Meetings and social media: 4 challenges to consider

Nowadays, there is a new trend based on social network such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: the fans and the followers post photos, share news and comment on status updates. They are really involved in the image and communication of brands and for events, feedbacks and reactions on live are also critical elements for event planners to control.


The social media landscape has become essential in order to build a strong community of attendees, promote an event and communicate afterwards about its outfalls.

Scott Stratten, the President of Un-Marketing helped meeting professionals at the Convening Leaders 2015  understand some of the leading reasons why their organizations are struggling in the social media race (for further information, please visit their website ConveningLeader).
According to him, four characteristics and trends about Social media may explained why Event organizers face troubles on the virtual world.

 

 1: People don't want; they Really want

Stop failing in catching attention. Consider using emotions when talking to an audience.

Wondering why no one is bothering to like all those reminders about the early bird registration deadline? Because they all feel like promotional billboards, and promotional billboards do very little to inspire attendees. You have to make it awesome.

“Nobody shares mediocre,” Stratten said. “People spread emotion. We share something really funny or really sad or something that makes us really angry.”
In deed, to make a difference in the multiplicity of information, powerful emotions are the only way to distinguish among others. Remember that on-line users are bombarded with posts that cover everything from what their friends ate for breakfast to sponsored advertisements to pictures of someone’s new baby. Translation: the social media world is very crowded. If you want to stand out from the noise, do something worth your attendees’ time. Make them stop, listen and turn the volume up to make sure other people hear the message.

2: Give voice to your online community

While your communications department can write, revise and refine a press release, social media is the opposite.

“It’s not the brand telling the story,” Stratten said. What communication could be stronger than the one made by convinced attendees? In contrary to a marketing campaign led by the brand, noise emerging from the reactions of people is much stronger and more able to promote company's values.

Organizations can attempt to start the conversation, but the online community members will be the ones who determine its direction.

“Don’t ask them to retweet or to share,” Stratten added. “Put your messages out into the world and hope that they’re worth talking about. Hope the story is good enough that your audience will do the work for you.”

3: Be awesome and not negative!

 

Social media can be a great outlet for sharing good stories and positive reviews, but these channels also act as a platform for voicing frustrations. Be careful not to find your own media platform turn against you to become a bad promotion. When attendees complain about the lack of gluten-free food options at lunch or the temperature in the general session  it’s up to the meeting team to make sure each user’s complaint receives attention. Even facing serious complaint, one should react confident and awesome so that a complaint turn into a memorable story.

4:  #BeReactive

The time lapse between a complaint and its answer is sometimes more important than the actual content of the answer. If an attendee posts an angry tweet at 10 AM, someone needs to reply by about 10:01 AM — sooner, if possible. Being reactive is essential in this rapid-response business environment, “The speed at which we reply is almost more important than what we reply with,” Stratten said.

This carries serious implications for any meeting team that creates a specific hashtag for a conference and asks attendees to use it throughout the conference. A hashtag is a good idea under one condition: a staff member must be constantly monitoring it throughout the conference to respond to questions, needs and negative comments. In deed, whenever you give access to a platform where meet live reactions, tweets and comments, you also need to allocate a representative of the event that may be able to answer to questions, complaints and limit damages in case of hot debates.

“Don’t have an event hash tag if you’re not following it in real time,” Stratten said.

We know how influential, uncontrollable and wide the social media networks are today and for meeting professionals as much as others, they are an undeniable part of the success or failure of a company/event. From the promotion, the on-going and the outfalls of an event, social media are an efficient way to communicate and share; it is also a slippery slope because company may have chosen the brand, they have not so much control on their image.

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