements about the conference. Review the conference web page periodically because updates are often made to speakers and program descriptions. Do Web searches to learn what you can about each of the keynotes and breakout speakers.

You can do this step even if you aren't yet sure you want to attend the conference in person. Think of this stage as a way to verify whether the conference is a good fit for you.

2) Create Your Plan - What's your purpose for going? What are your goals? Who do you want to meet? What do you want to learn? Plan ahead so that you know which sessions you want to attend.

3) Take a Business Card - Most likely, one reason for attending the conference is to make new connections, so it's essential that you have a business card to hand out.

Think about the impression you make with a business card from an unrelated field or the statement of "I forgot my cards" or "I only brought a few cards" or "Do you have a pen and paper? I can write out my contact info for you."
If you aren't working or you are working, but looking for a new position, create a simple business card that includes your name, specialty or focus, your phone number and your email. If you have a blog that's relevant to your future career direction, include that as well. You don't have to spend a lot of money on these cards - think big box office stores or Vistaprint.com.

4) Engage Fully - Plan to participate as fully as possible during the entire conference. Take advantage of opportunities to network during breakfast, breaks, networking sessions, and receptions. Think about a few questions you can use to start conversations with people you don't know - you can ask where they are from, what they do, why they came to the conference. Later in the conference you can ask what they've learned, what they've enjoyed, or what their best takeaway is so far.
If the conference has activities - a tour, a pre-conference workshop, a team-oriented activity, or break out discussions - take part! You'll make deeper connections with people you interact with in a meaningful way.

5) Deepen Your Understanding of the Field - While at the conference, use your detective skills to discover as much as you can about the industry.

Pay attention to clues about who's who in the field. Identify the team that pulled the event together.

Notice who seems to have a high status in the field; they may be key note speakers, recognized for their contributions to the field, or people holding roles on the Board of Directors.

Keep an ear open for clues you hear about issues--opportunities and challenges--the field is facing at this time. Emerging industries may be dealing with different issues than a more mature industry.

Watch for opportunities to contribute to the field. How can your skills, talents, and time provide benefit to the industry organization?

Figure out the sub-areas of your field. With this information you'll have a better sense of the areas of the profession that are a good fit for you.

6) Follow Up - Your conference experience doesn't end when the conference closes. To make the most of your investment, it's up to you to follow up with the contacts you've met. Reach out to your contacts on LinkedIn, send a brief note via email, or follow them on Twitter. Set the stage for continuing the conversation you started at the conference. Fulfill any promises you made during the conference--connect people who need to know each other, send a link to a resource you shared with contacts. If you run across an article that reminds you of a particular contact, reach out again to offer information that will be valuable to them.

If You Aren't Able to Attend in Person

Don't despair if you can't make it to the conference. You can still benefit from the conference.

Learn what Twitter hashtag (#Keyword) the conference is using and you can track what's happening from afar. Enter the official hash tag or abbreviation for the conference in the upper right corner of http://hashtags.org or use another search function on Twitter. Then you can watch the tweets sent before, during, and after the conference.

Watch for blog posts with summaries and updates from the conference.

Follow keynote speakers and break out speakers on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Glean as much information as you can from the conference Web site...use this to leverage your research process.

Be sure to watch for announcements about regional or virtual events - webinars, telesummits, live streaming video - that are relevant to you. It will be a bit different from an in person conference, but you can gain a number of the benefits. Participate in the live chat during the event to make connections, and then follow up with them to create ongoing relationships.