If, like me, you dread having to give anyone a sales pitch, trade shows and exhibitions can be a daunting project. Yet, I find myself accompanying the sales team to them as much as possible. Why? Because I’ve worked out how to make it work for me.

Here are my top three tips for promoting your business at a show, without feeling sleazy:

Twitter

Social media is a godsend for introverts everywhere and Twitter is particularly great for shows as it allows people you are not already connected with to discover you.

If you are more of a typer than a talker, then try to find the show’s hashtag and use it to talk about your business.

Tactics that work:

• Ask other people questions using the hashtag (Twitter polls are great!)
• Take pictures of your stand/colleagues and share them (the more light-hearted the better)
• Let people know about any promotions you are running, so they know to check out your stand
• Attend talks and tweet about them – share great quotes from speakers, and retweet others.

Twitter + Periscope

Periscope is a live-streaming app that’s owned by Twitter. There are various ways in which you can use it to your advantage at an event:

• Livestream a talk you attend (bonus if it’s one of your colleagues)
• Interview people attending the conference – you can use this as a live-version of Twitter polls. Maybe do this accompanied by someone outgoing if helpful.

A Periscope video lasts 24 hours, but you can save it and download it, and make a collage of these videos to share your experience of the event later.

The great thing about this is that it’s informal – you don’t need expensive tech (though I would recommend a lapel microphone if interviewing anyone).

Liveblogging

As the Head of Content Marketing for Passle – a tool that allows you to create content really easily – it seemed like a pretty logical step for me to liveblog at shows. It’s basically practicing what we preach!

What I do is attend talks with my laptop and take notes with the aim of posting something up before it’s over.

As there are time constraints I find that either summarizing the main points/tips (as I did here) or focusing on one particular point (as I did here) are the most effective tactics.

When I’m happy with the post, I search for the conference hashtag in Passle’s Twitter picker and add the tweets of people attending the same talk as me. Then, once it’s live, I thank those people for those tweets.

So in one short post I’ve connected meaningfully with several people attending the same talk (including the speaker!)

Win.