Event planning 2.0

Event planning 2.0

We chose this recent article 2-2010 (latest version) because it deals with the sensible and clever use of social media strategy among the MICE INDUSTRY. Indeed, even if Internet and digital communication have been used in events since 2004, this industry just began to use the social media to improve their communications, to create new distribution channels and finally to allow interactive communication and networking. The Gesellschaft für Marketing GmbH in Berlin has its own definition for this new phenomenon, they define it as the “user generated content” (UGC). Nicole Simon, a web 2.0 expert from Lübeck, compares this progress from Internet to the web 2.0 as from static to dynamic. The German digital economy association – Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschft (BVDW) distinguishes between 4 different ways of using the social media: Networking; Contribution; Sharing; Messaging. Facebook has already more than 500 million active users; Tweeter counts about 750 tweets/second and 112 million active blogs with 120,000 new ones every day.

How can marketing departments use these trends in order to provide new tools to the event planners? Surveys have shown that in the USA spending in social marketing will increase by 34 %/ year until 2014. The event and meeting industry has to take advantage of this situation.

The new ROI stands not (only) anymore for Return on Investment but for Risk of Ignoring, which empathizes the importance for event planners to care for these new trends, vital for the successful survival in the MICE domain. Only organizers who will be able to adapt to the challenges, which present the new technologies, will be able to correctly exploit the new opportunities.

Event planners will still use predominately traditional tools to communicate as telephone, e-mail etc., nevertheless they cannot ignore the current trends in order to hit new target groups. Interactive tools enable event planners to communicate and share information about for instance good speakers, venues, former events and latest event information. It is therefore important to integrate social media at each stage of the event planning: before (social media monitoring: to benchmark the competitors and to analyze the environment), during (to share content and allow UGC) and after (to spread feedback to the attendees as well as the prospects for future events).

Some other examples could be easy communication about the event program and program changes via Twitter in order to keep all participants updated, setting up a help desk via a blog, it will present technical support for registrations and assure that everybody has the same knowledge level before attending an event. Furthermore, the new technologies enable sharing, networking and voting during the event. Thanks to these tools the so far passive audience can be turned into active participants. Moreover, tools as Skype will enable the integration of far away speakers to the meeting.

As a conclusion we can say that the article shows the importance of staying updated with the current technologies for all members of the MICE industry. A refuse could result in important losses of performance for the event planners. Nevertheless, we all have to keep in mind that these changes require a large amount of expenditures, know-how and man power. Constant monitoring, technical infrastructure and support need to be provided. Social media consultants and specialists can provide their help.

Resources: http://issuu.com/germany-meetings/docs/gcb-mag-1002-en issuu?mode=embed&layout=http://skin.issuu.com/v/light/layout.xml&showFlipBtn=true

image : http://www.markevanstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/social-media-consultant.jpg